IT CAME FROM THE THRIFT STORE: RUTGER HAUER ESCAPE FROM PRISON DOUBLE FEATURE
Usually the Thrift Store is a good place to pick up movies for my Legends of the Silver Screen reviews for a cheap price. I was originally going to make Escape from Sobibor and Deadlock part of a future Rutger Hauer Legends of the Silver Screen posting, but since they both feature him escaping a prison, I thought it would be cooler to pair them up for a Thrift Store Double Feature.
Our first film is…
ESCAPE FROM SOBIBOR (1987) **
Alan Arkin is one of 600 Jews in Sobibor, a WWII Nazi work camp. Well, they call it a “work camp” but you know what they say; a death camp by any other name… Anyway, Alan is pissed off that the Nazis are killing his people and plans to escape. Of course, he doesn’t really know how to do that, so he just kinda hangs out and bides his time. When Rutger Hauer shows up at the camp, Arkin knows he’s found his man to mastermind his escape.
You know, I thought it would be a good idea to do a double feature of this and Deadlock but Escape from Sobibor isn’t the usual kind of thing I normally feature on It Came from the Thrift Store. Usually for this column I only watch weird, cheap movies or low budget action flicks. Escape from Sobibor on the other hand is a somber movie about the Holocaust and it just doesn’t have the same entertainment factor as a Never Too Young to Die or Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone.
This is a Holocaust Movie and as a Holocaust Movie, it’s no Schindler’s List or anything. Its intentions are sound though and it definitely gets points for earnestness. But earnestness only goes so far.
It also happens to be pretty depressing too. There’s this one scene where a Jewish chick smuggles her baby into the camp. One of the guards hears it crying and confiscates the kid. You can probably guess what happens next. (This scene actually kinda reminded me of the part in Reform School Girl where Sybil Danning found out the girls were hiding a kitten under their bed.)
Even though he’s featured prominently on the video box, Hauer doesn’t show up until almost an hour into the flick. When he does finally arrive on screen, the flick does start to get a faint glimmer of a pulse; mostly because of Hauer’s charismatic take-no-shit performance. However, the next half hour or so of the film is nothing more than him and Arkin planning, planning, and planning for their escape. (Seriously, if you take a shot every time someone says, “escape” you’ll wind up in an alcohol-induced coma before the movie’s even over.)
And I hate to do it, but I have to call bullshit on their escape plan. It basically involves luring several Nazi guards into the Jewish tailor’s shop and then murdering them while they’re in the middle of their fitting. This seems sorta badass (and provides a few murders via tomahawk) but c’mon, don’t you think the Nazis would’ve known something was up by the time the twelfth officer disappeared in an afternoon while visiting the tailor? This is some serious Hogan’s Heroes shit we’re talking about here.
And the final escape is a complete fucking joke. They all sort of fuck up the plan and basically Rutger just yells “RUN!” and six hundred people make a break for the front gate. (It kinda reminded me of the end of Bottle Rocket where Owen Wilson fucked the robbery up and his crew collectively made a run for it.) This leads to a long scene of people getting gunned down, tripped up on barb wire, and blowing up on land mines.
Then the narrator tells us that 300 of the 600 prisoners died escaping. This would actually be kinda hilarious if this movie was about anything EXCEPT the Holocaust. But because it IS about the Holocaust we’re supposed to think it’s a tragedy that the prisoners foolishly tried to scale a barb wire fence and ran through a mine field mere feet away from highly trained snipers. Honestly, a 1:1 ratio of people surviving such a foolhardy escape is staggering if you ask me. Then, there’s an American Graffiti style Where Are They Now segment letting us know what happened to the survivors, which ends the movie on a goofy note.
So basically its Schindler’s List Meets the Great Escape, except their escape ain’t all that Great considering half of them got turned into human clay pigeons.
Our next Hauer film is…
DEADLOCK (1991) ** ½
Looking over my review for Escape from Sobibor I saw words like “somber:, “earnestness”, and “depressing”. These are words we don’t usually find on the It Came from the Thrift Store column. Thankfully, none of those words will appear during my dissertation of Deadlock.
I remember seeing this when it premiered on HBO and thinking it was OK. Sometimes when I revisit a movie after two decades, my opinion changes. That is either because of the nostalgia of youth or the wisdom that comes with age. Umm… my opinion of Deadlock hasn’t changed much. I still think it’s OK.
Rutger Hauer stars as a thief in the future. He pulls off a diamond heist and gets double crossed by his partner (James Remar) and his girlfriend (Joan Chen, who also co-starred with Hauer in The Blood of Heroes). Rutger gets caught and is sent to a newfangled prison where the prisoners all wear electronic dog collars. If they’re more than 100 yards away from another inmate (“wedlock partner”), both of their heads will blow up. Of course, no one knows who their wedlock partner is, so it makes escape mostly impossible. Mimi Rogers is this fine piece of ass prisoner who gets the scoop that she and Rutger are wedlock partners and together they devise an escape plan. But does she really want to escape, or is she just a pawn of his former partners to recover the diamonds. What do you think?
Deadlock was directed by Lewis Teague, who also helmed another It Came from the Thrift Store favorite, Fighting Back. This one isn’t as good as that flick but it’s a solid little sci-fi/caper/prison break movie. The scenes in the prison work best. There’s a great scene where the pissy warden (Stephen Tobolowsky) puts Hauer in a sensory deprivation tank to make him give up the location of the diamonds. And the exploding head effects are pretty sweet too.
The flick is a lot of fun while Hauer and Rogers are in the unconventional prison (think No Escape Meets Scanners) but once they escape, things get a bit disappointing. Basically it’s just like every other fugitive from justice movie except the heroes wear funny metal dog collars. Also, the film has a few weird asides that don’t go anywhere (like when Mimi busts up her ex’s wedding). And how come the flick takes place “in the future” but once they escape, everything still looks an awful lot like 1991?
Probably the best thing that came out of the film is the notion of the electronic dog collars. I bet the inventors of those “invisible fence” dog collars owe a debt to this movie. Makers of said collars should send any royalties to Lewis Teague, Rutger Hauer, and company pronto.
Hauer is in Quiet Understated mode here but he still manages to be pretty cool. He and Rogers have a solid chemistry together. Mimi by the way was looking fucking fine and gives a spunky performance. And Remar is Remar in this movie; which means he’s fucking great. Chen (who was so good in The Hunted) is kinda blah here though. We also get Danny Trejo in a small role as (what else?) an inmate.
Rutger and Remar get the best dialogue exchange in the flick when Hauer says, “Jesus Christ” and Remar replies “No… but I’m flattered by the comparison!”
Deadlock represents the third It Came from the Thrift Store flick starring Rutger Hauer. That puts him in a tie with David Carradine as the actor who’s starred in the most Thrift Store movies. (Well, if you count Godzilla as an actor, then it’s a three way tie.) If you’re keeping score here’s a list of actors that have starred in two Thrift Store films apiece: Billy Dee Williams (Deadly Illusion and Black Brigade), William Prince (Blade and Second Sight), Paul L. Smith (Desert Kickboxer and Gor), Vanity (Deadly Illusion and Never Too Young to Die), and Morgan Fairchild (Deadly Illusion and Street of Dreams).
Next week we’ll start a run of Kung Fu movies that are all on (GASP) DVD! First up will be Incredible Shaolin Thunderkick, directed by the incomprehensible Godfrey Ho. It should no doubt be nothing less than incredible.