Danishka Esterhazy’s films are often female-centric, like Level 16, a dystopian story where girls are trained to be perfect young women. How that prepared her for a movie that reimagines the 1960’s Sid and Marty Krofft creation for Hanna-Barbera is a good question. Here’s some trivia — the original show was directed by Richard Donner.
If this movie seems inspired by Five Nights at Freddy’s, well, that video game was inspired by Chuck E. Cheese’s and ShowBiz Pizza Place, which was probably inspired by The Banana Splits. Time is a flat circle.
Harley Williams is the world’s biggest fan of The Banana Splits, a children’s show that features Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper and Snorky as well as their human co-star Stevie. All of the Splits are voiced by Eric Bauza, who is also the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Marvin the Martian, Pepé Le Pew, Tweety and Woody Woodpecker.
When his birthday rolls around, his parents buy him tickets to see the show live — on the very last day of production, unbeknowwst to nearly every character. Another unknown — the Splits aren’t actors in suits. Their robots who are slowly turning against their programming.
Before you know it, people are dying left and right, as this turns into a slasher. Writers Jed Elinoff and Scott Thomas have also worked on the Hanna-Barbera WWE tie-in movies and episodes of Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated and R.L. Stine’s The Haunting Hour.
My favorite part of this film was when Instagram star Poppy loses her mind at the death of her fiancee and becomes the lost fifth Split, Hooty. She looks kind of like the killer from Stage Fright, which made me laugh out loud.
Obviously, this isn’t for kids. It’s also not for those that worry about gore. There’s plenty of carnage and dead bodies literally pile up at one point. This is the first Hanna-Barbera property to star in an R-rated movie. Hopefully, it’s not the last, as a giallo-style Scooby-Doo would be my dream come true.
Despite the teaming of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Escape Plan underperformed at the U.S. box office. So how have there been three of these films? Simple. International box-office success, as this movie debuted in first place in several foreign markets, with the total international gross more than doubling its $50 million budget, leading to a worldwide gross of $137.3 million.
Ray Breslin (Stallone) is a former prosecutor, businessman and skilled structure engineer, but he’really knownwn for being the world’s best escape artist. As part of Breslin-Clark, he poses as an inmate to test supermax prisons from the inside out. His goal? Keeping criminals in jail, because back when he was a lawyer, his wife and child were killed by a convict he put away that escaped.
Breslin and business partner Lester Clark (Vincent D’Onofrio) get a multimillion-dollar offer from CIA agent Jessica Mayer, who wants them to test a top secret prison where several prisoners have disappeared. They’re not told where this prison is, but Breslin allows himself to be captured. However, things go wrong right away, as his tracking chip is removed and he has no idea where he is.
Now, he’s under the control of Warden Hobbes (Jim Caviezel) and meets fellow prisoner Emil Rottmayer (Schwarzenegger). Together with Javed, a Muslim prisoner, they start to create an escape plan — but soon learn that they are on a cargo ship in the middle of the ocean.
This movie is packed with interesting supporting players. Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson plays Hush, Ray’s best friend and technical expert. Sam Neill is a prison doctor. And former soccer star Vinnie Jones is the lead guard.
Escape Plan was directed by Mikael Hafstrom (1408) and was written by Jason Keller and Miles Chapman, who has written all of the Escape Plan films. It’s way better than the next two films in the series, but that kind of goes without saying, right?
Frank Coraci has made a living doing films with Adam Sandler (The Wedding Singer, The Waterboy, Click) and Kevin James (Here Comes the Boom and this movie). Sandler and James helped write this take on the “only one man can hear animals” trope and here we are — with me being a completist that needs to see every Stallone movie.
Griffin Keyes (James) proposes to Stephanie (Leslie Bibb), who rejects him because he’s a zookeeper. His heart is broken and five years pass before he runs into her again. Griffin’s brother Dave offers him a job at his car dealership and tries to get them back together, but obviously, our hero loves animals. And they love him so much that they decide to break the code and speak directly to him.
The central issue that this film gets wrong is that zoo vet Kate (Rosario Dawson), who he uses to get Stephanie jealous, is a million times beyond her in coolness and hotness levels.
Humans that appear include Joe Rogan as Stephanie’s boyfriend, Ken Jeong as a reptile house workers, Donnie Wahlberg as an evil zookeeper, and James’ real-life wife Steffiana de la Cruz.
Let us speak of the animals. Bernie the Gorilla was played by Tom Woodruff, Jr., the Academy Award-winning effects master of. Death Becomes Her and voiced by Nick Nolte. Crystal the Monkey plays Donald the Tufted Capuchin with Sandler providing the voice. Stallone is in here as Joe the Lion, alongside Judd Apatow as an elephant, Cher as Joe the Lion’s wife Janet, Jon Favreau as Jermo the bear, Faizon Love as another bear, Maya Rudolph as a giraffe, Bas Rutten (!) as a wolf, Don Rickles as a bullfrog, Jim Breuer as a crow and Richie Minervini as an ostrich.
It’s exactly the kind of movie you think it is. If you hate puerile junk with talking animals, you’re going to hate it. Perhaps by the context clues you’ve guessed my stance.
Ironically, this is the first movie where Jan-Michael Vincent discovered coke. Bad joke. It’s directed by Jonathan Kaplan, who was behind Night Call Nurses and The Student Teachers for Roger Corman, as well as the much more socially acceptable film The Accused.
Carrol Jo Hummer (Vincent) is an independent truck driver who just got out of the Air Force, where he’s considered a hero. All he really wants to do is come home and marry his girl Jerri (Kay Lenz, The Initiation of Sarah,House).
Soon, they’ve bought their own rig, the Blue Mule, and CJ announces on the CB that he’s available to start doing jobs. That’s when he finds out from his dad’s old partner Duane (Slim Pickens!) that the only hauls available are untaxed cigarettes. CJ refuses to do anything illegal, but then he finds out that the cops are in on the crime. He’s handcuffed to his truck and beaten nearly to death by Clem (Martin Kove).
CJ soon learns that he’s blackballed from working all around Tucson, so he grabs a shotgun and threatens Duane, who tells him that he’s only a pawn. He needs to talk to Red River’s manager Buck Wessler (L.Q. Jones, The Beast Within), who agrees to let CJ take a load to Dallas with his dad’s old friend Pops (Sam Laws, Truck Turner) along for the ride. They fight off some goons, but make the job.
Soon, however, CJ learns that Red River is a front for a corporation called Glass House which is in itself a front for the mob. His efforts to expose them and organize a union lead to him being framed for Duane’s murder, which is a pretty harrowing sequence of the older man getting run down.
On their way back from the trial, CJ and Jenni discover the body of Pops — who had been driving the Blue Mule — in their house. The independent truckers all attack the Red River drivers, which leads to a meeting with Glass House. CJ doesn’t trust their business practices and declines the offer, which leads to both him and his wife getting attacked in their own bed. She loses their baby and discovers that she’ll never be able to have children.
CJ goes insane and tries to destroy the office of Glass House, even taking a bullet to the head before crashing into their big sign. As he leaves the hospital, we learn that all of the other truckers are on strike in his honor.
Leigh French also shows up. She ties into trucker pop culture history not just with this movie, but with her appearance on the abortive TV pilot Goober & the Truckers’ Paradise, where Goober from The Andy Griffith Show would manage a truck stop. And as with most movies from Roger Corman alumni, Dick Miller makes an appearance.
Mill Creek has just re-released White Line Fever on blu ray, complete with awesome retro VHS packaging. The quality of the print is really good and while there aren’t many extras, it’s affordable.
DISCLAIMER: This movie was sent to us by Mill Creek, but that has no impact on our review.
How many times can you lock up Sylvester Stallone? Well, I can count three Escape Plan films, Tango & Cash, him getting placed into frozen jail in Demolition Man, getting sent to the Cursed Earth in Judge Dredd and being locked up in First Blood and in prison at the start of Rambo: First Blood Part II. Oh yeah — he also gets put in the clink in Over the Top.
But if you really want to get your fill of Sly in the big house, there’s only one movie that’ll give you that for the entire running time and that’s 1989’s Lock Up.
Frank Leone (Stallone) is a model prisoner in the low security Norwood prison, enjoying work release and looking forward to serving the last three weeks of his sentence for assaulting the criminals who attacked his mechanic mentor. He even has a girlfriend — Melissa (Darlanne Fluegel, Eyes of Laura Mars, Battle Beyond the Stars, To Live and Die In L.A.) — who he plans on spending way more time with once he finishes this bid.
That all changes one night when he’s forcibly removed from his cell and sent to the maximum security Gateway Prison. It’s run by Warden Drumgoole (Donald Sutherland), who has a grudge against our hero. It turns out that Leone had asked for one hour to see his dying mentor and that was denied, despite him only having a few weeks left to serve. Leone escaped Treadmore Prison and informed the press about Drumgoole’s civil rights violations. The incident led to the warden getting the one black mark on his record, which brought him to Gateway and Leone getting five years added to his sentence.
What follows is an entire movie of abuse against Stallone. He earns the ire of the big man on the block, Chink Weber (Sonny Landham, who was Billy in Predator). He also gets some new friends who all work together in the prison’s auto shop. There’s Dallas (Tom Sizemore in one of his first roles), First-Base and Eclipse (Frank McRae, the police captain in 48 Hrs.). First-Base goes crazy behind the wheel of the car, which the warden deals with by having Weber and his gang — look for a very young Danny Trejo — destroy the automobile.
Leone is sent to solitary confinement for six weeks and is tortured the entire time by the guards, except for Captain Meissner (John Amos), who grudgingly becomes to respect the convict and frees him from the hole.
The warden wants to make Leone snap, so he orders Weber to kill First-Base in the gym. Leone goes wild and attacks the man, but stops from killing him, giving one of Weber’s henchmen time to knife him. As he heals in the infirmary, one of the prisoners tells him that he is going to assault Melissa while Leone rots in jail.
That’s when the real escape begins, which is filled with twists, turns, double crosses and violence. Of course, this being a Stallone movie, everything ends up working out for our hero.
It’s no surprise that this film was nominated for three Razzie Awards including Worst Picture, Worst Actor for Stallone and Worst Supporting Actor for Donald Sutherland, but failed to win any awards.
Stallone told Entertainment Weekly that this was “not a film that was produced and performed with enough maturity to really make a significant impact on the audience or my career. And that’s the truth.”
Director John Flynn (Out for Justice, RollingThunder, Brainscan) told Shock Cinema that “Lock Up is a strange lesson in how Hollywood movies are made. Stallone had a window which means the guy was available for a certain window of time. Larry Gordon had a terrible script set in a prison. Stallone calls James Woods and asks if I’m any good as a director. Woods says “Yeah, he’s a good director and you ought to work with him.” So we have a director and a star, but no script. All we have is a theme — a guy escaping from prison. So we hire Jeb Stuart (Sam’s note — who we all remember from directing Switchback after he wrote Die Hard and Next of Kin) who was then one of the hottest writers in Hollywood, to rewrite the script and we go off looking for prison locations. Now we have a star, a theme, a shooting date, a budget, a studio, but we still have no script. So we all go back to New York City, and move into a hotel where Larry tortures Jeb and Henry Rosenbaum (Sam’s note #2 — The Dunwich Horror and Hanky Panky) into writing a script in record time. Meanwhile, I’m going around scouting prisons. We finally found one in Rahway, New Jersey. Jeb and Henry were writing the script as we were making the movie. New pages would come in every day. There was one day when I was on the third tier of a cell-block in Rahway Penitentiary and I had nothing to shoot. I had my movie star, all these extras and a great location — and the pages were on their way. So we sat around and bullshitted with the prisoners. Stallone is a smart guy and a very underrated actor. If I ever needed a better line, he’d come up with one. Stallone is a really hard worker. I had no problem whatsoever with him.”
Interestingly enough, while they were shooting in Rahway, Chuck Wepner, the inspiration for Rocky, was there as a prisoner serving time for cocaine possession. Stallone greeted him and told the other prisoners that he was the real Rocky, which was actually part of a lawsuit that Wepner brought against Stallone that was resolved out of court in 2006.
In Turkey, Lock Up is known as Free Blood, which is just an attempt to get audiences to think that this is a sequel to the Rambo films. I love that level of exploitation being used for a Hollywood film. In Hungary, they call this movie In the Prison of Revenge, which is a much more poetic title.
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