There’s No Escaping This One

Uttered in the opening narration, the oft quoted line “the rules are simple: once you go in, you don’t come out” is in many ways symbolic of how John Carpenter’s 1981 motion picture Escape From New York has ensnared a passionate cult following.

Set in a dystopic America in 1997, the crime rate has risen by four hundred percent, and the island of Manhattan has become an Alcatraz of sorts, only infinitely more secure and bizarrely intense. Surrounded by a behemoth of a wall and patrolled by the United States Police Force, all bridges leading out of the city are mined, making for a doom laden locale that has a semblance of inescapability. Carpenter carefully transports us into this eerie world at the movie’s opening, providing us with an eagle-eyed perspective of Manhattan and its near impenetrable defences.

Guards do not patrol inside the walls, making way for a wild west of sorts. People must fend for themselves; some form groups, others go it alone, while a few have cracked and become known as ‘crazies’ – they live in the subway system below and only come to ground level in the shadow of night.

It is in this setting that the President of the United States (Donald Pleasence) is forced to use his Air Force One escape pod to survive, though it places him in the centre of the hostilities. Head of the Police Force, Commissioner Bob Hauk (Lee Van Cleef) pitches a rescue mission to one Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), a disgraced Special Forces soldier who has been sent to Manhattan for robbing a bank (an intense ten minute opening scene that was deleted prior to release – though now, thanks to the Blu-Ray, it is available for viewing) – hoping that the capable man will use his wide array of skills to rescue the President (and the vital cassette tape he is carrying) in exchange for his freedom.

Grudgingly accepting, Snake is given his mission – forcibly implanted with a micro-explosive charge that will blow if he does not return with the President in twenty-three hours, as the man must present the tape to other world leaders at that very specific time.

A venerable anti-hero, Snake is the type of man that most wish they could be – an all-out bad ass who is beholden to no one but himself. With a certain mythos, his name means something, despite the fact that most on the inside, for some odd reason, believe he has already died (intriguingly, something similar happens to each person who mentions this). Meeting a wide array of peculiar and dangerous individuals, from a cheery, pleasant-hearted Cabbie (Ernest Borgnine) and the vicious head of Manhattan – The Duke (Isaac Hayes), to a clever former friend named Brain (Harry Dean Stanton) who stabbed him in the back long ago, and his sultry but no less dangerous gal Maggie (Adrienne Barbeau); one thing is clear: there is nowhere safe in Manhattan.

Escape From New York filmmaker John Carpenter with Filmizon.com’s Nikolai Adams

With spectacular special effects for its time, Carpenter’s team (which included a young James Cameron) built several scale models of Manhattan (one of which was 1/500th) to depict the deteriorating isle. With no power, Manhattan is almost pitch black, a landscape of dilapidated, ominous high-rises that once blinked with alluring impressiveness from dusk till dawn. It is these models that provide the grand scale of the location, and the horrors that it now holds. On a more micro perspective, the creative team were fortunate enough to use East St. Louis, Illinois for the nighttime street shots, as it had been charred to bits during a massive fire back in 1976. Aided by the city, they turned the streetlights off, and the crumbling, damaged and burnt buildings, looking utterly seedy, furnished a realistic dystopic setting that feels wholly realistic. . . as, in essence, it was. It did not hurt that they imported multiple dump trucks worth of ruined machines and other garbage to litter the streets.

Russell leads the splendid cast, his eye patch and gruff voice (somewhat reminiscent of Clint Eastwood’s growl – which makes sense, as the actor based his performance on the iconic star) depicting a man you would not want to cross. It is fitting then that it is Van Cleef’s Hauk who deals with Snake, as he worked with Clint Eastwood in two of the three Dollars films by Sergio Leone. Borgnine, from his opening scene, is a standout. As Snake enters a cross-dressing Broadwayesque show, everyone seems uninspired, other than Borgnine’s Cabbie, his head bobbing and face glowing as he listens to and enjoys the number. It is his cheerful, humorous persona that shows that there is still some joy in this horrific dystopic world. Hayes uses his large frame and cocky swagger to construct a big boss man that you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of. Stanton adds a twitchiness to his character, a fast-moving brain whose allegiance switches as quickly as the wind does, while Barbeau imbues Maggie with a much more loyal streak and a penchant for violence that shows why she has survived on the felon-filled island. Season Hubley (who was married to Russell at the time) also has a cameo as a cigarette smoking dame in the abandoned store Chock Full o’ Nuts. A little known fact is that the opening narration and the computer’s voice in the first prison scene is done by Jamie Lee Curtis. Perhaps even less known, the Secret Service Agent who is trying to break into the cockpit of Air Force One after it has been hijacked is former President Gerald Ford’s son Steven.

A commentary on Government authority and corruption, Carpenter thought of the idea after the Watergate scandal, writing it in 1976 – saturating his tale with the cynicism that ran through America in the 1970s (and brought with it other great anti-heros like Dirty Harry Callahan, Randle McMurphy, The Man With No Name, Billy Jack and so many more). Pleasence’s President, though put through the ringer in this one, has an untrustworthy streak running through him, symbolic of the era in which it was written. Carpenter was also influenced by another take on the anti-hero – Charles Bronson in Death Wish, though it was “the sense of New York as a kind of jungle”, as he put it, that stuck with him while he wrote Escape From New York.

The poster must also be highlighted, as it has garnered quite the buzz. The metaphorical image of chaos on the streets of New York with the severed head of the Statue of Liberty sitting in the background, though not a sequence in the film, echoes the crumbling nature that this alternate United States, as well as the predicament Snake must fight his way through, is in. This poster actually influenced a key scene in the J.J. Abrams produced 2008 found footage monster movie Cloverfield – which finds the lady’s head in almost exactly the same position as it was on the poster.

An atmospheric sci-fi action flick, John Carpenter’s B movie depicts a bizarre Manhattan that has a touch of the punk aesthetic that started to grow around the same time in which the filmmaker wrote his first treatment. Like George Miller’s Mad Max franchise, there is a certain adrenalin and madness to the crumbling societal norm, a degenerative depravity in which two individuals can fight to the death (using nail laden baseball bats) in front of a packed, enthusiastic crowd, and no one blinks an eye – an eerily mass-maniacal visionary dystopia. Carpenter (who directed, co-wrote, and co-scored the film), brings together an impressive who’s who of a cast, and transports us to a very different America utilizing his intriguing narrative, ahead-of-its-time special effects and uncanny setting. So, boogie on down and check out this sci-fi adventure – I can assure you, there is no government red tape that will get in your way.