(2003, 2 disc set) Original release date: 1981 Director: John Carpenter Starring: Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Harry Dean Stanton, Isaac Hayes, Donald Pleasence, Ernest Borgnine, Adrienne Barbeau
My favorite flick of all-time finally gets the special DVD treatment......
...after a 3 and a half year wait, in 2003 MGM released the two disc "Special Edition" of Escape From New York, and HKC sighed a breath of relief.
To say this is quite possibly my favorite genre flick in the history of the universe is a huge understatement. This is the film that turned me into a lifelong Kurt Russell and John Carpenter fan, way before I even cared or knew who either man was......I just dug Russell as the main character, former Special Forces soldier turned shady criminal and all around bad-ass, S.D. "Snake" Plissken...
My fascination began at the age of seven, in the summer of 1981, when my mother took me to a drive-in showing of the then new flick. I sat in awed amazement of the action on the screen (alternating between bites from one of the greasiest fish sandwiches on planet Earth from the concession stand and a bottle of Barq's cream soda), absorbing every plot point and movement of Plissken, so that "Escape" would become a scenario used in backyard neighborhood games of pretend for years to come. For the next three Halloweens, I went as Snake (this is during the days when seeing a small child on All Hallows Eve walking around with an eye patch and a toy Uzi wasn't grounds for suspecting he'd be plotting a Columbine-type event).
The Plot: Filmed in 1980, and set in 1997 (THE FUTURE!!!), Escape from New York, begins it's tale by proclaiming that in 1988 (THE FUTURE!), the crime rate in the United States would rise a drastic 400 percent, forcing the creation of the USPF (the United States Police Force), a paramilitary group of goons taking back the streets in a desolate future America that has been involved in some sort of conflict with the USSR in Siberia (Plissken is said to be a veteran and war hero of the event). Ah...the good ol' days of the Cold War, when dirty Commies were still bad guys in flicks, even if it was just exposition. The U.S. of this alternate future has all but become a police state of the "Germany in the late 1930s" kind. How is that any different than it really is now with George Dubbaya in office? You can laugh. That's my political humor for the evening, ladies and gentlemen......
Cut to New York Maximum Security Prison, a real swell place to be. If yer absolutely ape-sh*t insane, that is. The Big Apple of the Future has been transformed into one gigantic grey bar motel, the entire island of Manhattan populated by the worst offenders on the USPF's list. The opening narration proclaims "Once you go in....you don't come out." Nice to see that even in the future, Manhattan will be considered a roach motel by the outside world...native New Yorkers, please, calm down. I'm just makin' wit' the funny here. Fergeddaboutit, eh?
This is where we pick up on Snake's story....
Plissken is being processed in for an off-screen robbery of the Federal Reserve in Cleveland (something that the Special Edition DVD reveals on the second disc...an entirely deleted reel one of the flick that shows us this heist and capture).
Seems the President's plane has been brought down in N.Y. by radicals led by Isaac Hayes as the Duke of New York, who wants free passage out of the prison in exchange for the Commander n' Chief (a very British Donald Pleasence), and the USPF commander, Hauk, portrayed by Lee Van Cleef (no wonder Russell went for the Eastwood impression for this flick), has an offer for Snake he can't refuse: Go in, get the Prez out, receive a full pardon...but with a catch...Plissken must do this within 24 hours, or the microscopic explosives Hauk had injected into his neck will blow his head off...
...and then, the fun begins. The End.
Escape from New York is a fun, suspenseful apocalyptic action romp, presented in this two disc set looking better than ever transfer-wise. Some really good special features round out the discs nicely (2 audio commentaries, one with Russell and director Carpenter, always a treat and a fairly informative documentary, "Return to Escape from New York") make this a set worth having, especially for Plissken freaks like me...
No comments:
Post a Comment