John Carpenter: Escape from LA

Despite my somewhat muted praise of Escape from New York — one of the most beloved of Carpenter’s films — there’s no denying the elements that fervent fans of the cult classic point to as reasons why it’s one of the best action films of the ‘80s. The primary reason being of course Kurt Russell’s performance as Snake Plissken, so it’s no surprise that there were always plans to bring the character back. However, time kept passing and opportunities kept getting stunted, and it wasn’t until 1996 that Carpenter and Russell would re-team (along with Carpenter’s long-time writing/producing partner Debra Hill) for Escape from LA, the long-awaited sequel fans of the original had been pining for. Alas, the film is not a sequel as much as a re-introduction to the character, and it suffers because of this. Even though I wasn’t the hugest fan of the original, it would have been interesting to see a true sequel to the film. Instead, the film plays exactly like Escape from New York both in terms of narrative and in entertainment value. I know that may be sacrilegious to suggest that LA is just as good as New York, but aside from the film’s huge budget (50 million, which is the largest Carpenter’s ever received for a film by a significant margin), there is really nothing different about the film. What’s true about New York is true for LA: they’re both flawed films that are worth seeing for a couple of standout setpieces, some memorably wacky side characters, the great musical score, and for Russell’s performance.

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John Carpenter: Big Trouble in Little China

Note: This is going to be a bit of an odd entry into this retrospective; I am going to focus more on Kurt Russell and what an action hero was in the 1980s than on Carpenter. For a better review of the film and a more comprehensive look at its production, check out J.D.’s fantastic post on the film from his Carpenter blog-a-thon a couple of years ago.

John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China is a lively, funny, and energetic; the exact kind of follow-up he needed to remedy the effect his previous film — the prosaic friendly alien film Starman — left on viewers. Big Trouble in Little China is a movie that never fails to make smile — a joyful mix between old school Oater and Indiana Jones; it’s the type of film that is always good for whatever ails me in the way that Raiders of the Lost Ark or Die Hard or Lethal Weapon seem to always cheer me up. Nostalgia naturally plays a role in this — I grew up watching these types of action movies, and the aforementioned triad were some of my very favorites — but there is something about these types of action films that acts as the perfect remedy for a bad day or week. Whether it’s Nazis trying to steal the Ark of the Covenant, Germans taking a high rise hostage, or mystical Chinese bad guys running things from a lair beneath Chinatown, these are films that elicit genuine glee despite their ridiculous premises. They’re all filled with great setpieces, memorable dialogue, a wacky premise that makes you smile, and, most importantly, a great hero that the action revolves around. I think Big Trouble in Little China works (along with the aforementioned films) so well as this kind of “antidote movie” the characters (and the filmmakers) take all that ridiculousness very seriously — and so the laughs and the smiles and the thrills are all feel earned.

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John Carpenter: The Thing

Every Halloween, I end the night with a “comfort food” type of horror film. Films like Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Beyond, Suspiria, The Church, Psycho, or Alien may not be considered the best horror films (although most on that list certainly qualify), but they make for a nice, familiar end to the night. Another film I often consider to end the night on is John Carpenter’s brilliant science-fiction/horror hybrid The Thing. Ask me on the right day, and I might even tell you that I like The Thing more than Halloween. While Halloween — as we’ve already discussed in this retrospective — embodies everything that is great about the horror genre and is pretty much the perfect horror movie, The Thing, however, adds another, more cerebral, layer to both the horror and sci-fi genre. There are moments throughout The Thing that are so perfectly executed — that so expertly showcase the bleak tone and evoke such a perfect tone of dread — that I could be convinced that I’m looking at a more complete and complex (and yes better) film than Halloween.

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John Carpenter: Escape from New York

Thanks to the success of The Fog, Carpenter was given a six million dollar budget for his next project, the dystopian adventure film Escape from New York. Re-teaming with star Kurt Russell, Carpenter’s film is a mixed-bag of genres — part action/adventure film and part post-apocalyptic movie (which were in abundance around 1981) set in grimy New York City (ah, “grimy New York City,” another sign of the film being released in 1981) — Escape from New York is also a film with mixed results. It’s a film I remember having a great fondness for in high school, but it just doesn’t hold up. The music and performances (it has great ensemble of colorful character actors) and set-pieces are all top-notch, but Carpenter’s reliance on stories that take place within a 24-48 hour timeframe backfires here. He tries cramming too much of his budget into the film’s short runtime, so instead of a coherent adventure story, we’re left with a film where the parts are more impressive than the whole.

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John Carpenter: Elvis

If you’re a fan of Elvis and like to think of him only as the hip-swayin’, Cadillac buyin’, white jumpsuit wearin’ showman, then John Carpenter’s Elvis is the Elvis biopic. There’s nothing in this movie that even hints at the darker side of Elvis’ life. Similar to the rags-to-riches story arc that is found in other Rock and Roll biopics like The Buddy Holly Story, Carpenter’s film is a hagiographic retelling of the life of one of music’s greatest performers. It’s not an overarching biopic seeing how it ends in Vegas prior to Elvis taking the stage for his big comeback (a few years prior to his downfall), and it doesn’t even come close to covering all of the aspects of Elvis’ life, but it’s satisfying and entertaining and contains a great lead performance that was the beginning of one of 1980’s most underrated actor/director collaborations.

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