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The Complete Carpenter: Escape From New York (1981)

The Complete Carpenter: Escape From New York (1981)

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There are no guards in this article. Only the author and the words he has typed. The rules are simple: once you go in, you do not come out … unless you click on a link or a bookmark or close the browser tab or …

Jumping out of The Fog and back into the fire as I move into the most intense period of John Carpenter’s career: the one-two knockout punch of Escape From New York and The Thing.

Escape From New York was the second movie Carpenter made under a deal with Avco Embassy. The production budget was $6 million, the largest amount of money Carpenter had yet worked with, but still tight for an ambitious SF picture. By comparison, 1981’s James Bond movie, For Your Eyes Only, had a budget of $28 million, and that was a cost-cutting move for the series after Moonraker. And the small drama On Golden Pond cost $15 million. Escape From New York ended up a hit, grossing more than four times its budget, making it one of the most successful films in Carpenter’s career — and, unfortunately, one of his few hits of his most productive decade.

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A Mythic Crime Story: Top Cow’s Postal

A Mythic Crime Story: Top Cow’s Postal

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Regular readers may notice that I try to sample a lot of different comic series. I like individual comics, but I also try to understand the field and its sub-genres. Crime fiction has a long history in comics. Its modern incarnations include titles like Brian Azzarello’s 100 Bullets, Ed Brubaker’s Gotham Central and Criminal, among many others.

Last year I heard the Nerdist Comics Panel interview Bryan Edward Hill, a TV writer working on Top Cow’s Postal.

The premise was catchy: Eden is a town entirely populated by criminals laying low or getting new identities, completely off the grid. And the main character of the story is Mark, the mayor’s son who works as Eden’s postman and who has Asperger’s.

And it’s in development for TV.

So I checked it out.

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Goth Chick News: Are the Blade Runner and Alien Worlds Colliding?

Goth Chick News: Are the Blade Runner and Alien Worlds Colliding?

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I was super excited to see the new Blade Runner 2049 trailer released this week, partially because I was curious to see how much if any actual running Harrison Ford would actually be doing.

Okay, don’t look at me like you weren’t wondering exactly the same thing.

Turns out, there was more than one item to discuss in this latest look into our dark futures.

First, Mr. Ford does do a bit of a hustle at the 1:41 mark, which incidentally was not bad for a 75-year-old man. Next, Jared Leto’s Wallace character is sufficiently creepy with those cataract contact lenses. And apparently you make the future even more futuristic with 3-story-tall, sexed up holograms – who knew?

But what is really giving the fan girls and boys fits is the possible Easter egg at the 15-second mark.

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Justin Cronin on Bringing The Passage Trilogy to Television

Justin Cronin on Bringing The Passage Trilogy to Television

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Over at DGO, Patty Templeton interviews author Justin Cronin on bringing his bestselling horror trilogy to the small screen. Let’s listen in, shall we?

The Passage is a damn fine book. It’s a doorstopper of a read with deep characters and a full-tilt apocalyptic plot. The first in a completed trilogy, The Passage establishes a near-future world ravaged by a contagious virus that leaves its victims in a vampire-like state. From there, one world dies and another is born…

PT: THE PASSAGE TRILOGY IS COMING TO TV. WHAT EXCITES YOU MOST ABOUT THE PROJECT?

JC: I think TV is so good now. Film is a director’s medium and TV has become a writer’s medium. TV is natural for ensemble storytelling and for telling a big story. Television is also a very good way to bring people to the books. Television is around for a long time, assuming the show is successful enough to stay around. Movies come and go, now. Half the movies I want to see are gone from the theaters before I can see them. Whereas television is one of our great cultural pleasures. Good television is kind of like Dickens used to be. It’s episodic and we can all go down to the pier and await the next chapter of David Copperfield.

Read the complete interview at DGO!

Goth Chick News: Ellen Ripley Relives Her Tortured Past

Goth Chick News: Ellen Ripley Relives Her Tortured Past

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Consider for a moment your adult self, with all your current knowledge, experience and (theoretic) ability to know better, magically transported back in time to relive the trials and tribulations of your incredibly awkward and potentially misspent youth.

Would you do it?

Personally that’s a great big “no” with several colorful swear words preceding it. But this is the exact personal hell soon to be faced by Sigourney Weaver.

Sort of.

Ridley Scott isn’t ruling out a young Ellen Ripley entering the storyline in one of his planned Alien: Covenant sequels, via the magic of CGI de-aging.

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So You Want to Be a Movie Star – Really?

So You Want to Be a Movie Star – Really?

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Joan Crawford

Joan Crawford

So you want to be a movie star? Big house, swimming pool, fancy cars, lavish parties, gala premiers, fawning flunkies, fame, fortune, the envy and adulation of millions — all the accoutrements, privileges, and perquisites of a luxurious lifestyle undreamt of by lesser mortals? It’s quite a life, I hear.

But of course, there’s always the flip side (everything has a flip side), when the years start to mount up and more and more choice parts go to fresh young things with a little more rubber on their radials, and the waiting time between films grows longer… and longer… and you, a big talent, a serious thespian, a major star, finally find yourself slinking onto the sound stage to take up your role in a low-budget exploitation movie. You can’t even salvage a little dignity by hiding somewhere in the middle of the credits, can’t pretend that you’re doing a campy cameo as a favor for an old friend. Nope — honey, you’re the headliner, the main attraction, that’s your name up there in big, bold print, right up there for everyone to see on the posters of Strait-Jacket… and Berserk!… and… please, God, no… Trog.

Yup. It’s a hell of a life, being a movie star. Just ask Joan Crawford.

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Peplum Populist: Hercules, Samson & Ulysses

Peplum Populist: Hercules, Samson & Ulysses

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hercules-samson-ulysses-posterThe “versus film” has been with us for decades, even if “vs.” didn’t show up in early movie titles like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Audiences crave watching cinematic legends smash into each other in duels to the death — or duels to the mutual understanding. Alien vs. Predator, Freddy vs. Jason, Batman v[s]. Superman, King Kong vs. Godzilla (soon ready for a rematch), Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter (this really happened), Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper (a number of occasions), and Dollman vs. The Demonic Toys. Bring up anything involving the SyFy Channel and sharks and you get hurt.

Italian sword-and-sandal (peplum) films couldn’t resist putting titans of the ancient world into the ring together, and there’s no finer example than 1963’s Hercules, Samson & Ulysses. The Italian title translates as “Hercules Challenges Samson,” in case you needed to know who goes up against whom and who is hanging around as the sidekick.

When it comes to peplum-as-pulp, Hercules, Samson & Ulysses is the real deal. Appearing at the point in the genre’s evolution when sword-and-sandal films either went stale or went silly, HS&U falls solidly on the positive silly side. It’s an outrageous actioner that knows exactly what its audience wants to see and delivers 100% on the promise of watching two legendary supermen batter each other in muscular absurdity. It may not be the best sword-and-sandal film, but it’s one of the most entertaining. This is the peplum film to watch if most of the genre’s other offerings don’t grab you.

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A Cybernetic Detective in a Futuristic Japan: Ghost in the Shell

A Cybernetic Detective in a Futuristic Japan: Ghost in the Shell

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I prepared myself before going to see Ghost in the Shell, expecting an overly simplistic story full of action that vaguely resembled the 1995 anime release of the same title. Fortunately, my expectations were wrong.

Just to set some background: the franchise began with a manga titled The Ghost in the Shell, written in 1989 by Masamune Shirow (a pen name for Masanori Ota). It was later adapted as 1995 film with the same name (directed by Mamoru Oshii) and a subsequent anime series (Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, one of my all-time favorite anime series).

The 1995 film is a really intriguing story, taking a closer look at humanity and robotics in a gritty, futuristic Japan. It took me a couple of viewings to understand everything; the story comes fast, as do the fantastic action sequences. It inspired the Wachowskis with The Matrix film series, and you can see some direct correlations between certain scenes.

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Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster: The Godzilla Movie to Rise Again in 2019

Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster: The Godzilla Movie to Rise Again in 2019

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It’s been a month since Kong: Skull Island came out and grossed over half a billion dollars globally, so I feel safe in 1) discussing the post-credits stinger without a spoiler freak-out, and 2) predicting we’ll indeed see Legendary Picture’s planned Godzilla vs. King Kong film in a few years. Warner Bros. isn’t leaving franchise money on the table, especially with their DC pictures in a shaky place.

But the movie arriving before the Radioactive Terror and the Eighth Wonder smash heads is promised in Skull Island’s post-credits stinger. Godzilla: King of the Monsters, to be directed by Michael Dougherty and slated for release in March 2019, is the third installment in the Legendary Pictures Kaijuverse. Kong: Skull Island contains numerous references that it occurs in the same universe as the 2014 Godzilla, such as the presence of the monster-researching Monarch Organization and mention of the Pacific atomic test originally targeted at killing Godzilla.

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Goth Chick News: Netflix Gives Hill House Yet Another Life (Yay!)

Goth Chick News: Netflix Gives Hill House Yet Another Life (Yay!)

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The Haunting of Hill House-small

I discovered Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, considered one of the best ghost stories of the 20th century, in fourth grade. Not because it was on the approved reading list for nine-year-olds – on the contrary, I didn’t run into it academically until high school – but because I came across it during a summer reading program at my public library. Thankfully, librarians then were far less politically correct than they apparently are today, and they didn’t discourage browsing of selections that were not strictly “age appropriate.”

Since I fell in love with all things Shirley, I discovered Hill House had two theatrical adaptations, both call The Haunting; one in 1963 by Robert Wise, and one in 1999 (my guilty pleasure) directed by Jan de Bont and starring Liam Neeson, Owen Wilson, Cathrine Zeta-Jones, and The Conjuring‘s Lili Taylor. Both telling the tale of a group of people spending a summer in a mansion rich in haunted history and tales of the paranormal, who soon realize the stories are not just old wives tales as they begin to experience the supernatural and malevolent phenomena for themselves.

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