Morlocks Kidnap The President

Somehow, despite being a sci-fi geek, I never managed to see Escape from New York and the glory that is Kurt Russell's hair.

This weekend, all that changed...

• This movie is set in THE FUTURE. And by that we mean, 1988.
• In 1988, crime has gone up 400 percent and they've turned the island of Manhattan into a prison. Because, y'know, you always build prisons where real estate values are the highest.
• Why not just wall off Florida and let the old people fight it out?
• Wait, I've been duped! THE FUTURE takes place in 1997!
• I really need to look up when this movie was made.
• Judging by the cast, 1975.
• According to the Netflix envelope, 1981.
• The first ten minutes get pretty creepy when terrorists hijack a plane and crash it RIGHT NEXT to the Twin Towers. Apparently Osama Bin Laden is a big John Carpenter fan.
• Look out, Mars.
• The president bailed out of the plane in an escape pod that looks almost, but not quite, exactly the same as the ship Mork used to travel from Ork. Except the president's is RED.
• Lee Van Cleef is going to go get the president! He's so butch he doesn't even wear a helmet or carry a rifle! He is going to kill men with his scowl.
• Uh-oh. They found President Mork's ship, but no President Mork. Lee Van Cleef's scowl just got six times deadlier.
• The Morlocks have President Mork's finger! Lee Van Cleef runs off like a whiny bitch. Disappointing.
• Kurt Russell and Lee Van Cleef negotiate the rescue of the president by having a scowling contest: three dead, twenty-six wounded.
• Apparently, sometime between 1981 and 1997 we had a war with Russia.
• I'm not sure if Kurt Russell's hair is a separate costume piece or another character altogether.
• We'll know for sure if Kenny Baker gets a credit as a hair stylist.
• Lan Van Cleef put a bomb in Kurt Russell's head! It's just like my Star Frontiers campaign from 1985! Only with less dralasites.
• Somehow Kurt Russell is going to land a glider on top of the World Trade Center. Pardon me while I suspend disbelief.
• Ok, landed. Phew!
• In a blatant display of how boss he is, Kurt Russell just hot-wired the World Trade Center.
• Any time anything freaky happens in the post-Apocalypse, it happens in an old rundown theater.
• In this case, the freaky thing in question is the appearance of Ernest Borgnine.
• Kurt Russell is so boss, his uzi has a silencer AND a scope. Both of which are bigger than the gun itself.
• For being a maximum security prison, most of New York is pretty empty.
• Apparently the crime that went up 400 percent was murder. Or truancy.
• Kurt Russell dropped his radio and the president's tracking device ended up on the arm of some bum. I think this movie is going to end up being a parable about man's over-reliance on technology.
• Technology, and hair products.
• Any time anything freaky happens in the post-Apocalypse, it happens in a cab.
• Welcome back, Ernest Borgnine.
• Adrienne Barbeau is not in this movie, but her cleavage is.
• For a place that's completely cut off from the outside world, everyone in Fortress New York seems to know Snake Plissken.
• Even Adrienne Barbeau's cleavage knows Snake Plissken.
• I'm not sure what movie Ernest Borgnine is in, but it's not this one.
• Kurt Russell has to drive down Broadway. Apparently this is a bad neighborhood.
• It's not a bad neighborhood because the locals throw bricks at you and beat the car with baseball bats. It's a bad neighborhood because they shoot your car with flaming arrows.
• Kurt Russell is good at a lot of things, but he's not good at fighting mobs. Where's Fezzik when you need him?
• Isaac Hayes is the only guy on the entire island who doesn't know who Snake Plissken is.
• The president has had a briefcase chained to his arm for 15 hours and the bad guys JUST noticed it might have something in it.
• This is Fortress New York!! Your secrets to nuclear fusion are no good here!!
• Snake Plissken has a really... unfortunate tattoo.
• It's not the post-Apocalypse if you don't have people fighting to the death in a grimy arena.
• Round one: Baseball bats.
  Round two: Baseball bats with NAILS in them.
  Round three: There is no round three.
• In the time it takes you to climb to the top of the World Trade Center with a bum leg and climb back down again, an arch-criminal can gut the engine of your car and replace it with a dude wielding a crossbow.
• Actually, that's probably true.
• If you hit a mine on a bridge, it will cut your car cleanly in half.
• On the plus side, it will kill Ernest Borgnine.
• Adrienne Barbeau's cleavage gets pretty upset when her scientist-boyfriend accidentally steps on a mine. So upset her cleavage throws itself in front of a car.
• Because mines are unreliable.
• Surprising, because you'd think there'd be enough pressure there to set one off.
• In Hollywood, those last three bullets are known as character development. At least when it comes to the leading lady.
• If you're Lee Van Cleef and you need to rescue the president while he escapes from Fortress New York, you don't need to go yourself. In fact, it really only takes about eight soldiers to bring him in. Why not send the guys from the mail room?
• Isaac Hayes will then proceed to shoot six of them.
• It's the end of the movie and Kurt Russell's head didn't explode. This is NOTHING LIKE my Star Frontiers campaign!
• Hopefully in Escape from L.A. they'll have some monkey dudes with ion blasters trying to hunt down Sathar agents.
• That, and better head-bombs.

-Tom, who's expecting Jan Michael Vincent to show up as a nutty bus driver.