99CR 28: Escape From New York

02/17/25 • 121 min

This week we take a look at Bryan's favorite movie of all time, John Carpenter's tough guy action dystopia that definitely shook the Disney off of Kurt Russell and reintroduced him as a premier action movie star for the 1980's. We track the entire trajectory of this movie's production, we'll tell you why everyone thinks Snake Plissken is dead, you'll find out about all the other guys that the production company wanted over Kurt Russell, how director of photography, Dean Cundey engineered an entirely new anamorphic lens just to see the movie at night without sacrificing all the awesome lighting. It's a once-in-a-lifetime action movie that set the pace for the decade and inspired everyone to try their hand (and mostly fail) at making their own version of the movie.

Carpenter had access to more money than he'd work with before and still had to stretch a dollar to make the movie and he managed to knock it out of the park on every front. The cast is stacked. The production design is second-to-none, and the soundtrack is just perfect. Listen in and learn all about it.

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Previous Episode

67: Blacula

This week we take a look at one of the standout features of the 70's blaxploitation age, William Crain's seminal vampire movie, Blacula, starring William Marshall, Vonetta McGee, and Thalmus Rasulala. Blaxploitation is a troubling topic to take on as the bad movie outnumber the good movies three to one and definitely play up the worst black stereotypes but for a little while there blaxploitation movies and their arty cousin, the LA Rebellion, pushed forward black power narratives and power fantasies that spotlighted black talent and provided black audiences with great characters that reflected their values and dreams.

Blacula as a horror movie is also a standout picture, being every bit as riveting and spooky as Hammer's best outings. William Marshall absolutely dominates the screen as doomed Prince Mamuwalde and Vonetta McGee is hard to take your eyes off of. Give this episode and listen and do chill out. Bryan realized too late that yes, All The Colors of the Dark is a Sergio Martino movie and What Have You Done To Solange was by Massimo Dellamano.

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(Sample) Do You Think I'm Spooky? S1E10: Fallen Angel

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This week we get a nice little course correction from writers Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa. After the series worst episode, Space, and some notes from Fox, Gordon and Gansa got to work on bringing the episode back into focus as Mulder goes rogue and infiltrates a UFO crash site that's being recovered by a covert army operation. When he's inevitably caught he meets UFO enthusiast and fellow paranoia enjoyer, Max Fennig, as the pilot of the downed UFO sneaks around the crash site, killing soldiers, while waiting for the mother ship to arrive and pick them up.

Not exactly a mythology episode but not exactly not a mythology episode, Fallen Angel brings the series back into paranoid focus to remind everyone that it's about UFOs, aliens, and conspiracy.

We also break down this week in pop culture and the news as usual.