Escape from New York

Episode 4: Escape from New York (1981)

Theme: 80s John Carpenter Films
Hosts: Oz & Curtis

For the final week of Carpenter Month, Oz and Curtis strap on their eyepatches and glide straight into Escape from New York — the 1981 sci-fi action classic that imagined the far-off future of 1997, when crime is up 400%, Manhattan is a maximum-security prison, and the President is somehow British for reasons nobody ever fully explains.

Join your two favorite inmates as they break down:

• Why Snake Plissken is the most famous person nobody has ever actually met — yet everyone greets him with, “I thought you were dead,” like he’s the Tooth Fairy with a criminal record.
• How John Carpenter basically built an entire cinematic universe out of the same ten actors, the same synth bassline, and the same three fog machines — and somehow made every movie awesome anyway.
• Why the Duke of New York’s chandelier-covered Cadillac deserves its own place in the National Film Registry.
• Whether Romero, the Duke’s creepy hype-man, was a terrifying prisoner or just an 80s theater kid who never broke character.

How this movie features:
• a glider drop onto the World Trade Center
• a prison full of sewer cannibals
• an oil derrick inside the public library
• a professional wrestling match with spiked baseball bats
• and what might be the worst peace summit location ever chosen: Hartford, Connecticut.

And of course, that perfect Carpenter ending — the President gets his “important tape,” Snake gives zero cares, and the fate of international diplomacy rests entirely on a cassette mistakenly swapped with Cabbie’s big-band mixtape.

Final Verdict:

Oz — Nine and a half eyepatches out of ten
Curtis — Twenty-seven landmines out of thirty-two
Both — Definitely thought the other one was dead.