One of those days when you are in front of the T.V. randomly flipping channels in a mindless sort of way. And you stumble across a movie you last saw ages ago. In this particular case the movie was Escape from New York. This is a cheesy (although far less cheesy than its ridiculously bad sequel), yet memorable movie if only for its amazingly poor vision at predicting the future of communication technology. (yes theres a geek in me)

 

Interestingly this movie was made in 1981, 15 years before the sequel. The special effects in the sequel (Escape from LA) are sooo bad that they make the original look like a George Lucas production - in reality the effects in  Escape from New York is pretty bad - the gliders look plastic toys - which they obviously are. Of note is that Ernest Borgnine and Isaac Hayes are in the movie along with Lee Van Cleef. And Pam Grier is in the sequel to this John Carpenter series. Looks like John Carpenter finds a role for her in two of his particularly bad movies. No points for finding out the other. One surprising thing is Kurt Russel looks pretty much the same in the 2 movies almost 15 years apart!

 

One final note - aren't you always surprised by how movies (especially sci-fi) you thought were great as a kid often end up being cheesy shadows of whats in your memory?