Gary B. Kibbe

Dismissed by many as just a convoluted and slimy shocker, this is one of John Carpenter's best films (still not available on Region 2 DVD!)and amost 15 years later it's even more relevant than it was in 1995. Imagine if Stephen King or Dean Koontz or James Herbert books started driving the readers crazy and that the author had gone missing. What if you wrere a private-investigater hired by the author's desperate agent to seek him out and find out what the hell was going on. And what if you found him in a strange and spooky vilage in the middle of nowhere and the villigers were all mad? shake up that mix with loads of H P Lovecraft, Sam Neill as the sceptical p.i. and blend it with some pre-apocalyptic imagery and you have an intelligent horror movie that when viewed in this post 9/11 era is actually quite disturbing.

The second part of a proposed Trilogy, Escape from LA wasn't quite the hit that everyone expected, but like Escape from New York, the film has now gained a cult following. In my mind, anything Carpenter and Kurt Russell do together turns to gold - ELVIS, THE THING, BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA... Russell also had a hand in the script of this action-packed, apocalyptic thriller fantasy. It's just a shame that they won't be doing ESCAPE FROM EARTH...

A few years before Rob Zombie and the like decided to re-visit John Carpenter movies, Carpenter himself chose this 60's black-and-white British chiller to re-imagine. Most remakes are a pointless exercise (The Omen, Psycho, The Fog, Assault on Precinct 13) while just a few actually improve upon the original source material and make the grade. This is one of them. This isn't art, it's entertainment - and when you consider that the vintage VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED is now dated and cheap-looking, this update is leaps and bounds ahead of it. Christopher Reeve's last on-screen performance (as the head doctor who suspects foul play) before his horse-riding tragedy is engaging and the supporting cast is suitably fraught: there's Kirstie Alley (FBI/CIA-type), Mark Hamill (Priest!), and Linda Koslowski. The silver-heaired kids are pretty good but arn't terrably scary, and Carpenter's music as always is perfect. Released just after ESCAPE FROM LA and before IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS this is undemanding and frivolous horror fluff from the master.