Escape From New York

Everything about John Carpenter's Escape From New York is preposterous.  I don't care.

In the far-flung dystopian future of 1997, Manhattan Island is a maximum security prison full of the worst criminals of our time.  A 50-foot concrete wall runs all down the Jersey Shore and around the borough.  That's supposed to keep the baddies in and the good people of 'Murka safe.

Then terrorists (not Muslims!) hijack Air Force One with the president on board (say what?) and crash the plane into a skyscraper(!) but not before the president, played by Donald Pleasance, climbs into a giant red egg ("pod," they say) and ejects.

Donald Pleasance played Blofeld in the James Bond film You Only Live Twice, a rather inferior entry in the 007 canon, but a Connery film all the same.  Mike Myers modeled his Dr. Evil character in part on Pleasance's portrayal of Blofeld.  Interestingly, in Escape From New York, Pleasance climbs into an eject pod shaped like an egg, much like Dr. Evil does in the first Austin Powers film.  Did Myers conflate the Bond film with the presidential escape pod scene in Escape From New York?

Snake Plissken, war hero, criminal, and general badass of the future, replete with camo pants, mullet, and eyepatch, is sent to rescue the president.  I wonder why he wears this eyepatch, because at 43:26, Snake busts into a room and turns his head this way and that, and you can totally see that he has two eyes.  When I said this film was preposterous, I wasn't just saying.

Lee Van Cleef, badass old man with beady eyes, plays a police chief who recruits Plissken for the job.  I don't know much about Van Cleef's later films, except that he did a string of B-movies.  I remember him mostly from his work in the Italian western films by Sergio Leone and others.  He's a great villain.

Very few action heroes get to drive a woody wagon.  Snake Plissken?  Yes.  In a station wagon reminiscent of Clark Griswold's in National Lampoon's Vacation, Plissken gets away from the baddies (temporarily, anyway) with two or three other characters in the car.

What a weird, awesome film.  Truth be told, I never paid much attention to Escape From New York before a few years ago.  I worked with a cartoonist who was a huge, huge fan of Snake Plissken, and John Carpenter's work in general.  My cartoonist co-worker was such a fan, and had such a grip on storytelling, that he cooked up an idea for a third Escape film — not a remake, but another sequel, set somewhere else.  Of course, he didn't have the rights to develop the idea, but whatever.  I can't tell you everything, but I loved the idea.  He also talked me into checking out this film again, so I found a copy of the above version, used of course (and with a comic book, too).

I wish Carpenter had revisited the Plissken character more often.  With all the locales that could become part of his dystopian vision of the future, and all the possibilities for interesting characters and situations, I'm not sure why there's only one sequel.  This could've gone on for years.

Yes, Escape From New York is a preposterous film, but no, I don't care.  This remains one of John Carpenter's best — a very well done search-and-rescue action/adventure/sci-fi B-movie that I can watch again and again.