Last week I discovered that John Carpenter's Escape From New York has been re-released in a fancy double-disk edition, complete with extras and commentary. Its underrated younger sibling, Escape from L.A., has, sadly, received no such special treatment.

    I think I can see why people prefer the New York movie--it's old enough that its low-budget effects seem campy and nostalgic rather than inept, it features both indy icon Harry Dean Stanton and Isaac Hayes (though this is sort of distracting these days--close your eyes and you'll hear Chef saying some really mean shit), and its vision of a futuristic police-state hell hadn't yet been done to death. The L.A. movie, on the other hand, commits the cardinal sin of sincerity: the special effects are hokey and exuberant, and the political message is prominent and heartfelt. Hipsters beware.

    It's this very lack of irony which makes Escape From L.A. a better movie than the first. It's certainly more fun, especially in its more ridiculous moments, like the plastic surgery zombie hordes, led by a scenery-chewing Bruce Campbell, or the tsunami surfing chase scene, featuring an incredibly stoned-looking Peter Fonda. And any movie that gives me a hang-gliding ninja drag queen dropping explosives on Disneyland earns my eternal devotion. Even the first movie gets its share of barbs. While the inmates of New York eyed Snake and said, all tough-like, I heard you were dead, the celebrity-jaded residents of L.A. frown and say, I thought you'd be taller.

    About halfway through, the movie's bleeding heart is exposed. Snake, sneaking through a hellish wasteland of tangled cars, is stopped by the sight of a prayer circle. His guide (a lovely young lady, of course) explicates for our benefit that religious dissidents of all stripes have been exiled to the prison by the religious-right U.S. government. Snake wonders why they stay, as they aren't actually criminals. Out there, that's the prison, she says, This is the last free place on earth.

   In this future, that's absolutely true. Carpenter refuses to side with either the creepy big-brother U.S. or its opposition, led by a charismatic Che-like communist rebel. The movie's apocalyptic conclusion gives us one of the bleakest and yet most hopeful cinematic endings ever, as darkness and the sound of crickets cover the California hills. Few filmmakers have had the guts to make a movie that was simultaneously so silly and so unapologetically romantic.