Escape From New York (screens Oct.13 and Oct. 15 at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK screens Friday October 13th at 7:30 pm and Sunday October 15th at 9:50 pm at the Cleveland Cinemathque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

All his career John Carpenter has told folks that he’s really only wanted to make “westerns.” Yet he has consistently delivered horror and science-fiction and the occasional one-off nonconformist like a good TV biopic of Elvis Presley (featuring Kurt Russell) or the police thriller ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, which is regarded as a partial remake of RIO BRAVO. Okay, but not since his student-film days, if I’m not mistaken, has the dude actually delivered a genuine western.

Maybe he’s doing one of those things from The Little Prince, in which there’s a drawing of a lamb that is so perfect it’s just the box in which the lamb resides; you will never actually see a lamb, but you can still just imagine how the drawing is exactly right (sort of like my career). Same with John Carpenter and his “westerns.”

Carpenter’s 1981 flick ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK, at least, does have the DNA of a proper Hollywood-studio western, in the Howard Hawks no-funny-business filmmaking style (most recently personified by Clint Eastwood’s work behind the cameras), hitched to a high-concept dystopia plot.

Repost: Halloween (September 21st and 22nd at the Cleveland Cinematheque)

[HALLOWEEN screens Thursday September 21st at 6:45 pm and Friday September 22nd at 9:10 pm at the Cleveland Cinematheque.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Has it been 35 years? Really, THIRTY-FIVE YEARS! since I heard locker-room whispers around the NE Ohio high school I attended that there was a new movie out called HALLOWEEN, by that maverick director John Carpenter who had previously done that attention-getting, whacko low-budget science-fiction flick DARK STAR (a film-school project that had won bonus re-release to cash in the success of STAR WARS).

And HALLOWEEN was talked up by my youthful classmates as the coolest thing ever; all the guys on the football team were going to get stoned with their skank girlfriends and see it again on the weekend.

I took that rave with a slight bit of skepticism. Much as I admired DARK STAR, this was the late 1970s, remember. And Ohio kids would get stoned to go see a roadshow return engagement of THE SOUND OF MUSIC, as long as someone brought the keg and the dope and the skank girls. 

31 Days of Halloween 2013: Christine (October 19th at the Capitol Theatre)

[CHRISTINE screens Saturday October 19th as part of Cleveland Cinemas 12 Hours of Terror 2013 horror movie marathon.]

Review by R.J. Justavick   

Being a bit of a car nut, movies featuring killer motor vehicles are naturally up my alley. If an opportunity arises to watch motorized mayhem, then count me in. And there have been some doozies over the years; DUEL, THE CAR, and KILLDOZER are a few that come to mind. Heck, I’ll even admit to making a fool of myself last week when I found a pristine DVD of MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE at a local pawn shop (must have been a sad day for that poor sap who had to pawn his copy of that!). While all of these pictures are great for their own reasons, I must admit to having a very soft spot for one particular movie dealing with evil motor vehicles: CHRISTINE.

31 Days of Halloween: Halloween (October 8th at the Capitol Theatre)

[HALLOWEEN screens Tuesday October 8th at 7:30 pm at the Capitol Theatre.]

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Has it been 35 years? Really, THIRTY-FIVE YEARS! since I heard locker-room whispers around the NE Ohio high school I attended that there was a new movie out called HALLOWEEN, by that maverick director John Carpenter who had previously done that attention-getting, whacko low-budget science-fiction flick DARK STAR (a film-school project that had won bonus re-release to cash in the success of STAR WARS).

And HALLOWEEN was talked up by my youthful classmates as the coolest thing ever; all the guys on the football team were going to get stoned with their skank girlfriends and see it again on the weekend.

I took that rave with a slight bit of skepticism. Much as I admired DARK STAR, this was the late 1970s, remember. And Ohio kids would get stoned to go see a roadshow return engagement of THE SOUND OF MUSIC, as long as someone brought the keg and the dope and the skank girls. 

Dope Island: John Steakley we hardly knew ye

By Charles Cassady Jr.

Someone at one of my menial part-time jobs - wow, what fun it is, to be an internationally published writer - remarked that the first part of the newspaper he turns to are the obituaries. Because he wants to see if anyone he knows is in there. Including himself. I thought I was the only one who did that.

Despite my strenuous efforts to keep up, not only checking the death notices in The Plain Dealer but also the addictive BlogofDeath.com, one fatality got past me. John Steakley, dead at 59 last November (my despised birth month, during which no good happens) in McKinney, Texas. Cause was cited as a longstanding liver condition.

Why should you care? Steakley was a science-fiction and fantasy author of something less than prolific output. He only wrote a handful of short stories and finished two novels. Even with that, I can't claim to have read anythying more by him than the one of those novels that made a whimpering dent in Hollywood history, Vampire$.