"I swear to God, Snake, I thought you were dead." Didn’t everybody? Join your faithful Grue Crew - Crystal Cleveland, Chad Hunt, Bill Mulligan, and Jeff Mohr - as they once again travel to the world according to John Carpenter, this time partnering up with Snake Plissken as he tries to Escape from New York (1981).
Decades of Horror 1980s
Episode 157 – Escape from New York (1981)
In 1997, when the U.S. president crashes into Manhattan, now a giant maximum-security prison, a convicted bank robber is sent in to rescue him.
Imdb
Director: John Carpenter Writer: John Carpenter, Nick Castle Producer: Debra Hill Location Mgr/Assoc Prod: Barry Bernardi Music: John Carpenter, Alan Howarth Director of Photography: Dean Cundey Production Design: Joe Alves Special Effects Superviser: Roy Arbogast Cast Kurt Russell as S.D. "Snake" Plissken Lee Van Cleef as Bob Hauk Ernest Borgnine as Cabbie Donald Pleasence as the president Isaac Hayes as the Duke Harry Dean Stanton as Brain Adrienne Barbeau as Maggie Tom Atkins as Rehme Season Hubley as Girl in Chock Full o' Nuts Charles Cyphers as Secretary of State Frank Doubleday as Romero John Strobel as Cronenberg Ox Baker as Slag Jamie Lee Curtis as Narrator / Computer (voice) (uncredited)
Everybody loves Snake Plissken and the Decades of Horror 1980s Grue-Crew is no exception. Chad Hunt calls Escape from New York John Carpenter’s western. There are a lot of flaws in the film’s story and its science fiction dressing and even as Bill identifies some of them, he is also professing his love for the film. Crystal proposes Zac Efron to play Snake if there is ever a remake and one of her crewmates even agrees with her. Escape from New York will forever be one of Jeff’s favorites if only for Ernest Borgnine’s performance as Cabbie and the inclusion of the theme song from American Bandstand.
Escape from New York is highly recommended by your loyal Grue-Crew and is currently available to stream on Amazon Prime and as a Scream Factory Blu ray.
Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror 1980s is part of the Decades of Horror 3-week rotation with The Classic Era and the 1970s. In episode 158, the 80s Grue-Crew will visit director John Carpenter’s work again in Frank Hennenlotter’s Brain Damage (1988).
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