Review of Escape from New York (1981) by Loren T — 10 Jan 2013

When John Carpenter struck to fame with his notorious film 'Halloween', production/distribution company AVCO Embassy Pictures signed him to a two picture deal. What would follow after 'Halloween' would be 'The Fog'. An excellent midnight movie about vengeful ghosts who appear in the fog and want the gold that was taken from them many decades ago. His next project was to be 'The Philadelphia Experiment', but instead bowed out of that project to direct another one of his own.

He had written a screenplay for 'Escape from New York' during the watergate scandal and couldn't get it funded because many studio's didn't like the idea. Flash forward to 1980 and all of that would change. With a few re-writes, thanks to his school buddy Nick Castle who also co-wrote and starred as Michael Myers from 'Halloween', the new script for 'Escape from New York' offered more humor over just a straight action picture.

The setting is 1997 in a dystopic future where the crime rate has skyrocketed! Since ordinary prisons can't hold the overwhelming number of criminals, the island of Manhattan located in New York City has been turned into a maximum security prison. A containment wall circles the island itself to keep people from escaping. Once you go in, you don't come out.

What would be a huge challenge in making this film would be the setting. New York City had to look like a wasteland, but with budget restraints how the hell do you do that? Well, you get creative. You instead look else where that might resemble New York and that's when they decided to shoot in East St. Louis, Illnois. It had old buildings that existed in New York at the time and many, many run-down, seedy areas that could be used for filming. However, to make the audience believe that it really is New York you have to include at least one national momument that'll make it seems believable. Luckily, they were able to shoot on Liberty Island to film the Statue of Liberty at night. So with that procured, the rest could easily be manipulated with special effects, miniatures or matte paintings (which was used to create foreground images of many, many shots involving the Manhattan skyline or buildings.).

When the president's plane becomes hijacked by terrorists, he escapes through a presidential pod that is shot out of the plane before it crashes into, none other, Manhattan. Now the president is trapped inside with the world's most vicious criminals. Who will save him?

Snake Plissken was ex-military before he became a criminal. Something about the arm forces must've changed his mind about serving his country. Because Snake could care less about a president, or anything for that matter except to stay alive. How he came into custody isn't shown in the film itself. A deleted scene, which should've never been deleted, shows Snake robbing a bank before getting caught and having to go on a mission that he doesn't want to do. An injection shot into his neck involving a microscopic explosive wakes him up in having to deal with annoying set of circumstances. He has 24 hours to find the president, retrieve a tape or else explosives in his neck will detonate. Looks like he has no choice! Once arriving to the prison from hell, he's met with several colorful characters like Cabbie, The Brain and his squeeze Maggie. Also the Duke of New York who controls much of the island and is a serious threat to Plissken in making it off the island alive with the president.

There are many great shots in this film. Like the glider scene when Snake enters the island of Manhattan. Even the look of the film is very film noir-ish. Kind of like a more grimy version of 'Blade Runner', but with low budget effects. It's a super cool actioner with a hero you can root for all the way.