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Escape from L.A. (stylized on-screen as John Carpenter's Escape from L.A.) is a 1996 American post-apocalyptic action film co-written, co-scored, and directed by John Carpenter, co-written and produced by Debra Hill and Kurt Russell, with Russell also starring as Snake Plissken. A sequel to Escape from New York, Escape from L.A. co-stars Steve Buscemi, Stacy Keach, Bruce Campbell, and Pam Grier. The film received a mixed reception and was a box-office bomb, but gained a cult following.

Plot

In 2000, a massive earthquake strikes the city of Los Angeles, cutting it off from the mainland as the San Fernando Valley floods. Declaring that God is punishing Los Angeles for its sins, a theocratic presidential candidate wins election to a lifetime term of office. He orders the United States capital relocated from Washington, D.C. to his hometown of Lynchburg, Virginia and enacts a series of strict morality laws. Violators are given a choice between loss of U.S. citizenship and permanent deportation to the new Los Angeles Island, or repentance and death by electrocution. Escape from the island is made impossible due to a containment wall erected along the mainland shore and a heavy federal police presence monitoring the area.

By 2013, the U.S. has developed a superweapon known as the "Sword of Damocles," a satellite system capable of targeting electronic devices anywhere in the world and rendering them useless. The president intends to use it to dominate the world by destroying hostile nations' ability to function. The president's daughter Utopia steals the remote control for the system and escapes to Los Angeles Island in order to deliver it to Cuervo Jones, a Peruvian Shining Path revolutionary. Cuervo has marshaled an invasion force of third world nations and is planning to attack and reclaim the U.S.

Facing deportation for a series of crimes, Snake Plissken is offered a chance to earn a pardon by traveling to the island and recovering the remote, a task that a previous rescue team failed to accomplish. To force his compliance, the president has one of his officers infect Snake with a virus that will kill him within 10 hours and promises that once he completes his mission, he will receive the cure. The president is not concerned with Utopia's safety, regarding her as a traitor.

Snake is issued equipment and sent to Los Angeles in a one-man submarine. As he explores the island, he meets "Map to the Stars" Eddie, a swindler who sells interactive tours and one of Cuervo's associates. Along the way, Snake is helped by Pipeline, a surfing enthusiast; Taslima, a woman deported for her Muslim faith; and Hershe Las Palmas (formerly Carjack Malone), a trans woman and past criminal associate of Snake's.

Eddie captures Snake and turns him over to Cuervo, who uses the Sword of Damocles to shut down Lynchburg in retaliation for Snake's presence. Cuervo threatens to inflict the same fate on the rest of the U.S. unless his demands are met. Snake escapes and fights Cuervo at the invasion staging area, the "Happy Kingdom" in Anaheim, taking the remote from him. Eddie alters the remote for his tours to match the real one. Snake, Eddie, Utopia, Hershe, and a group of defectors from Cuervo's forces leave the island in a helicopter. Eddie shoots Cuervo, who fires a rocket launcher at them before dying. Snake, Eddie, and Utopia escape before the rocket hits the helicopter and causes it to crash into a mountain.

At the crash site, the president and his officers find that both Snake and Utopia are carrying remotes and take the one held by Utopia (slipped into her pocket without her noticing), thinking that Snake has switched them. As Utopia is taken to the electric chair, Snake learns that the virus infecting him only causes a severe case of influenza that subsides within hours. The president tries to use Utopia's remote to neutralize an invasion force threatening Florida, but it only plays a recorded introduction to one of Eddie's tours.

Furious, the president orders his officers to kill Snake on the spot, but he proves to be only a hologram projected from a miniature camera that had been issued to him. Disgusted at the world's never-ending class warfare, he programs the real remote and triggers every satellite in the Sword of Damocles system, deactivating all technology on Earth. Utopia is saved when the power fails just before she can be electrocuted. Snake tosses the now-useless camera aside and lights a cigarette, then blows out the match and mutters, "Welcome to the human race."

(Clean up/tighten)

Production

Escape from L.A. was in development for over 10 years. In 1987, screenwriter Coleman Luck was commissioned to write a screenplay for the film with Dino De Laurentiis's company producing. Carpenter later described the script as being "too light, too campy". In time, Carpenter and Kurt Russell met together to write with their long-time collaborator Debra Hill. Carpenter insists that Russell's persistence allowed the film to be made, since "Snake Plissken was a character he loved and wanted to play again." Carpenter credited that same enthusiasm with motivating Russell's work on the script, declaring “I used his passion to do the movie to get him to write more”.

Filming

Carpenter has described Escape from L.A. as both "fun to make" and requiring "months of nights" of work. Like much of his filmography, Escape from L.A. was shot with Panavision anamorphic lenses. Carpenter would later recall that the theme park scene, shot at night on a Universal backlot, resulted in a noise complaint from Rick Dees which forced them to cease using live ammunition. CG supervisor David Jones has expressed his distaste for the resulting effects used in the battle, which he described as "a little iffy". Although uncredited, Tony Hawk has claimed that he and fellow professional skateboarder Chris Miller worked as stunt doubles for Peter Fonda and Kurt Russel during the surfing scene, which was filmed at the Schlitterbahn Waterpark in New Braunfels, Texas. Several scenes were shot in Carson, including the Sunset Boulevard and freeway sequences. The Sunset Boulevard scene was filmed in a landfill, where production staff constructed over one hundred and twenty structures to create a shanty town. In order to create the impression of a crowded post-apocalyptic freeway, two hundred and fifty broken cars were sourced from a junkyard in Ventura.

Release

Home media

LaserDisc and VHS releases

In the United States, Escape from L.A. was released on LaserDisc on January 21st, 1997 in both letterbox and pan and scan formats and on VHS on August 5th, 1997. Internationally, the film was released on LaserDisc in Japan, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

DVD releases

Escape from L.A. was initially released on DVD in the United States on December 15th, 1998 and later reissued on September 26th, 2017.

Blu-ray releases

The film was released on Blu-ray by Paramount on May 4, 2010. Shout Factory later released a Collector's Edition in 2020 with an improved transfer from the original Blu-ray. On February 22nd, 2022, Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment rereleased the film on Blu-ray in 4K Ultra HD. Upon release, an English audio encoding error was noted by several reviewers, prompting Paramount to correct the issue in unreleased discs and launch a replacement program for initial purchasers.

References

1. https://www.proquest.com/docview/209633416/570F4315421E4FABPQ/1