Escape from L.A. (John Carpenter)

A Snake in Hollywood.

After rescuing Blofeld, oh, I mean the U.S. President and escaping from the madhouse that is New York city in the first film, Snake Plissken (reprised by Kurt Russell), in a logic applicable only to action movie sequels, gets drawn back yet again to this little parlor game of rescue and escape. This time, the place of choice is the city of angels. 

     

Although this film is not that successful in recreating the unique atmosphere of "Escape from New York" and may also be accused of having one action scene too many, this is still one hell of a ride. Plus, it has also solidified Snake Plissken's status as perhaps one of the greatest cult anti-heroes ever. 

     

With this film being almost identical to its predecessor's story and premise, "Escape from L.A." has also re-introduced us to Snake in very much the same manner as in "Escape from New York": In cuffs, escorted by armored guards and wearing that perennial frown. 

     

As usual, before he was even officially incarcerated, he was greeted yet again with another potential pardon riding on the shoulders of another dangerous mission. Oh, the bars were raised a bit high this time too; if Snake was given a full 24 hours to save the President in "Escape from New York", here in "Escape from L.A.", he's only given nine hours to successfully recapture a doomsday device brought into the Los Angeles wastelands by none other than the President's daughter. And to up the ante and heighten Snake's sense of urgency even more, a toxic substance was once again put into his system. These bureaucratic people know that Snake is a dangerous man yet they are also aware that he always gets the job done. But what they are not aware of is that Plissken is not named after a predatory creature for nothing. In the end, you'll laugh at the world and smile with Snake.      

Tone-wise, "Escape from L.A." is very, very different from the first film mainly because of the generational gap between the two. Made during an era (the mid-'90s) when the MTV culture is the 'thing', John Carpenter has dropped the visual aspects that have made "Escape from New York" so fascinatingly atmospheric (the slow pacing, the dark renditions of graffiti-laden street corners and whatnot) and has instead chosen to conform with what is in-demand at the time (abundant action scenes and some heavy doses of rock music); the result was definitely a hit and miss. 

     

It's a 'hit' because we are given the fun chance to see Snake play some life-threatening hoops, surf his way through a tidal wave alongside Peter Fonda and hang glide with a male-voiced Pam Grier amid the ironic ruins of an apocalyptic Los Angeles. But then again, it's also a 'miss' because we're not given enough time to absorb Carpenter's visualization of a Los Angeles gone mad quite enough because the film itself is much more concerned with the progression of the film's MacGuffin-furthered plot and how action scenes may fit into it more than anything else. But despite of that, I have still enjoyed the film well enough, particularly its overall campy tone and clever ending (written entirely by Kurt Russell himself). This is pure escapist fun right here.

FINAL RATING 

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Russ Meyer)

Tura Satana as the vicious Varla.

Call it dated, silly and extremely campy, but still, "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" is classic exploitation fun that brings us back in a time where the deadly combination of femme fatales and some high-octane machinery equals to titillation. This, I think, is one of those films that have definitely made men salivate back then. Cars, violence and sexy women, what more can you ask for? Yet despite of its superficial display of violence, sexual innuendos and car chases, there's no doubt that this film, directed by Russ Meyer (who has also produced and co-written it), still has something much to say than meets the eye. 

Is it a film about women empowerment? Well, definitely a big no. In fact, this is the kind of film that will definitely make feminists shake their head in disgust and disappointment. This was never how they envision women to be. It portrays women as unpredictably murderous low-lives and nothing more. To make it even worse, the heroines of the film (if you can call them that) are a bunch of go-go dancers, which is not exactly the most ideal job for the female populace. So, if it's not a film that empowers women, then what is it all about? 

Personally, I think that it's merely a film about power. Director Russ Meyer, with an intention to exploit and entertain, was successful in putting into the screen the things (sexy women, cars and violence) that sway men into complete submission and reduce them into libidinous losers. In a way, it's not the female characters' sexual force that dominates the film but Russ Meyer's power as a director. In a way, he reflects, by way of this film, the ultimate male fetishes of the time while also relishing in it himself. Now, imagine what kind of film would be made of today's male fixations? What kind of 'pussycat' will we see at this point in time? Oh, well, enough of that before it gets all too... sleazy. 

Back to the subject at hand, this is a film that's undeniably sexy and spell-binding. It is a fun little film that has since been one of the genre's cornerstones. Yet at the end of the day, it's also considered as trash. Yes, the kind of trash that has inspired Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez to create "Grindhouse". With that given, why then, despite of the fact that the film was made specifically for its own era (the 1960s) and nothing further, has it become timeless? Well, I think the answer lies in the very execution itself. Buried somewhere in the middle of the curvy presences of Varla (Tura Satana), Rosie (Haji) and Billie (Lori Williams) is a quick-witted script and a fast-paced plot. 

The story is simple enough: three go-go dancers, after a day's work, found themselves in a contagious mood for reckless fun. Enter a young, harmless couple who have obliviously joined the unpredictable triumvirate in a picnic of sorts. A little trouble occurs and the male half of the couple was killed by one of them crazy ladies. This is where the carnage starts. From here, "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" picks up the steam like there's no tomorrow. With the female heroines increasingly becoming more and more dangerous, so do the male characters in the film, particularly the crippled whacko (Stuart Lancaster) and his 'all brawns no brain' son (Dennis Busch). There's also the other son named Kirk (Paul Trinka), who may or may not be your usual decent Southerner. 

In a way, I occasionally found the script, with all those wonderfully-placed puns and whatnot, to be even more fascinating than the narrative itself. I also found the performances to be even more engaging than the characters themselves. Although I can see where the logic of the characters are coming from and what motivates them to do what, I still can't help but be more smitten by how these actors and actresses have gotten themselves in the spirit of camp even though there's this brooding sense of futility in what they are doing. They are, after all, merely acting in a cheap exploitation film. Why should they give their all, right? Well, energy and passion indeed perform mysterious wonders to people. 

What the actors and actresses lack in talent, they make up for intensity. Acting more like cartoon characters than actual people, there's this comedic feeling that, inevitably, there will be an Acme box that will fall from the sky and hit one of them in the head, resulting in an explosion of unearthly proportions and a bump of mountainous heights. It's a laughable thought, really, but this is also the very reason why the film is so much fun. You just can't help but picture the surprise appearance of a carrot-eating, wise-cracking bunny in there somewhere, or perhaps an arrogant, constantly salivating duck suddenly coming out from one of them desert shrubs. 

Ultimately, "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!", unlike the curvaceous wholeness of the three lady characters in the film, proved to be less than the sum of its parts. But still, that does not take anything away from the film's wildly alternative vision of America; a vision where liberated women are given free reins to do whatever they want in the middle of the desert, with men ironically at their mercy and the revving of car engines as their symbol of authority. Ladies and gentlemen, what we've got here is a new wild west.

FINAL RATING

Temptation Island (Chris Martinez)

A tributary notion.

Well, alright, I raised my rating to two full stars partly as a tribute to the original cult classic which this film has almost remade shot-by-shot and word-for-word. But remaking a film made in the 80's and completely retaining almost all of the dialogues that made the original so fascinating and endlessly intoxicating in its ability to capture, time capsule-style, the verbal pretenses of the bourgeoisie class (especially represented by the character Joshua in the original film) of the said era, I believe, is completely wrong.

Dialogues such as 'poor, proletariat, indigent people' should have stayed in the original and in it alone because as I hear it being uttered by John Lapus (who played Joshua in this remake), I can't help but feel the uneasiness of how comically oblique and strange the delivery is, especially coming from a supposedly homosexual character who dwells in the postmodern world of fashion where every terms and jargon are with added flash, sociopolitical words like 'communist' are the last things you may hear.

But despite of that, in a time where our local showbiz industry's range of gay performers are from undeserved hosts to stand-up comedians, John Lapus delivered the needed sense of villainy, vanity and lunacy, but he really never inherited the brash deadpan performance by Jonas Sebastian as Joshua in the original. But judging from John Lapus' gurgling, smoker voice, and his regular stint in television where he's regularly thrown in the air by a myriad of dancers while dancing off-sync with the music, you really can't expect subtlety from him.

For the bulk female cast, there really is nothing special going on except Marian Rivera, for the simple reason of her being the typical noisy comic actress that she is, Rufa Mae Quinto, whose stereotyped verbal tone is almost always effective, and Lovi Poe, mainly because her character is the most interesting of all. Solenn Heussaff (a real eye-candy, by the way) and Heart Evangelista, on the other hand, are all too unremarkable in their roles.

While the male roles, filled in with the typical 'pretty boys', suffered because of a crucial casting mistake (or a cast list typo?). Aljur Abrenica, who plays the role that Alfie Anido has played in the 1980 film, is characteristically far out of proportion and capacity with the character he plays (which is supposed to be a smart lad, me thinks). Newcomer Tom Rodriguez, who plays a lowly waiter in the film, should have scuffled for Mr. Abrenica's role and the latter should have been demoted in the waiter's shoes. Aljur's acting chops are just too 'wooden' ("Machete" pun, ha!) to show even a hint of involvement in the whole film.

Personally, I think director Chris Martinez should have fully heeded the nuances and true essence of the word 'remake' first before making this one. Aside from a screenplay fully devoted to the original's satirically composed dialogues (which I think, although how rich the source material is, does not give this remake any rightful merits) that is a delightful thing of the past, this "Temptation Island" remake is, overall, a very messy film, editing wise. Scenes jump from one to the other without a sense of adhesion, while relationships develop without a sense of emotional rhythm. And that final, post-island scenes are just too overlong in a very cliched and unnecessary kind of way.

And those 'food' hallucination scenes, which made the original even crazier and cheesier, are recreated not for the sake of eliciting the penetrating idea of 'hunger', but for the sake of the chief actresses to showcase their modeling prowess once more.

Compared to Martinez's earlier film "Here Comes the Bride", "Temptation Island" is an empty, absurd load of cinematic tosh (Maybe it's its campy intent, but it just doesn't translate that well). And who would have known? John Lapus' bodily parts produce finely grilled pork chops. Nice.

As the end credits roll, scenes from both the original film and this remake show up in succession. And for what? For comparison. Dialogues overlapping with one another, sometimes one trailing the other. I can't see the necessity of this remake. For comparison? If both are fueled with the same script and virtually with the same line deliveries, who needs that? If one needs a biting satire regarding the not so glitzy side of contemporary fashion, beauty contests and the world of social climbers and nausea-inducing extreme elitism, then local films such as "Pinay Pie" and "Bikini Open" are much more potent representations. Not this one.

(By the way, except for the dialogues, I did not like the original "Temptation Island" film that much either. So there.)

FINAL RATING