St. Louis has had its fair share of film productions over the years, but none are more iconic than director John Carpenter’s Escape from New York, which celebrates its 45th anniversary this summer.
For those unfamiliar with Escape from New York, the 1981 film stars Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken, a war hero-turned-bank robber. In this dystopian version of 1997 America, Manhattan has been turned into a maximum-security prison, and Plissken is offered a pardon in exchange for venturing into the dangerous island to rescue the President (Donald Pleasence) after his plane crashes in the heart of the city. What ensues is a race against the clock for Plissken to find the President, rescue him from the Duke of New York (Isaac Hayes), and find a way out of the sci-fi wasteland before a bomb planted inside his head goes off.
Chances are, if you’ve lived in St. Louis for long enough, you’ve likely heard about the massive fire at the Heyday Shoe Factory in 1976 that ravaged a significant portion of downtown. There was still residual damage from the fire around downtown in the years that followed, and alongside other urban decay, it made St. Louis the ideal place to stand in for Carpenter’s dystopian future vision of New York City. The film was shot on location around St. Louis and East St. Louis in the summer and fall of 1980…