Kill James Bond! - S4E5.5: Escape from L.A. [PREVIEW]

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

This is a preview of a bonus episode! find the whole thing here, on our patreon! ----- John Carpenter's Escape from New York is a classic. But John Carpenter's Escape from L.A. is almost the exact same story remade with all the sliders turned to 11. Snake Plissken is deployed into a post-Big One L.A., an area designated by the new christofascist US Government as the dumping ground for all criminals, to retrieve a superweapon stolen by the President's daughter- who was radicalised psychically by an L.A. Revolutionary leader.  Joining us to tackle this is L.A. resident and actor, Morgana Ignis! Star of Helluva Boss, Class Acts, and of course Dracula's Ex-Girlfriend! ----- Donation links for the LA Wildfires Climate change will be experienced as a series of disasters filmed on mobile phones that get progressively closer until it's your phone doing the filming. Currently, Los Angeles is experiencing a wildfire that would have been unimaginable a few decades ago. Directrelief is, as the name suggests, coordinating direct relief for those who have lost everything. https://donate.directrelief.org/give/406660/#!/donation/checkout ----- FREE PALESTINE Hey, Devon here. As you well know I've been working with a few gazan families to raise money for their daily living costs in the genocide. As a ceasefire has been announced, we hope soon plenty of Aid can get in and help alleviate the dire famine they're being subjected to. But until then, they still have to afford to eat, so we ask for you to keep helping them out, just a little longer. https://www.gofundme.com/f/a8jzz-help-me-and-my-family-get-out-of-the-gaza-strip https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-me-and-my-family-to-find-a-safe-place https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-maher-and-my-family-to-leave-gaza-to-belgium https://www.gofundme.com/f/htdcj-evacuating-my-family-from-gaza https://www.map.org.uk/donate/donate ----- Consider supporting us on our reasonably-priced patreon! https://www.patreon.com/killjamesbond ------ WEB DESIGN ALERT Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Kill James Bond is hosted by November Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon. You can find us at https://killjamesbond.com

Hello listeners. The following episode, Escape from LA, was recorded at a different time last week before thousands of people actually had to escape from LA, owing to the devastating fires currently sweeping the city. The climax of the film shows an iconic Los Angeles landmark on fire, and the hosts remarks that this is sick nasty and rules should be understood in their historical context. In all seriousness though, we are very happy to say that our guest for this episode, Morgana Ignis, is alive and safe at time of recording. We'll be providing a link in the show notes to an organisation called Direct Relief, who are giving emergency medical aid, respirators

and other critical suppliers to the affected communities, should you feel compelled to donate and help the people of Los Angeles? Because you may have survived Cleveland, you may have escaped from New York, but this is L.A., Vato, and you're about to find out that this fucking city can kill anybody! Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of Kill James Bond. I am November Kelly, joined as always by my friends Abigail, Thorne and Devon. Hey! Captcha waitin' huh?

And we have a very special guest, we are joined by actress Morgana Ignis from Class Act's Hell of a Boss and Dracula's Ex-Girlfriend. Morgana, how's it going? It is, look, given the current situation of the entire world, which is entirely too relevant to this fucking film, um, I'm great. Never been better. Fantastic, really. We're all feeling good, we're feeling healthy, our hyoid bones are intact, we've watched

a movie! And that's still legal! This was Abby's pick! Amazing. It's just still legal. Go to the's pick! Amazing! Mm-hmm. It's just still legal. Go to the movies, watch them while you still can. Yeah, I first watched this movie on a couch, uh, full of clouted up transsexuals, uh, very

high on weed gummies, in LA, and it was that couch that is just to Morgana's right right now, because she was the one who introduced me to this movie, and you and me and Laura watched it when we were high as balls and it was great! That's the registered way to watch a movie, that's the recommended. I believe that there were no less than 20 to 30 times that you said during this film this might be the greatest movie ever made. Yeah, and you were right! It's fantastic!

Each of those times! That was my experience as well. Keep film criticism! And the thing is, we're doing this thing that we do on this podcast of coming in in the second part of a series again, because I haven't seen Escape from New York. We haven't certainly haven't talked about Escape from New York. Doesn't matter. So I have, and I watched Escape from New York for the first time on a couch with one extremely

clattered up transsexual. When I was still in the closet, we were dating at the time, and we were waiting for her Viagra to kick in, and we watched Escape from New York. How long does Viagra take to kick in? Let me tell you one thing about Escape from New York, if you're watching Escape from New York, you don't need Viagra, baby, you are ready to fucking go after watching that movie. That's fucking right.

You're just trying to get topped, and she's like, kept you waiting, huh? Oh no, I was doing the top. Doesn't matter. I'm here to make Metal Gear references. Ready to go, but I'm like, hang on, hang on, I'm watching this fucking movie. Here's how he escapes from New York. I'm just invested in the story of Snake Plissken. Okay, here's the thing to keep in mind about Escape from LA versus Escape from New York. So both written, directed, scored, everything by John Carpenter.

Escape from New York significantly better reviews than this film. John Carpenter has come out and said, those are incorrect. He is not even like, John Carpenter is not something who respects that someone might have a different opinion. He has literally come out in the record and said, anybody who does not love this film is just objectively wrong. And this is the better film of the two. I love John Carpenter for many reasons, including him saying he doesn't really want to make

films anymore. He just wants to play video games and smoke weed all day, which I respect. But the fact that he, like, after this movie kind of got review bombed, wrongfully so, John Carpenter came out and said, yeah, those reviews are just incorrect. It's not a matter of opinion. It's simply wrong. This is an amazing film and should get more respect. ALICE Refute your critics in the year of our Lord 2025. Refute your critics by being like, no, this one's good, actually. And the thing about this movie is, like, I have two, I have a dialectic going on, I have two opinions about this movie. One is that it's like, kind of morally, like, wrong, and the other is that it's fantastic, it whips.

Like, I had a great time watching this one, it is kind of reprehensible. Yes. Sick as fuck. Yeah. It rules, it sucks, it sucks just enough to be perfect, like, there has to be that vital suck component for it to properly rule. It's the seed pearl in an oyster, you know, there has to be that little bit of... ZACH It fucking gloriously sucks, in the best

way as possible. RILEY It's so good, man. I owe Abby basically my biggest apology of my professional career, because when you were like, oh, let's go watch Escape from New York with Morgana, I was gonna be like, okay, this is gonna be a vehicle to hear about the time that you spent in LA, right? But this movie fucking rules. I'm so happy that you made me watch this. I'm like fully on both knees, hat in hand. I'm so sorry. Thank you. I wouldn't bring you a Duffer. It's all killer. Don't film with me. It's all killer, baby.

This movie was made in 1996. It's set in the futuristic year of 2013. And so we have a bit of a build up. first of all we get the sickest title sequence in the world. Yeah, well first of all we get the title sequence in the Law and Order font, which is disorienting, introducing the fact that Kurt Russell, Walt Disney's last words, is gonna be in this movie, and Pam Grier is in this movie! Steve Buscemi is in this movie, and Pam Greer is in this movie! Steve Buscemi is in this movie! Promises a lot, and believe me it delivers. BRUCE FUCKING CAMPBELL is in this film! Yes!

Bruce Campbell's in this film. This is gonna be one of those Kill James Bond reviews where I say a lot of people's names reverently. I'm gonna be like, oh my god! I will also be remiss too if I don't mention during this opening. Again, there's so much to talk about before the movie even begins, that should say everything. The iconic score, the iconic opening music that continues from Escape from New York, same music from that one, scored by John Carpenter. This music, if you are

into cyberpunk sort of dystopian future aesthetic, this is your theme. I had this. I had this on my middle school iPod. RILEY I have it on my gym playlist now, I was doing chest and tricep data. ALICE Just get like pumped up. RILEY You need to get ready! ALICE So like, the deal is, right, America has fallen to fascism. And in the movie, America has fallen to fascism.

Yeah, the deal is this. The city of Los Angeles is ravaged by crime and immorality. So it's set in a very equivalent timeline to our own. Pure fantasy, nothing that we could relate to at all so far. Obviously. So a presidential candidate in like 1998 predicted that in the year 2000 the big one would happen and destroy LA. By the way, this presidential candidate, what they're doing is Pat Buchanan, right, who

was this like, even further right kind of like third party candidate, I think he ran for the Reform Party a bunch of times, but was doing all of this Christian nationalist shit. And it's sort of, like, extrapolating from the kind of, like, urban decay thinking about LA in the 90s, and Pat Buchanan running, to be like, well how does this play out, and the answer is... Stalkin' and he, like, basically gets it right. So in the 2000, the big one does hit, and he gets sworn in as president for life. He even looks a bit like Trump when Trump's doing his tough guy face. It's really kind of remarkable. No, we noticed that when we watched it the first time.

I didn't think about that initially, and then going into it, given just how much we've seen that face of Trump around. Yeah. I'm like, okay, this is sitting way too close to him. The hair, the hair is kind of unrealistic on a human creature. It's way too reminiscent. This is Cliff Roberts. They don't bother naming him any further, he's just called President the whole time.

The earthquake causes LA to like, some of it sinks into the sea, but now there's like an island as the island of Los Angeles, which is now one giant concentration camp for non-citizens. And if you break the new moral Christian laws in the United States, you are instantly deported without trial to LA Island. So there is no escape from LA. Well indeed. Making any escape from LA impossible. Exactly. You get exiled by this paramilitary fascist police force, the United States police force, and the vibe here is all like black visors and black Humvees and CGI Comanche helicopters. It's such a particular-

Way less militarized than the actual police right now. Yeah. It's such a particular vision of American fascism, and it reminds me of another great piece of American sci-fi, Terminator 2, right? Where, making the Terminator 2 in Terminator 2, like, an LAPD officer, because the LAPD is so obviously, like, fascist robots, in the same way, being like, oh this fascist paramilitary force that's cordoned off Los Angeles, all wearing black, and driving around in humvees and shit, and it's like, that's just the LAPD.

ALICE Oh, that is as much as I can let you listen to for the low low price of nothing, if you want to listen to the rest of it you're going to have to pay the low low price of at least £5 a month by going to patreon.com slash killjamesbond, all one word, and signing up today. Word to the wise. Next bonus episode is going out on the free feed. We got ourselves a bit of a guest. We'd be fools to keep locked up.