I dread to think what they’d do to it now.
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That is A Good Thing. Knowing what they wanted it to be is just a kinder phrasing for pretense. Knowingly subverting genre expectations requires one to first internalize them. Whereas avoiding expectations in defiance of genre is creativity itself, and what adds to the interest of experiencing the work. I agree that Escape from New York is flawed, but the best movies, music, literature, etc I find generally defy easy categorization.
IIRC about the production, there was no CGI. For the cityscapes they actually painted their miniatures of the city black and fastened reflective tape to the edges. And the other display effects were hand-animated. I liked the effect.
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I don’t think there was any CGI n that move. I believe it’s all done with models, and they’re my favourite part of the movie.
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I didn’t flag your comment. It seems like a legitimate question.
Isn’t it supposed to be an action movie? I can’t think of what else it was aspiring to be. It’s not a comedy, musical, romance, drama or western.
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Oh, that’s right! - the ‘computer enhanced’ view of the city was a mock-up model of a city, with reflective tape added to the edges, and (blacklight?) used to illuminate the fake wireframe as a camera panned over the model. Ironically, the effect looks hokey because the edges move and overlap at a precision that’s much better than the rest of the ‘display’ is supposed to be.
And this?
This is classic. 
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It is like a clunkier version of the hand-drawn computer graphics from the old HHGttG series:
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Which, to be fair, were amazing.
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The helicopter sweep parts were the ones that annoyed me. Infra-red would have been far more useful that the useless implied psuedo LIDAR they used (which showed nothing but wireframe skyscrapers).
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In the past few weeks I’ve rewatched all the old Phantasm movies, and watched for the first time the last Phantasm movie. I think they are underrated entries in the 80s horror/sci-fi genre.
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Yeah cause they couldn’t dirty up the streets to film there. Hometown St. Louis before it got cleaned up represent.
You can see The Fox Theater, Union Station, and other places that look a lot nicer now.
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I love the plot of the first one. Kid tries to stop evil guy killing people, shrinking them down to half size and turning them into zombies so he can send them to another world to work as slaves.
I don’t think I ever got past the second. Is it worth going through the whole series?
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It depends on how much you love schlocky sci-fi-horror films? the rest of the cast came back for later films and the stories are interconnected until the last film. The higher budget 2nd film (with no Michael Baldwin) just isn’t as good (though Reggie Bannister and Angus Scrimm do a great job in that one).
I think they’re great, personally and worth watching the whole series to see the whole story unfold. My favorite horror series right after Evil Dead, to be honest.
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i think my uncle was on the force back then. i seem to recall him talking about when they filmed on the Eads Bridge, etc.
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We will explore 40+ Hitchcock films from his first film in the silent era, The Lodger (1927)
Harrumph…
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Since some of the reviews (and many of the comments) of the new Tom Cruise Mummy movie reference the Brendan Fraser version, tonight I watched…
…the Brendan Fraser Mummy. And it’s just as much fun as I remembered it was. Fast-paced action, smart characters, as much humor as horror–it’s a great romp. 
I have absolutely no intention of watching the Tom Cruise one. Pretty much every review I’ve seen said it should never have been brought out of the tomb.
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I really think Brendan Fraser is underrated because he was in films like Looney Tunes. He was also in The Quiet American and Gods and Monsters, and he was brilliant in both.
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Speaking of mummies, if you haven’t seen it I would like to recommend Bubba Ho-Tep.
The best thing about the movie, in my opinion, is the way it humanizes Elvis. I’ve never been an Elvis fan, but this movie made me reconsider him as a person rather than a larger-than-life icon.
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Yes! That is such an incredible movie. Bruce Campbell is amazing, though Ossie Davis almost steals the show as J.F.K. (yes, John Fitzgerald Kennedy. You’d probably need to see the movie to understand.) As goofy as the concept is, it has such compassion for its characters, especially Elvis. It is so worth seeing!
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I haven’t seen Gods and Monsters or the Quiet American yet. I should catch up at some point. I really think Fraser’s a good actor. He dropped out of acting for a while, I hope he comes back to it at some point.
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You get a full frontal of Brendan in that one…
Also to tie in with the horror films, have Frankenstein and The Bride Of Frankenstein cued up to watch after Gods And Monsters.
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