Taglines: New York is a disease. Meet the cure.
Escape from New York movie storyline. The year is 1997. New York City has been turned into a maximum security prison colony, when the American crime rates grows high. New York City is surrounded by a wall and the bridges and waterways are mined making sure no convict escapes from Manhattan. Snake Plissken, a one-eyed former soldier turned bank robber arrives at New York after being sentenced to life imprisonment in New York City. Bob Hauk, police commissioner who runs the New York penal colony gives Snake a job for his freedom.
Snake is sent into Manhattan to find and rescue the President of the United States who is trapped there, when a terrorist hijacked Air Force One and crashed it in the city. Not only Snake must rescue the President, he must also retrieve a cassette containing vital information in the President’s possession. Hauk has Snake implanted with a bomb which is programmed to detonate in 22 hours, which will kill Snake if he fails the mission, and Hauk will have the bomb disarmed if Snake succeeds.
Entering New York and 22 hours before the bomb kills him, Snake sets out to rescue the President who is being held hostage by a ruthless warlord known as The Duke of New York. Can Snake rescue the President and retrieve the cassette before the 22 hours are up? and will Snake Escape from New York?
Escape from New York (stylized on-screen as John Carpenter’s Escape from New York) is a 1981 American science fiction action film co-written, co-scored and directed by John Carpenter. It stars Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Donald Pleasence, Ernest Borgnine, Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau, and Harry Dean Stanton.
The film’s storyline, set in the near-future world of 1997, concerns a crime-ridden United States, which has converted Manhattan Island in New York City into the country’s maximum-security prison. Air Force One is hijacked by terrorists and is purposely crashed in New York City. Ex-soldier and current federal prisoner Snake Plissken (Russell) is given just 24 hours to go in and rescue the president of the United States, after which, if successful, Snake will be pardoned.
Carpenter wrote the film in the mid-1970s in reaction to the Watergate scandal. After the success of Halloween (1978), he had enough influence to begin production and filmed it mainly in St. Louis, Missouri, on an estimated budget of $6 million. Debra Hill and Larry J. Franco served as the producers. The film was co-written by Nick Castle, who had collaborated with Carpenter by portraying Michael Myers in Halloween.
Escape from New York was released in the United States on July 10, 1981. The film received positive reviews from critics and was a commercial success, grossing more than $25 million at the box office. The film was nominated for four Saturn Awards, including Best Science Fiction Film and Best Direction. The film became a cult classic and was followed by a sequel, Escape from L.A. (1996), which was also directed and written by Carpenter and starred Russell, but was much less favorably received.
Filming
Carpenter and his crew persuaded the city to shut off the electricity to 10 blocks at a time at night. The film was shot from August to November 1980. It was a tough and demanding shoot for the filmmaker as he recalls. “We’d finish shooting at about 6 am and I’d just be going to sleep at 7 when the sun would be coming up. I’d wake up around 5 or 6 pm, depending on whether or not we had dailies, and by the time I got going, the sun would be setting.
So for about two and a half months I never saw daylight, which was really strange.” The gladiatorial fight to the death scene between Snake and Slag (played by professional wrestler Ox Baker) was filmed in the Grand Hall at St. Louis Union Station. Russell has stated, “That day was a nightmare. All I did was swing a [spiked] bat at that guy and get swung at in return. He threw a trash can in my face about five times… I could have wound up in pretty bad shape.”
In addition to shooting on location in St. Louis, Carpenter shot parts of the film in Los Angeles. Various interior scenes were shot on a sound stage; the final scenes were shot at the Sepulveda Dam, in Sherman Oaks. New York served as a location, as did Atlanta, to use their futuristic-looking rapid-transit system (the latter scenes were cut from the final film).
In New York City, Carpenter persuaded federal officials to grant access to Liberty Island. “We were the first film company in history allowed to shoot on Liberty Island at the Statue of Liberty at night. They let us have the whole island to ourselves. We were lucky. It wasn’t easy to get that initial permission. They’d had a bombing three months earlier and were worried about trouble”.
Escape from New York (1981)
Directed by: John Carpenter
Starring: Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasence, Isaac Hayes, Harry Dean Stanton, Adrienne Barbeau, Season Hubley, Charles Cyphers, Frank Doubleday
Screenplay by: John Carpenter, Nick Castle
Production Design by: Joe Alves
Cinematography by: Dean Cundey
Film Editing by: Todd Ramsay
Costume Design by: Stephen Loomis
Set Decoration by: Cloudia Rebar
Music by: John Carpenter, Alan Howarth
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: AVCO Embassy Pictures
Release Date: July 10, 1981 (United States)
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