59. Escape from New York

John Carpenter, 1981

“Call me Snake.”

1997. New York City is now a maximum security prison. Breaking out is impossible. Breaking in insane. Thus reads the tag line for one of the most kick ass movies of all time. For those of you who haven’t seen it, first off, shame on you. Secondly, this sucker rates a 9.5 on the Big Bad Leroy Brown kick-ass-o-meter. The plot? Well, you already know the basics. It’s the future, far off 1997. New York is a hell hole in which the worst of humanity has been condemned to life, although they are free to roam the streets as they please. It’s a dark and dangerous world and the president’s Air Force One escape pod has just crashed into the middle of it. Enter Snake Plissken, played to bad ass perfection by Kurt Russell, forever proving that he isn’t only the computer who wore tennis shoes. Anyway, and I can’t stress this enough, Snake is one bad mother SHUT YOUR MOUTH! Hey, I’m just talkin’ about Snake. OH. I CAN DIG IT. He’s on his way in, but New York’s warden, Hauk, played by Lee Van Cleef, Angel Eyes himself here to also kick some ass, knows that Snake is the only guy who stands a chance at getting the president out. So, they strike a deal. If Snake rescues the president, Hauk won’t kill him.

Once Snake makes his way into New York it’s all money. He fights cannibals, roving street gangs, and teams up with Ernie Borgnine, Harry Dean Stanton, and Adrienne “I’m Up Here” Barbeau to take on The Duke of New York (A #1), played by Isaac Hayes his own bad self. Do you see how bad ass this movie is? Must I continue to belabor the point? It’s bad ass, brother! When you get right down to it, Escape from New York really is a terrific action movie, but it’s also one that knows better than to take itself too seriously. It’s hardly the big deal weight of the world sort of action movie you might have seen too often. Indeed, Escape has a healthy sense of humor. Ernie Borgnine is really pretty funny as Cabbie. There’s a whole running joke about everyone thinking Snake is already dead, and the scene where the Duke makes Donald Pleasance scream out over and over, “You are the Duke of New York, A number one!” over and over brings a smile to my face each time. By the way, Pleasance plays the president, which is weird since he’s British.

The film also has some terrific visuals. This is a world without electricity in any real sense, so seeing Issac Hayes tool around in a Cadillac Fleetwood sedan with chandeliers for headlights makes perfect sense somehow and is also just a great idea. At any rate, I love John Carpenter from the eighties. He made a handful of movies there that are just a hell of a lot of fun. Escape may be a pretty straight forward action flick, but, as I’ve tried to point out, it’s just fun as hell, from the weird ass concept, to the strange characters, to the climactic chase across a mined bridge. Great, great stuff. On a final note, I love how Carpenter mixes a bit of the Spaghetti Western style into most of his films. Having only recently discovered Leone myself, it’s terrific to rewatch these and see the influence those films had on Carpenter himself, whether its just the look and feel of the film, the clear influence of the Man with no Name on characters like Snake, or the use of Van Cleef here or an Ennio Moriconne score in The Thing. Oh, and did I mention that this movie kicks an ungodly amount of ass? I thought so.