I remember watching Escape from New York in the early eighties, missing the original run but catching it as it rolled into my local, small theater that we all went to. The whole concept of Manhattan as a prison, surrounded by a giant wall with no hopes of ever escaping, tickled my sci-fi-fueled brain. It’s now 2021, and even though I’m *ahem* a bit older, and some things have not aged as well as others, I still appreciate John Carpenter’s grim, dark, sci-fi/western concepts and all the characters that live in this film.
While the idea of a city being walled up and used as a prison was interesting, I was much more interested in what went on there, how it looked, etc. Carpenter sucked the life out of the city, giving it a grim, apocalyptic look and feel, thanks to some great model work and matte paintings, making you feel all hope has indeed left this place. It is here the President of the United States sees his life pod crash, and in his possession, a tape of an address that will stop a war. With the whole world at stake, they need a rescue plan and fast.
Enter Snake Plissken, wearing an eye patch and spewing an attitude that makes you want to be just like him. Plissken (played wonderfully by Kurt Russell) is the perfect anti-hero, an ex-soldier who works for himself now as a robber and, in general, pretty much hates the world. Maybe hate is too strong a word, more like an extreme indifference to who lives and dies. He is recruited for the job by the head of police Bob Hauk (the great Lee Van Cleef), and to give the film that real feeling of urgency, Plissken has an explosive device injected into his neck and gives him only 24 hours to get the President back, pissing him off to no end and vowing deadly revenge.
I wanted to be Plissken…hell, I don’t know too many guys who didn’t. He was also the bad boy women loved, so an added bonus right there. He oozed everything rebellious in nature and had a real gunslinger feel, something that Carpenter did purposely as the film overall has the feel of a Western, with Plissken’s speech, attitude, and style eerily similar to that of the legendary Clint Eastwood as the Man With No Name. To this end, casting Lee Van Cleef seems no mistake, his roles in numerous Westerns make him a perfect choice to go toe to toe with Plissken.
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If this film was made today, the special effects and action would be front and center, but due to budget constraints, Carpenter couldn’t make this all about action and gunplay. Instead, he relied on his characters, the good, the bad, and those straddling both sides, in which there were many. Adding well-known faces didn’t hurt, either. Donald Pleasence (as the President), Isaac Hayes ( as ‘The Duke’), Harry Dean Stanton (as ‘Brain’), and not to mention Adrienne Barbeau, Tom Atkins, and Ernest Borgnine as ‘Cabbie’, all make different impressions, big, over the top and funny, too.
Plissken was as anti-establishment as you could get, serving his own needs before anyone else, and yet there I was, cheering for him in Escape from New York. Carpenter crafted a unique film around a Western theme, filled it with depressing ideas and ideologies, and yet the characters quickly become people we cheered for, laughed at, scowled at, or felt sadness for. For a film set in a grim future and wrapped in the idea of a whole city being turned into a prison, we saw in Plissken something to hope for, even though he had long ago given up on everyone else but himself. “Call me Snake” indeed….
