Continue Reading Below Advertisement

The movie would open with Plissken and a partner, disguised as a couple of techs, robbing a bank by hacking it. Then they'd escape by hacking a subway car -- which, this being the future, goes all the way across the USA. Seemingly not anticipating that anyone who noticed that the transcontinental subway was hacked would have access to that futuristic technology "the phone," Snake and his bud are surprised by cops almost as soon as they disembark.

At this point, Snake's friend is shot and we see our fearless antihero run away, then sort of awkwardly turn around, like he has no idea what to do, until he turns himself in. The idea was that Snake could have escaped, but tried to come back for his friend, but no one in the test screenings got that. He just looked like a big, indecisive weenie.

Embassy Pictures

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

"I CAN MAKE IT TO THE BATH-- nope, too late."

It's only after ten minutes of this crap that we find out that, oh yeah, Manhattan has been turned into a giant prison, by the way. The test audience wanted to get to the good shit right away, and fortunately, Carpenter didn't have enough clout to ignore the screening's results back then, so he cut the whole introduction. Too bad no one forced him to do the same with the entirety of Escape From LA.

Adam Koski also wrote an exciting and hilarious fantasy novel called Forust: A Tale Of Magic Gone Wrong.