Escape from L.A./John Carpenter's Escape from L.A./Escape from Los Angeles (1996) or, Snake Plissken in Crazy-World!

4/21/2017

Escape from L.A./John Carpenter's Escape from L.A./Escape from Los Angeles (1996) or, Snake Plissken in Crazy-World!

♥♥♥

+ Costliest Flop of the Year: 31.12 mil. $ range

Kurt Russell looks cool in the intense colors on this poster for John Carpenter's Escape from L.A.

Snake Plissken is back, this time in the year 2013, in which he avoids deportation by getting imposed an assignment by the mad president of the United States to capture his daughter and a weapon on the prison island that is Los Angeles.

Escape from L.A. is a colorful an very wacky sequel to New Yorker master co-writer-director John Carpenter's (Halloween (1978)) own great Escape from New York (1981). It features some early CGI, which looks curious today, and an exaggerated plot that doesn't reach the heights of the first film or another comparable 1990s sci-fi-action great like Paul Verhoeven's Total Recall (1990).
But Escape from L.A. does have its own kind of charm and a cast that contains several smaller scoops, including a scene where Bruce Campbell (Burn Notice (2007-13)) plays a crazy plastic surgeon, which is a favorite, and Pam Grier (Linc's (1998-2000)) playing a male-to-female transgender, (hadn't seen that coming.)
Escape from L.A. is co-written with Debra Hill (The Fog (1980)) and returning star Kurt Russell (Dark Blue (2002), actor). It is a noisy and nonsensical piece of super-kitsch. SPOILER Especially the film's ending is odd, as Plissken "bombs the world 500 years back" by turning off the power with a satellite.

Related posts:

John Carpenter: Cigarette Burns (2005, TV movie) - Carpenter burns out in weird, tiresome TV movie

1996 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
Christine (1983) or, Bad Plymouth!
Escape from New York (1981) - Carpenter introduces Kurt Russell as action star in dystopic dream
Top 10: The best action movies and TV-series reviewed by Film Excess to date
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) - Solid action guerilla film-making

Watch an ad for the film from a VHS tape here - featuring creative marketing that changes the film's huge flop status by referring to it as a "25 mil. $ box office smash", - some 20 years after movies broke the 100 mil. $ mark at the domestic box office ...

Cost: 50 mil. $
Box office: 47.2 mil. $
= Huge flop
[Escape from L.A. was released 9 August (North America) and runs 101 minutes. The film was in development for almost a decade but was sped up by the 1992 LA riots, the 1994 LA earthquake as well as Russell's wish to play Plissken again. The budget was more than 8 times that of the original film. Shooting took place in California, including at Universal Studios, Texas and Miami, Florida from December 1995 - March 1996. The film opened #3, behind fellow new release Jack and hold-over hit A Time to Kill, to an 8.9 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it fell out of the top 5 in its second week, only played 4 weeks and grossed just 25.4 mil. $ (53.8 mil. % of the total gross.) Roger Ebert gave the film 3½/4 stars, equal to two notches better than this review. Escape from L.A. is rotten at 53 % with a 5.6 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Escape from L.A.?

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William Friedkin has died

Born in Chicago, Friedkin accrued TV credits prior to his advance to the big screen as the director of Good TImes (1967), The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970) before his major breakthrough, The French Connection (1971), for which he won his only Oscar. He followed it up with the even bigger smash, The Exorcist (1973), arguably the best horror film of all time, for which he was Oscar-nominated. Later credits include Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Rampage (1987), Rules of Engagement (2000), Killer Joe (2011) and The Devil and Father Amorth (2017, documentary). Friedkin passed away at age 87. R.I.P.

Louise Fletcher has passed away

Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Jean-Luc Godard has passed away

Born in Paris, France, Godard lived much of his life in Switzerland. He wrote for French film criticism magazine Cahiers du Cinema and became foundational for the New French Wave that inspired new waves in scores of other countries across the world with his Breathless (1960). Later credits include A Woman Is A Woman (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Petit Soldat (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Weekend (1967), Every Man for Himself (1980), King Lear (1987), Century of Cinema (1995, documentary), Goodbye to Language (2014) and many more. Godard died of assisted suicide at age 91. R.I.P.

Wolfgang Petersen has died

James Caan has died

Caan was born the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany in New York. He got his start on TV in the early 1960s. His credits include El Dorado (1966), The Rain People (1969), Brian's Song (1971, TV movie), The Godfather (1972), - for which he earned his only Oscar nomination, - Slither (1973), The Gambler (1974), Funny Lady (1975), Rollerball (1975), Silent Movie (1976), Hide in Plain Sight (1980), - the only film he also directed, - Thief (1981), Misery (1990), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Bottle Rocket (1996), Eraser (1996), Dogville (2003), Elf (2003), Las Vegas (2003-07), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and many more. Caan passed away at age 82. R.I.P.

Jean-Louis Trintignant has died

Born in Vaucluse, France, Trintignant's theatrical debut as an actor was in If All the Guys in the World... (1955). Later credits include ...And God Created Woman (1956), The Seven Deadly Sins (1961), Inferno (1964), A Man and A Woman (1966), My Love, My Love (1967), A Man to Kill (1967), The Great Silence (1968), Z (1969), The Assassination (1972), Three Colors: Red (1994), Amour (2012), Happy End (2017) and many more. He also wrote and directed two films in the 1970s. Trintignant passed away at age 91. R.I.P.

Ray Liotta has died

Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

Born in Ohio, Hall didn't start acting until he was 30. His long list of credits include Zabriskie Point (1970), Miami Vice (1987, TV-series), Midnight Run (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Cheers (1993, TV-series), Hard Eight (1996), The Rock (1996), Air Force One (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), Seinfeld (1991-98), Rush Hour (1998), The Insider (1999), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Bruce Almighty (2003), Dogville (2003), The Zodiac (2005), Zodiac (2007), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2004-09), Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), Modern Family (2011-12) and many more. Hall passed away at age 90. R.I.P.

William Hurt has passed away

Born in Washington D.C., Hurt's first film role was the lead in Altered States (1980). Later credits include Body Heat (1981), The Big Chill (1983), Gorky Park (1983), Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), for which he earned his only Oscar as Best Actor; Chilrdren of a Lesser God (1986), for which he was also Oscar-nominated; Broadcast News (1987), for which he was again Oscar-nominated; Smoke (1995), A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), A History of Violence (2005), for which he was again Oscar-nominated; The Good Shepherd (2006), Into the Wild (2007), Robin Hood (2010) and many more. Hurt passed away at age 71. R.I.P.

Ivan Reitman has passed away

Born in Chechoslovakia, now Slovakia, Reitman's family fled the Soviet regime to Austria, then Toronto, when he was 4 years old. Reitman broke into movies as a director with Foxy Lady (1971). Later credits include Cannibal Girls (1973), Meatballs (1979), Stripes (1981), Ghostbusters (1984), Twins (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Kindergarten Cop (1990), Junior (1994), Father's Day (1997), Evolution (1998), No Strings Attached (2011), Draft Day (2014) and more. Reitman's son Jason Reitman is also a great filmmaker. Reitman passed away at age 75. R.I.P.

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4/21/2017

Escape from L.A./John Carpenter's Escape from L.A./Escape from Los Angeles (1996) or, Snake Plissken in Crazy-World!

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