Sunday, May 5, 2024

Drive -in Monster-rama April Ghouls 2024 KILLER KLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK

 


KILLER CLOWNS FROM OUTER SPACE
Classic horror  comedy was the focus of the raffle basket at the Drive-In Monster rama this April. It was a stunner that everyone wanted to win.

The film itself follows a small town where the title clowns arrive and begin  carting off the population. It’s up to a group pf friends to try and start them.

Making only the barest bit of sense, this is really just a bunch of loosely connected set pieces that entertain with their off kilter sense of reality. It’s also a film that has endlessly quotable dialog that I have been subjected to for nearly 4 decades by my brother who seems to have the film memorized.

While I have seen the film numerous times over the years it was delight to see it on a big screen for the first time, more so when an actual killer clown was wandering through the drive in.

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK
I first saw John Carpenter’s classic film on the night it premiered in a packed house. I’ve seen it any number of times since then. Recently I’ve tended to catch it in the middle when it runs on one of the various cable stations.

The plot has Kurt Russell’s Snake Pliskin  going into a walled off NYC to rescue the President. It goes sideways from the start and Snake has to fight his way out.

Seeing the film from start to finish for the first time in a decade or more I was truly impressed by how well it is constructed. It’s a finely crafted machine that grabs you and holds you attention from start to finish. Other than a kind of rushed ending the film just moves at a perfect pace.  Its so good one has to wonder why Carpenter isn’t considered a greater director by film lovers.

This is truly a great film.

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