![]() You can see it in full above, restored by YouTuber ManticoreEscapee, along with alternate takes and some behind the scenes footage. The movie initially had a whole other opening reel that showed Plissken and his accomplice robbing the Federal Reserve but the ten minute sequence was cut after test audiences found it confusing. Apart from Russell in arguably his most iconic role (which he had to fight to get since he was at the time typecast as a Disney nice guy) the film also features Donald Pleasance – who had already appeared in Carpenter’s Halloween – as a British-accented US President (in his self-penned character backstory Pleasance imagined the US as a returned British colony), Lee Van Cleef (The “Bad” from The Good The Bad And The Ugly) as warder Hauk (he filmed his entire role in one night), Ernest Borgnine as the gleeful pyromaniac Cabbie, funk and soul (plus South Park) legend Isaac Hayes as criminal overlord The Duke and Harry Dean Stanton as former Plissken gang member Brain. The President has crash-landed inside the prison’s walls and soldier-turned-outlaw Snake Plissken has been forced into a do or die (literally, he has explosives injected into his neck to deter him from fleeing) rescue mission. It is 1997 and the US has been at war with Russia and domestic crime is so rampant that Manhattan has been walled off as a maximum security prison island. The Invisible Man director Leigh Whannell is writing a reboot and may also end up directing so if you haven’t seen the original, well, get off Instagram and go rent it right now. One of the greatest dystopian sci-fi films ever made and an all-time favourite of the INDUSTRIA team, this John Carpenter classic was released 40 years ago today.
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