I was watching the old movie Escape from New York the other day and it appeared to me that the paramilitary police uniforms in that dystopian future are less scary than the actual police uniforms today. Anyone agree or disagree?
Of course the future depicted in Escape from New York is probably now in our past. Does anyone have the numbers on that? I think TVTropes.org has a category for that but if I start looking at TV Tropes I won’t get anything done the rest of the day.
It takes place the far distant future of 1997.
Neither seem particularly scary to me.
If you are referencing the specifically the crowd and riot control gear, which is in all of the top shots on an image search of EFNY, I would also not describe it as paramilitary. Crowd and riot control is dominantly a policing function. The National Guard in a state role assists with those policing tasks. Active Component troops may perform those policing functions overseas during SOSO (Stability Operations / Support Operations) or in limited cases inside the US. The gear itself was designed for that dominantly non-military task, though. That gear is not paramilitary. It is designed for policing.
I do have one reason to be more concerned about EFNY police in their riot gear. It is shitty. I would worry that one or two assholes throwing things would be more likely to spark an overreaction from them than if they were throwing them at well equipped police.
It’s a long throw from Manhattan island to New Jersey tho.
John Carpenter didn’t have huge budget for EFNY; the total budget was just $6,000,000.
The riot uniforms look about the same to me… missing some armor maybe, but mostly it’s what I would expect to see.
~Max
Holy crap, is that true? There are movies made now with hundreds of millions of dollars in their budget and they suck 
Actually, I can’t remember the last good movie I saw
If we’re talking low-budget films, I believe Monty Python and the Holy Grail cost about £200,000 in '75. That’s less than half a million USD, assuming £1:$2.
~Max
Aye; it’s true. Escape from New York cost $6M and grossed $25.2M.
Ghosts of Mars had $28 million and grossed only 14 million. It was originally supposed to be escape from Mars. But since LA did so shitty, they gave it to ice cube instead.
Yeah, but that movie sucked.
I read somewhere that the classic opening bit where they use coconut shell halves to imitate the clip-clop of horse hooves came about from not having the budget to rent actual horses.
[spit take] WHaaatt?
Fun fact:
The bridge scene in EFNY was shot in St Louis, on the famous Route 66 “Chain of Rocks” bridge, that had fallen into disrepair. It has since been cleaned up and you can walk it now. Parts of Manhattan were also filmed in East St. Louis.
Fun fact: they bought the bridge for $1 prior to filming and then sold it back for $1 when they were done, thus keeping the city from liability claims had there been injuries during the shoot.