Greeting Loyal Airmen, we hope all of you are enjoying Spring and the fun outdoor activities this time of year brings. There's also a glut of new Hollywood action flicks coming to your local cineplex, including a big screen blockbuster this very weekend from famous French director, Luc Besson, called LOCK-OUT.

Now the plot premise of this film goes something like this.  In the future all of the meanest criminals on Earth will be locked away in a prison satellite orbiting the planet. Somehow the prisoners get loose and take over the place and in the process take the President of the USA's daughter as a hostage.  The government then goes out a recruits a hard case named Snow to go up there and rescue her.  All of this is made crystal when watching the trailers for the movie. Upon seeing them, the Air Chief had the feeling he'd seen this story done before, albeit in a slight different way.

In 1981 John Carpenter made a movie wherein the entire island of Manhattan had been turned into a maximum security prison for the most vicious criminals in America.  Somehow the President of the United States ends up there as a hostage and the government goes and recruits the worst hard case of them all to go in and rescue him. This cult classic is of course ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK and started Kurt Russell as Snake Plisskin.  In LOCK OUT, an obvious rip-off of the same plot, Guy Pearce is the hard case Snow.  Now don't get us wrong, we still have every intention of seeing LOCK OUT, it's very much our kind of movie.  Still seeing what an obvious rip-off the story is, we found ourselves thinking how Hollywood has done this kind of thing time and time again.  Here are a few samples we'll never forget.

          
In 1939 director George Stevens filmed a boisterous, fun adventure movie based loosely on a famous poem by Rudyard Kipling called GUNGA DIN.  In 19th Century India, three British soldiers (Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) and a native waterbearer (Sam Jaffe) must stop a secret mass revival of a murderous Thuggee cult before it can rampage across the land.  To this day its considered a classic with the noble Gung Din (Jaffe) being gunned down as he plays his bugle atop the temple to warn the arriving troops of the ambush set for them.  Of course one would have expected if Hollywood wanted to remake this movie, they would simply do it in the same setting and era.  Ha.  Not so.  Would you believe some Hollywood genius had the crazy idea of doing this story as a western?

        
In 1962, at the height of their popularity, the famous Rat Pack, led by Frank Sinatra, convinced a studio to redo GUNGA DIN as a western with them in the leads.  Thus veteran director John Sturges took the helm of SERGEANTS 3, a wacky western comedy with Frank, Dean Martin & Peter Lawford playing the three cavalry buddies and Sammy David Jr. as the black wanna-be hanger-on.  This time the heroes stumble upon a secret Native American society of dog-soldiers ready to stir up trouble on the frontier.  The movie itself is a joke and a truly sad rip-off start to finish.  Still, the one such movie swipe that truly bowled over the Air Chief was one which started out as a very popular comic book series from Dark Horse Comics.

Barb Wire starring Pamela Anderson Lee in came out in 1996 based on the comic book of the same name. In the movie, Barb runs a strip club in what is left of the Free America Zone located in the Pacific Northwest, most of the rest of the country having been taken over by a fascist dictatorship.  One of her old lovers shows up with his wife, who is now a well known political freedom fighter and they need Barb's help to escape into Canada.
Half way through watching this movie, the Air Chief realized he seen it all before…many, many, many times.  These people were ripping-off one of the most famous classic films of all time!

Directed by Michael Curtiz in 1942 and staring Humprhey Bogart & Ingrid Bergman, CASABLANCA is described in the data files as follows – Set in unoccupied Africa during the early days of World War II, an Ameircan expatriate meets a former lover with unforseen complications.  Now go to that exact same data file and punch up BARB WIRE and here's the quote – “A post-Apocalyptic remake of “Casablanca” set in a strip club.Talk about nerves of steel!  Using a movie classic to whip up a B-flick.  Proving once again, when it comes to Hollywood these days, there simply is nothing they won't do for a buck.

Still we do love the movies.  Till next week, save us the aisle seat and pass the popcorn.
Ron – Over & Out!