{"id":35811,"date":"2026-10-21T10:40:01","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T15:40:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=35811"},"modified":"2026-10-20T16:42:51","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T21:42:51","slug":"movie-report-escape-from-new-york-1981","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/21\/movie-report-escape-from-new-york-1981\/","title":{"rendered":"Movie Report: Escape from New York<\/i> (1981)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BookI picked this film out from the library for a rewatch on a tiny, 22″ television\/monitor combo that does, in fact, have speakers but is so old that it does not have an HDMI port. But it does have a PlayStation 2 attached to it, the PlayStation 2 that functioned as our first DVD player 25 years ago. So I spent the evening watching this film on a small screen from nine feet away. Like we used to do.<\/p>\n

So: Terrorists hijack Air Force One and crash it into buildings in New York (not the World Trade Center), but the president gets into an escape capsule (see also Air Force One<\/em> with Harrison Ford which also features this escape capsule which officials say<\/em> is fiction which might mean it’s real but they don’t want anyone to know). However, due to an increased rate of crime stemming from a war with Russia and China, Manhattan has been walled off and turned into a maximum security prison with a wall around it across the rivers where the inmates are one their oen. The government tries to chopper in a rescue team, but some of the residents, who work for The Duke (Isaac Hayes), tell them if they try to rescue the president that they will kill him. So the army backs off, but they make a desperate bid by sending in a former special forces soldier who was scheduled for interment at the prison for trying to rob a federal depository. So they inject him with explosives that detonate in 23 hours and promise to fix him if he comes out with the president in that time.<\/p>\n

So in he goes, flying a glider to the top of the World Trade Center, tracking the president’s watch but meeting up with an old acquaintance (and his girl played by Adrienne Barbeau), and they manage to get the job done.<\/p>\n

I mean, it’s production was stylized probably to make things fit the smallish budget, but it’s held up pretty well. It was filmed in St. Louis, and I’m sure St. Louis looks even more like that than it did 35 years ago. And strangely enough, the plot and the tropes are strangely relevant even now. Peoples’ party terrorists. Vainglorious politicians. Et cetera. So it’s less dated than one might expect, although perhaps I’m just old enough that I can watch this film on a 22″ screen (bigger than the televisions in 1981 anyway) and enjoy it.<\/p>\n

And the film had Adrienne Barbeau, who is famous for two things.<\/p>\n

Maude<\/em> on television and The Cannonball Run<\/em>. And The Fog<\/em>. And Swamp Thing<\/em>. So I guess more than two things. What, you thought I was going to say that she wore low-cut tops in all of them? Well, I am pretty sure she did. I was not a fan 30<\/strike> 40<\/strike> 50<\/em> years ago–I was certainly not the target audience for Maude<\/em>–I haven’t seen much of her work. Also, I think she suffered from looking a little like my friends’ mom. But she (Barbeau) makes appearances from time on Rule 5 sites. Like this one (sometimes).<\/p>\n

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You know who else suffered from this (plus being cast as the younger sister in Happy Days<\/em>)? Erin Moran.<\/p>\n

\n\t<\/p>\n

With some time offering perspective, I guess they’re rather pretty after all. As I guess is\/was my friends’ mom.<\/p>\n

At any rate, I will have to look for Swamp Thing<\/em> and maybe The Fog<\/em> on home video. They’re both at the lower end of the upward curve of home video sales, which means I’ll probably have difficulty finding them in the wild on videocassette. But, you know, it’s the hunt that makes collecting exciting. If I remember to look for them next time I go into the wild. Although it’s getting to be Christmas shopping season, so I’ll be popping around Relics and Ozarks Treasures a time or two in coming months.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I picked this film out from the library for a rewatch on a tiny, 22″ television\/monitor combo that does, in fact, have speakers but is so old that it does not have an HDMI port. But it does have a PlayStation 2 attached to it, the PlayStation 2 that functioned as our first DVD player […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35811"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35812,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35811\/revisions\/35812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}