It’s always fun to see films predicting a certain future and then the year passes and things are unchanged.
One such example that passed its’ year of reality was John Carpenter’s 1981 film ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. Set in 1997, it is the attempt by the baddest man in the world, one-eyed renegade and imminent prisoner Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), who is en route to what then used to be Manhattan Island, which has been transformed into a maximum security facility in light of the crime rate rising a staggering 400% in the United States.
Bob Hauk (Lee Van Cleef) is ready to kick Plissken’s immoral behind, when Air Force One, with the President and his team on board is hijacked by revolutionaries rebelling against the ‘racist police state’ and crash the plane down within. Hauk presents Plissken with a proposal – fly into the prison, rescue the President (Donald Pleasance) in a matter of hours – and all will be forgiven. There is a catch – two microscopic charges injected into his neck which run out when the mission completes its’ time-limit.
Plissken flies in, but pretty soon he has to contend with the might of an underground sub-army, presided over by The Duke (Issac Hayes, Chef in SOUTH PARK, composer of SHAFT (1971)) . but finds allies in Cabbie (Ernest Borgnine) and old acquaintance Brain (Harry Dean Stanton) and girlfriend Maggie (Adrienne Barbeau, Carpenter’s THE FOG (1979). The President has to be rescued, as he was on his way to a mega-important peace summit, but given the circumstances and people who inhabit this den of darkness, it’s a tall order for Plissken which he has to embrace…
Carpenter created an enviable legacy of cult works, with the likes of ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 (1976), HALLOWEEN (1978), THE FOG and his now-classic remake of THE THING (1982).
ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK is a unique experience and a very imaginative concept which is not without its’ flaws, but along with BLADE RUNNER, is one of the most well-realised ideas of a dystopian future that was very popular in the previous decade prior to the release of STAR WARS.
The production design by Joe Alves (who was part of the team behind Steven Spielberg’s JAWS) and art direction from one James Cameron who served his apprenticeship on films like this and BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS (1980) before graduating to the director’s chair with films like THE TERMINATOR (1984), TITANIC (1997) and AVATAR (2009) add value to a lower-budgeted work (apparently about $6 million according to online sources). It also contains without question John Carpenter’s best ever music score, something he did on a lot of his movies as he mentioned that he ‘was the fastest and cheapest I could get’
Ignore the fact that the year has passed, embrace the concept – and please call him Snake.