Okay, so Machete Kills hasn’t been getting great reviews, at least one missive we’ve read used the term “out of gas” to describe it, but there was a point where Robert Rodriquez was actually a very clever, inventive director, and made good movies.
In the Daily Beast, Rodriquez recalled his favorite genre movies, and we’re certain there’s plenty of geeks out there who love ‘em too, ourselves included. There were several John Carpenter films on the list, and in his prime Carpenter was also a very inventive and clever director.
For Rodriquez, Escape From New York “really opened up my eyes to the kinds of movies I wanted to do and be a filmmaker for because of the freedom it suggested. All my movies have a complete sense of freedom and fantasy where they’re not realistic at all but live within their own set of rules that are defined by that particular movie.”
Rodriquez also loves Carpenter’s remake of The Thing, who doesn’t?, Evil Dead II and American Werewolf for their mix of comedy and horror, and the 1980 version of Flash Gordon, another genre fave that’s getting its due again. A lot of people thought Flash was pretty silly when it first came out, but it’s still enormous fun to go back and watch today.
It’s great that Rodriquez took the time to go back to movies that inspired him, and we hope it will relight the spark in him to make better movies one of these days.
