All posts by Matt Dykes

Matt is a huge film and TV buff who studied film and moving image production at university. In his spare time he enjoys reading comics and books, the occasional gaming session and writing novels.

A dimension of sound, sight and mind: The legacy of The Twilight Zone

A DEEP DIVE INTO THE SERIES THAT WOULD PUSH THE BOUNDARIES OF TELEVISION AND INSPIRE COUNTLESS PEOPLE

You unlock this article with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension – a dimension of sixty years of a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just started reading an article about The Twilight Zone.

OK, so I’m not Rod Serling, but this is an article all about The Twilight Zone. A television series that would not only push the boundaries of television, but would go on to inspire writers, directors, actors and many more for decades to come. It would also be parodied, remade, referenced and lauded for just as long and will continue to do so for many more years to come. Each episode was played out as a self-contained story, which allowed the writers a huge amount of freedom to tell whatever story they wanted to tell. Every week, viewers tuned in, not knowing if the show was going to be about aliens, monsters, witches, devils, ghosts or any number of supernatural and extra-terrestrial beings.

Continue reading A dimension of sound, sight and mind: The legacy of The Twilight Zone

From Bomb to Modern Classic: The Shawshank Redemption 25 years later

A LOOK AT A BOX OFFICE BOMB THAT WOULD BECOME A MODERN CLASSIC.

Stephen King is mostly known as a horror writer; however, he has ventured into other genres on numerous occasions, although mostly with shorter stories. He wrote an anthology of short stories that made up the collection Different Seasons. One of the stories in this collection was called “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption”, which writer and director Frank Darabont would option for $5,000 and turn into one of the most celebrated motion pictures of all time.

Continue reading From Bomb to Modern Classic: The Shawshank Redemption 25 years later

A bird? A plane? It’s 40 years of Superman!

Imagine a time when comic book movies were not even a genre and the idea that they would dominate the box office would be laughable. Imagine a time when a film based on a comic book was seen to be a huge risk. That time is 1978 and a film was on the horizon that would change American Cinema forever. That film was Superman. At this point the most well known comic book adaptation was the live action Batman starring Adam West. The campy series was the exact opposite of what producers Ilya Salkind, Alexander Salkind and Pierre Spengler wanted to achieve. The development of Superman is the stuff of legend and borderline insane.

Continue reading A bird? A plane? It’s 40 years of Superman!

Bosch: The Crime Drama You Should Be Watching

IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR A NEW SHOW TO WATCH IN 2019, LOOK NO FURTHER THAN THIS EXCELLENT COP DRAMA.

In this age of binge watching and box set consumption people are forever looking for new shows to watch. The first show I recommend to everyone is Bosch. Based on the books by Michael Connelly, Bosch stars Titus Welliver as the titular character. A hard boiled, old school detective who constantly clashes with his superiors. It sounds like a cliché, and in some ways it is. But in others it is one of the most impressive crime series I’ve seen since The Wire.

Continue reading Bosch: The Crime Drama You Should Be Watching

Alternative Christmas Movies

Need some alternative holiday films? Matt has got you covered!

As the time of turkeys, trees and tinsel descends, also does the time of cheesy movies about Santa, hyperactive elves and reindeer. Not everyone is a fan of these kinds of films but they’re hard to avoid, so I decided to give you a list of five alternative Christmas movies you can watch this yuletide season.

Continue reading Alternative Christmas Movies

50 Years of Zombies: Night of the Living Dead 50th Anniversary

A look back at 50 years of the walking dead and the legacy they left behind.

OK, so before you bite my head off, I know that zombie films have been around for longer than 50 years. The title of this article refers to the zombies as we know them today which begun with Night of the Living Dead. The “zombies” in Night of the Living Dead are closer in lore to vampires than actual zombies. While zombies are reanimated corpses, they didn’t turn others into zombies by biting them before Romero. In fact, Romero never referred to the monsters in Night of the Living Dead as “zombies”; they called them “Ghouls” in the film. He rarely had characters referred to them as “zombies” in his subsequent films, I can only recall one usage of the word “zombie” and that was in Dawn of the Dead. Anyway, back to the subject at hand.

Continue reading 50 Years of Zombies: Night of the Living Dead 50th Anniversary

Call Me Snake: Looking Back on Escape From New York

Looking back on the legacy and influence of Snake Plissken.

Three words. Three small words introduced us to the baddest of all badasses, the man of few words, the one-eyed anti-hero Snake Plissken. My first introduction to the John Carpenter creation was on a television screen in Menorca at the age of 13. Escape From New York was playing on one of the channels in Spanish without any subtitles, making it difficult to understand. What caught and kept my attention was the incredible opening theme music, as well as the gritty and slightly futuristic look. I couldn’t look away.

When we were back in England I asked my parents to get me a copy of the film on VHS. Months later it was my 14th birthday and inside the colourful wrapping paper was a black VHS case with an image that remains iconic in my mind to this day: the giant decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty on the ground and three people being chased by a hoard of men with “John Carpenter’s Escape From New York” plastered on the cover. I jumped for joy and broke open the case immediately and removed the cellophane that covered the tape. I slid the cassette into my video player and I pressed play.

For the next 90 minutes I was transported to the grimy streets of Manhattan Island Maximum Security Penitentiary in the futuristic world of 1997 (bear in mind I saw this in 2001) and introduced to a cast of characters that were quirky, chilling, cool, dangerous and fun. I was totally immersed in the film and when it was over I rewound the tape to the beginning and watched it again. The high-tech police force contrasted against the no-tech prison fascinated me, but the biggest draw for the whole film for me was Plissken himself.

The character of Snake Plissken had gone on to inspire the character of Solid Snake in Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid series, and only upon replaying it did I realize the connection. Let’s face it, Solid Snake is Snake Plisken and the game was basically Escape From New York: The Game. His gruff, gravelly voice is practically an imitation of Plissken’s. Both are forced into taking their assignments, both are captured, both find a tough female and neurotic male ally on the inside, and their only communication with the outside world is through a radio. As if that weren’t enough, both Solid Snake and Snake Plissken sport the iconic eye patch.

But I digress. Escape From New York was not some big-budget blockbuster, instead it was shot on a relatively low budget in St Louis. In fact, there is only one “New York Shot” and even that was actually two different shots edited seamlessly together. This is because they could only afford to shoot for one day in New York.

The shot in question is the tracking shot where Rehme walks into the Liberty Island Security Control room to get the call from air traffic control. The shot pans over into complete blackness, and then with a cut we find ourselves in Los Angeles as the panning shot continues on, showing the helicopters and approaching prisoner transfer bus. It’s a seamless edit that I wouldn’t have even known existed until I watched a documentary about the making of the film.

Throughout Escape, Snake acts as an of angel of death of sorts. Everyone he interacts with inside of the walls of the prison ends up dead, with exception of the President. He’s also pursued by death by way of the countdown on his watch, which promises his own demise. Because of this he has a do-anything attitude to accomplishing his mission, ready to screw anyone over who can help him find the President.

Kurt Russell talks in an interview about the moment he knew that the character of Snake was going to be a hit, they were shooting one night and John Carpenter wanted a shot of him running down the street and turning down an alley. They shot it and as Kurt turned the corner there were four big guys coming around the corner from their side. Because of the eye patch he wore Kurt had gotten into the habit of tilting his head to look at people and as he did that the four big guys backed away saying “Easy, easy, it’s cool.” After coming back out of the alley and back down to where the crew were set up Kurt said to John Carpenter, “I think this character’s gonna work.”

And of course it works. Snake Plissken just oozes a pure sense of “Do not fuck with me” in every scene in the film. He has such a presence on screen. It’s clear to see how Kurt Russell became the huge movie star that he is today off the back of his performance in Escape From New York.

The opening title sequence does an incredible job of setting up the world through voice over, provided by an un-credited Jamie Lee Curtis, and enhanced by Computer Generated Imagery. It is not the only piece of fake CGI that is in the film, for the sequence were Snake enters the prison he is flying a glider that has computer generated images of the cityscape, or so we the audience are led to believe. In actuality the CGI we are looking at is actually a scale model of the city with the corners of the buildings covered in high contrast tape and filmed it under a black light. The realistic models of New York were achieved by laying out a map of the city and scale model buildings made from cardboard and plywood were placed on top, the streets were blacked over with tape to give them a realistic look of a street. For the POV shot of the plane speeding towards New York the effects team painted the studio floor with a high gloss black paint to simulate the water that surrounded Manhattan Island. Future director James Cameron worked on the film, providing some of the matte paintings and working on the effects shots of Air Force One.

The supporting cast are fantastic in their respective roles. Lee Van Cleef plays the role of Hauk – the opposite of Snake. It’s easy to see that if Snake had remained on the side of the law he could have ended up just like Hauk. Hauk is just as fearless as Snake, and their first meeting shows how tough he is when four guards have brought Snake to him and he asks them to leave them alone. Throughout the film he is the only one who really believes that Snake can accomplish his mission, even though he can be seen as an antagonist for Snake he is also his only ally on the outside. This is a recurring theme in the film: snake’s allies are also his enemies. Brain – played by Harry Dean Stanton – double-crosses him multiple times.

The characters are quite well-developed for what is really a B-movie; they all have their own backstories. Donald Pleasence came up with an entire backstory for why the President of the United States is British. None of it was used but it was that sort of work that informed his performance creating a solid character. He also brought some of his own real-life experiences of being a Prisoner of War in his performance, the blonde wig he is wearing when Brain and Maggie break him out was his idea.

Issac Hayes portrayed the Duke of New York with an imposing level of seriousness. When he spoke he spoke with a slow and deliberate manner to make people listen and pay attention to every word he said. There was also some very subtle things that Hayes injected into the role. The Duke has a slight twitch in his right eye which is only seen a few times but it adds a level of depth to the character that not many other B movies would have in their characters. In contrast to the serious Duke of New York there is his right hand man Romero, named after director George A. Romero. Everything about Romero was to the extreme from his general look to his over the top performance, he is the audience’s first glimpse of the occupants of New York and it leaves an impression. His creepy demeanor as he slowly counts down from twenty still makes an impact today. Romero was portrayed by Frank Doubleday who appeared in Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 as the robotic and unfeeling White Warlord who calmly guns down a 12 year old girl. Here he is the opposite, everything is over the top in his performance. Doubleday was given total creative freedom when it came to Romero, the voice and look were all his choices.

Where the story is quite a simple one, what really makes it work is Carpenter’s direction and world building. The creepiness and desolation of New York makes it a character in itself. Carpenter originally wrote the screenplay in 1974 as a response to the Watergate scandal, it was turned down by various studios for amongst other reasons they felt it was too violent. He put it to one side until the success of Halloween allowed him to strike a two-picture deal with Avco Embassy, the other film being The Fog. Carpenter brought in his friend Nick Castle to polish up the script. Castle had played The Shape in Carpenter’s Halloween years earlier. Some of Castle’s changes were to add a sense of humour to the film. He also tweaked the ending that Carpenter felt needed some work.

Where Halloween is probably seen to be John Carpenter’s most successful film, Escape From New York is easily his most ambitious. I recently saw the film in a packed cinema and was once again glued to the screen throughout. The moment Carpenter’s score kicked in a smile came across my face and I was engrossed from start to finish. It’s nice to see that all these years later the film can still keep me engrossed the same as it did all those years ago. If I had the option, I would have tried to get the cinema to restart the movie from the beginning. It’s easy to see why the film and the character of Snake Plissken has become such a cinematic icon, even though the attempt to continue the story of Snake Plissken did not live up to the original’s gritty and grimy tone it didn’t stop the character from being any less iconic.

The only way I can think to wrap this up is by quoting the man himself, “The name’s Plissken!”

Destination Star Trek 2018

MATT AKES US ON A JOURNEY THROUGH HIS FIRST STAR TREK CONVENTION.

I have been a fan of Star Trek for as long as I can remember — some of my earliest memories are of watching Star Trek at 6pm on BBC2. I had never been to a convention despite wanting to since I found out about them. So, when I saw the advert for the 2018 Destination Star Trek that mentioned a 25th Anniversary Deep Space Nine talk, I decided that it was time for my first Star Trek convention. Deep Space Nine is my favourite Star Trek, and the fact that it was the 25th Anniversary of its first airing seemed quite apt for me to attend my first Star Trek convention. After booking the hotel and initial entry ticket, each payday for the next several months I would purchase tickets for photos, talks and a documentary screening before the big day came.

Continue reading Destination Star Trek 2018

V: The Mini Series 35 Years Later

A SERIES THAT STANDS THE TEST OF TIME!

Fifty alien spaceships descended over major cities all over the world and announced that they came in peace and needed humanity’s help. These friendly alien Visitors looked just like us and offered us the fruits of their knowledge in exchange for our assistance in fabricating various chemicals required to save their planet. Or so they said.

V, the mini series, turned 35 years old this year, and it seems like it is more relevant today than ever. People often mistake V as an alien invasion story; but the aliens didn’t invade — they occupied. Great science fiction is stories that allow us to look at ourselves and remind us of how we need to be better. V told us the dangers of fascism. An allegory for the Nazi uprising and their subsequent occupation of Europe, V was a story about everyday people rising up against tyranny.

Continue reading V: The Mini Series 35 Years Later

What We Left Behind

A LOOK AT THE NEW DEEP SPACE NINE DOCUMENTARY!

Before I jump into the review of the documentary let me preface this thing with a little note about my interest in the subject. I LOVE Star Trek, and Deep Space Nine is my favorite of the series. I even announced this before asking a question at the Deep Space Nine 25th Anniversary talk at Destination Star Trek in Birmingham. It had rich story arcs and character development that just doesn’t exist in any other iteration of the franchise. Recurring characters have way more character development than any of the series regulars from any of the other Star Trek series. But enough about that – let’s jump into the review. I’m going to try to keep this a spoiler-free review, because there are moments in the documentary that need to be seen for the first time spoiler-free.

I was lucky enough to attend the world premiere of What We Left Behind in Birmingham at the NEC on October 20th 2018. Seeing this documentary in a packed auditorium with an audience that included many of the participants of the documentary was truly an amazing experience. The first opening of the documentary really throws you into some of the amazing restorative work they did for the documentary. As awe inspiring as it was seeing a space battle sequence fully restored in glorious HD, it was also slightly bittersweet because I immediately started thinking about how all the HD footage in the documentary will probably end up being the only HD footage of Deep Space Nine that will be released. Anyway, I digress, that may happen a few times so I apologise in advance.

Continue reading What We Left Behind