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Escape from New York / WTC / 10048 Project

This was a great " B " movie, released in 1981. I saw it in college, and boy did we love it's campy weirdness.

I've decided to try to see some of the movies in which the World Trade Center appears. See below for a list of such movies--it is not comprehensive--for example, saw the great " Serpico " last week, and noticed a shot of the WTC in the distance as Pacino went up the fire escape of a building in Brooklyn.

10048 Project - Movies with World Trade Center scenes
http://www.amuseyourself.com/10048worldtradecentermovieproject.html

Saw " Escape from New York " again tonight. The year is 1997, and all of Manhattan has been turned into a maximum security prison, without guards. The prisoners rule themselves, in a law of the jungle filled with gangs.

Air Force One, with the president aboard, is hijacked by terrorists, and crashes into lower Manhattan. The president escapes in a protective pod ( again, you have to suspend disbelief in this B movie! ) . Convicted criminal Snake Plisken ( Kurt Russell ) is allowed a shot at freedom by the authorities if he will go into Manhattan in order to free the ( wimpy, amoral ) President. He does-- by flying a small plane that lands on top of the World Trade Center.

The WTC here is an empty, graffitied shell , symbolic of the hell it sits in. Broadway, and the rest of the city, is under the control of violent, starving convicts.

Isaac Hayes is a stone killer and the head gangster ( "the Duke" ) ; Adrianne Barbeau is a scientist's girlfriend ; pro wrestler bad-guy Ox Baker has a gladiator type battle to the death with Snake; Ernest Borgnine is a over the top taxi driver, and looks like he had the time of his life doing it.

No great movie, created as mindless fun in a very pre-Giuliani NY , it still has that element going for it , but now the symbolism of the WTC in an apocalyptic movie has additional meaning.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000CNY27/qid=1113358826/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/102-4230159-9440131?v=glance&s=dvd