“Call me Snake.”
Join Ian, Liam & Kev for our 344th episode as we cross the wall, try not to get killed by the locals, and discover that in the distant dystopian future of 1997, the entire island of Manhattan has become America's maximum-security prison. It's John Carpenter's Escape from New York (1981), where Kurt Russell has one eye, Donald Pleasence is somehow the President of the United States, and absolutely nobody seems particularly concerned that they've sent one bloke in to rescue him.
Megs isn't with us this week — she landed on Manhattan while attempting to evacuate Air Force One and has informed us that she'd actually rather take her chances with the inmates than record with us.
This week we discuss:
Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken — one of cinema's coolest antiheroes, but how much of Snake is actually a character and how much is simply Kurt Russell walking around being impossibly cool?
John Carpenter's vision of 1997 — crime has exploded, America has become a police state, and Manhattan is a prison. It didn't quite work out that way... but how much of Carpenter's dystopia still feels surprisingly relevant?
The extraordinary world-building — Carpenter gives us remarkably little information about how any of this works. Is that restraint part of the film's brilliance, or are there questions we'd really quite like answered?
Ian gets into the film's narrative construction — because Escape from New York might have one of the cleanest movie premises imaginable. You've got a man, you've got a mission, you've got a ticking clock. What more do you actually need?
Snake Plissken's reputation precedes him everywhere — everybody has heard of him, everybody thought he was dead, and we're left wondering exactly what this man did before the opening credits to become such a legend.
Lee Van Cleef's Hauk — pragmatic authority figure or complete bastard? And is putting explosives inside the neck of the only man capable of completing your mission really the motivational strategy you'd go with?
Donald Pleasence as the President — accent notwithstanding, does the film deliberately make the most powerful man in America one of its least impressive?
Isaac Hayes as the Duke of New York — he's A-Number-One, but does the Duke live up to the incredible introduction the film gives him?
The supporting cast is ridiculous — Ernest Borgnine, Harry Dean Stanton, Adrienne Barbeau and more. Who makes the most of surprisingly limited screen time?
The film looks considerably bigger than it actually was — miniatures, matte paintings, abandoned locations and some ingenious low-budget filmmaking. How does Carpenter create an entire ruined Manhattan without actually having one?
The pacing — at barely 100 minutes, Escape from New York gets in, establishes its world, completes its mission and gets out. Have modern action films forgotten how to do this?
That ending. Snake has one final opportunity to do something heroic for the United States of America... and makes perhaps the most Snake Plissken decision imaginable instead.
And finally, whether Escape from New York is the Best Film Ever — or simply one of the coolest B-movies ever elevated into cult-classic immortality.
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