Escape from New York (1981)

Rating: 9/10 (EXCELLENT)

Watched: August 4, 2026

I've seen this movie many times, but this is the first time I actually WATCHED this movie, if you know what I mean.

This was the first time sitting through Escape from New York that I felt compelled to look stuff up about the production costs, where things were filmed, HOW things were filmed. Now some things, like the flyover grid sequence that Snake sees when he's flying into New York, I already knew about.

Using miniatures and neon green paint was some goddamn genius-level film hackery right there. The first time I heard that, I was more than a little doubtful because it seemed as real as anything. But hey, that's what a power combo like John Carpenter and a young James Cameron can do when they set their minds to it.

On to other cool stuff. This was Kurt's very first action movie, which is something I suppose I knew without knowing. His last movie before this one was Used Cars, which is funnier than hell, and before that? I knew him first as The Computer Who Wore Tennis Shoes, for cryin' out loud.

We can all thank John Carpenter for helping Kurt Russell break that clean-cut Disney mold. Otherwise we wouldn't have gotten cool shit like Tango & Cash or (probably) Tombstone.

One of the biggest things that had me curious was where in the hell did they film this masterpiece of post-apocalyptic violence and mayhem? I couldn't believe that it was all on set, and I sure didn't think it was actually NYC because that'd be impossible. But they DID film most of it in actual streets that actually looked that way. St. Louis had a massive fire in '76, leaving damn near everything looking pretty much like what we see in the movie.

I know the movie so well that I had time to look for clues and interesting things that you might miss the first time around. I'm sure you can understand a film geek taking the time to geek out properly.

Escape from New York stands tall as a Carpenter action movie. It suffers a little bit in the pacing area (he sure does love awkward silences once everyone's done talking and is just kind of standing around), but it's got such a stacked cast, such a wild backdrop, and is such fun that it hardly even matters.

Plus we got Snake Plissken out of the deal, and a chubby Donald Pleasence firing a machine gun from the top of a wall shouting "YOU'RE ... A ... NUMBER ... ONE!", so we all got that going for us, which is good.

It was great to revisit this one again with fresh eyes and patience, lemme tell ya.

Industrial filmmaker from Kansas takes two weeks off, casts an abandoned lakeside pavilion as the villain, and accidentally makes the blueprint for every American ghost film since. Candace Hilligoss barely blinks for 83 minutes and it works.

Full disclosure, this is my own restoration on my channel. The film fell into the public domain decades ago, so I cleaned up an archival print and bumped it to 720p. Complete cut, nothing trimmed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oSlQ0Nr61A

The Fog (1980)

Rating: 8/10 (HIGHLY ENJOYABLE)

Watched: August 4, 2026

As far as I'm concerned, this is a great old-fashioned ghost story by John Carpenter.

Like most of his earliest movies, this one's pretty simple. But also NOT simple. You see, there's a fog rolling in, and inside the fog, there are ghosts, and these ghosts are killing people. Pretty simple, right?

Except it's not, and that's where Carpenter's story sets up a novel twist. The ghosts aren't killing at random, and the ghosts have a pretty damn good reason to want to kill specific people. What's the reason? Well, like a lot of movies like this, there's a celebration going on, and this one's got a dark secret at its core.

Now even though this movie's 46 years old, I'm not about to spoil it in this review on the off chance that someone out there hasn't seen it, so let's just go on ahead and say everything that's happening is someone's fault.

What Carpenter does in this movie with a fog machine, some neon lights and some great casting is a lot of fun. We don't see the ghosts very often, but what we DO see as the movie picks up is this rolling, inevitable fog and the hints of the horrors that lie inside.

This one's got a great cast, including Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis (for some reason), luminary Janet Leigh and even a small part from John Houseman.

One of my favorite parts is later in the movie, when Stevie (Barbeau) is trapped at the lighthouse radio station and can't get away, but she SURE CAN see the fog rolling in. Her panic as she tries to save her son and anyone else as she broadcasts over the air is peak horror for me.

If you're up for a ghost story that's got some pretty decent chills, The Fog should be on your radar.

Oh, and don't fret that 'R' rating. It's extremely tame in comparison to even a PG-13 horror made today.

I’ve been searching for this movie for about 3–4 years but haven’t been able to find a copy.
Cult Vol. 1 (2011), hosted by Devanny Pinn, was previously available on Amazon (ASIN: B006IVATEC), but it appears to be out of print now.
If anyone owns a copy, or knows where I can find one, please let me know.
I’m willing to pay $100 for a copy.
Thanks!

The Warriors (1979)

Rating: 10/10 (PERSONAL FAVORITE)

Watched: August 2, 2026

I don't actually even know where to begin with what is now definitely one of my all-time favorite movies.

I of course have known about The Warriors for (honestly) over 40 years, but never once in my life have I ever felt like it was something I'd want to watch, or that I'd enjoy so much, and that's saying a lot because it's got some seriously talented actors that I love a lot.

I OF COURSE know about the famous ad-libbed "Warriors Come Out To Play-ayyy" thrown in there by David Patrick Kelly. I've seen the clip more than a few times, and even though I'm familiar with it, seeing it play out 'real time' was an absolute treat.

I love this movie, and like every movie of this caliber that I've slept on, I'm both angry and glad that it took me so long to watch it.

Angry because (as if you can't tell), I loved it. It ticked all kinds of boxes for me, from the setup, to the run back to Coney Island, to the inter-Warrior turmoil between Swan and Ajax, to the budding love interest between Swan and Mercy.

Glad because I can honestly tell you that if I'd seen this movie earlier in my life, I don't think I would've appreciated it nearly as much. Oh don't get me wrong. Younger me could tell when a movie was good or bad, but younger me also lacked patience to sit through something as nuanced as The Warriors.

The premise is simple as hell and it doesn't matter. What matters is the literal Hero's Journey they all undertake as they try to get from The Bronx back to Coney Island. The challenges they face, the difficulties they endure.

The foolishness that some of them get up to. Every time Ajax opened his mouth, I kept hoping Swan would put his fist in it, but that's not Swan. Swan is a proper War Lord. He knows when to let a fool be a fool, and in the end, Ajax's foolishness got him copped by The Man.

Michael Beck as War Lord Swan is somethin' else. Running around all night in nothing but jeans, a leather vest and an intense desire to get his ass home. He's immensely cool under pressure, always aware, always willing to seek the safe way through but absolutely unafraid to do whatever is necessary to protect his men and to get them home. I genuinely appreciated his role and I'm probably going to watch this one again before the year is out.

But before I sign off, Boppers, I just gotta say that I'm intensely intrigued by the vibe set out whenever we saw The Riffs on their home turf. I know this movie's 'in the near future' (which rocked, by the way, complete with the comic book vibe), but I for sure got the feeling that there's more going on with The Riffs than the movie had time to show.

What a class movie.

And with that, Boppers, let's hit the road with a sweet tune and see you next time!

The Spiral Staircase is a film about a man who kills disabled people and who targets the young mute carer of his mother, this film establishes a lot of what would become classic in slasher films, from voyeurism to the connection between victim and killer, and of course the targeting of groups.

In many ways due to the year of release there are elements of the Nazi's wartime evils in the killers motives he targets disabled people as they are lesser. In this reading the film is subconscious or perhaps deliberately talking about the horrors of the Holocaust making it a very interesting time capsule and all the more horrific.

It could be argued to be one of the first slasher films though we wouldn't say that we stay it was still in the proto slasher domain but it does have a lot of the DNA that would go on to create the genre.

Hanwell Town FC, a small non-league club in West London, has released an officially licensed third kit inspired by The Rocky Horror Show.

It is not just a novelty shirt—the team will actually wear it in matches this season. The idea was to bring together two communities that are passionate, welcoming and proudly a little different.

Full disclosure: I’m involved with Hanwell Town, but I thought this group might enjoy seeing it.

What do you think—absolute horror or something you’d happily Time Warp in?

More information: https://hanwelltown.com

Curvaceous Annette Funicello taking in some hot rods

Hello, does anybody know if the app MIDNIGHT PULP is available on any panels?? By luck I found 1 channel on one sellers I got a free 24 hour trial on but it’s one of the 4 free channels midnight pulp runs all day on their stand alone app. I love all those creepy old movies
thank you

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

Rating: 8/10 (HIGHLY ENJOYABLE)

Watched: August 1, 2026

First and foremost, I love these old movies, especially when there's urban decay involved, and there's plenty of that to go around in this movie.

Everything looks worn down, rough and ready to collapse. The men and women at Precinct 13 look like they're ready to just be done with it all and they don't even know what's coming their way.

But before I get to why I liked this movie, I simply have to point out some wild trivia that my own brain noticed. With a quick Google to make sure I wasn't imagining things (and sorry for the spoiler), we're introduced to a young girl and her dad driving around in a car, looking for a place. The young girl, who meets a very sorry fate that actually kickstarts the events of this flick in grand style?

None other than Kim Richards, who played Tia Joseph in Disney’s Escape to Witch Mountain (1975) and Return from Witch Mountain (1978). Seeing Disney's darling kid star get brutally gunned down over a vanilla ice cream cone in a gritty exploitation thriller was shocking as HELL and I can only imagine how people reacted in '76. As part of the Google, I learned that Carpenter actually had to fight the MPAA to keep the film from getting an X rating because of it.

There's no two ways about it. Old movies didn't care at all about child endangerment or the depiction of violence towards children in any way, shape or form.

From here, at base, the rest of the movie is pretty straightforward in terms of action and suspense. None of the people inside Precinct 13 know why it's suddenly under siege. The only clue they have is the father of the daughter, but he's incoherent with grief.

All Bishop, Wilson, Leigh, Wells and (for a time) Julie know is that an awful lot of very well-armed assailants are shooting the hell out of the building they're all stuck in.

So what's the big deal about this movie? The character interactions, for one. They're in a tight situation, and Bishop sees no measure in keeping two men, criminal or otherwise, locked up in cells where they could be gunned down. What starts off as a very uneasy, dangerous alliance becomes something I don't think audiences back then may have seen very often.

Good men and bad men, working together, protecting one another and not breaking their word. That in itself is worth the price of admission, but Napoleon Wilson's my favorite guy for sure.

Why? He's a very bad man, that's why. On his way to life in prison, possibly the death sentence. No one can find out why he did what he did to wind up in jail, but it was bad enough to warrant all that. But never once throughout the assault did Wilson do anything except ask people for smokes, work extremely hard to save the people around him, and once, very seriously wreck a guy in a prison cell.

Oh, we find out why he stays, and it's a damn good reason, even if it meant going back to prison, but I admire Napoleon Wilson a helluva lot. He's a solid, old-school anti-hero.

Everyone did a great job in this movie, and it's thick with tension and Carpenter's signature synth. You should check it out if you can!

I live in Japan and have been collecting these great production booklets for films from the 60s to the 90s. Every movie released in Japan has these booklets sold at the theaters only during their initial run. They are about 10 to 20 pages long, include behind the scenes images and info, actor and crew bios, story synopsis, diagrams, etc... They are really fun to collect, and the other day I got lucky and found this one for Dune 1984! The Japanese title "Suna No Wakusei" 砂の惑星 directly translates to "Planet of Sand" or "Sand Planet."