Escape from New York

SUNDAY, JULY 21st | FULL MOON SLEEPOVER 

Director: John Carpenter
Starring: Kurt Russell, Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Adrienne Barbeau
Runtime: 99'
Year of Production: 1981
Language: English
Subtitles: Greek

At the peak of his career, having a budget that is a joke by today's standards and an imaginative script that envisioned the New York of the future as a huge prison, whose number one inmate is the President of the United States himself, John Carpenter gave cinema one of the most enduringly beloved fantasy adventures, as well as one of the most popular anti-heroes: Snake Plissken, a rough-neck convict who, in order to secure his freedom, has a few (late-night) hours to infiltrate the impregnable fortress that has become Manhattan and rescue the President from the city's armies of thugs and criminals. Snake Plissken would have been unthinkable without Kurt Russell's outstanding performance, and so would every sci-fi film tragedy of the '80s that borrowed indiscriminately from that legendary «Escape» but never managed to surpass it. Perhaps because the secret behind the success of Carpenter's film was its ultimate humility: Its proud b-movie roots and sensibilities, the meager cost that persuaded those who worked for it to become even more inventive, the enviable directing savings and, of course, the philosophy that determined Carpenter throughout his whole career: quality over quantity. Loukas Katsikas

It is recommended that guests be equipped with insect repellant, as well as a mat or a blanket to lay on the lawn.