John Carpenter's Escape from New York is a stone-cold classic that is every bit as compelling now as it was upon release more than 40 years ago. The film is filled to the brim with rip-roaring action sequences, serves up a dynamite cast filled with familiar faces, and features an iconic score co-created by Carpenter. On that basis, we have nothing but love for it as a cinematic experience, but there is still one unanswered question that haunts fans after all these years. A question that stems from the casting of Donald Pleasence as President John Harker. Though Pleasence is pitch-perfect in the role, his status as a British native has us wondering how someone born outside the United States could assume the highest elected office in the country.
American law requires that a U.S. president be born in the United States. As convincing as Pleasence is in his turn as a powerful politician in peril, it's quite clear that he is not a natural-born U.S. citizen.
As it turns out, both Carpenter and Pleasance were well aware of the continuity challenges with a British national in the role of United States President, but each handled the situation differently. According to the commentary track on the physical media release of Escape from New York, Pleasance came up with a backstory involving Margaret Thatcher colonizing the U.S. and therefore allowing a British native to hold the highest elected office. Carpenter understood exactly the kind of film he was making and opted to instead simply gloss over the detail, focusing his energy elsewhere.
It seems like Carpenter had the right idea, considering that taking the time to explain how a British native assumed the role of U.S. president may well have slowed the pacing and answered a question few would even think to ask on first viewing. Carpenter's decision to avoid explaining how President John Harker came to take office not only ensures the pacing stays on point, it also gives us something to geek out about, as is evidenced by the fact that we are still discussing this four decades later.
The picture unfolds in a dystopian 1997 where Manhattan Island functions as the country's only maximum security prison. When a terrorist attack sees Air Force One crash landing in the borough, the U.S. government asks former Special Forces operative Snake Plissken (Russell), who is currently incarcerated in the aforementioned prison to rise to the occasion and liberate the President (Pleasence) in exchange for his freedom.
That setup delivers a star-making performance from Kurt Russell, but he's not the only cast member who makes his mark. In fact, everyone attached turns in a compelling showing. Russell is backed by a talented supporting cast featuring a veritable who's who of genre film stalwarts, along with a couple of household names of the era. In addition to Pleasence, Russell is supported by Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau, and Harry Dean Stanton to name just a few.
Critics and fans love the film because it's an unapologetic B-movie that manages to be endlessly entertaining as well as smarter than many of its contemporaries. The action starts early and remains consistent throughout, ensuring that no one has the extra bandwidth to ask questions about the logistics.
So, there you have it, Carpenter knew that it presented a minor continuity error to feature a British native as a U.S. president, but he also knew that was a small enough detail that he could ignore it and the film would likely be better as a result.
Carpenter and Russell revisited the property more than a decade later with the 1996 sequel Escape from L.A. Since then, multiple filmmakers have signed on to reboot the original, but those efforts have yet to bear fruit. Most recently, the filmmaking collective Radio Silence revealed that they are no longer attached to the long-gestured reimagining.
What are your thoughts on Pleasence playing a U.S. president in Escape from New York? Make sure to let us know in the comments section below.