Carpenter was really surprised that I wanted to make a soundtrack album for Escape From New York; he didn’t think anyone would listen to it outside of the movie. I think we sold 80,000 copies of the vinyl in the ’80s. – Alan Haworth, Co-composer, Escape From New York.

Written by Carpenter in the mid 70s as a reaction to the Watergate scandal, this dystopian action thriller sees ex-soldier Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) entrusted with the task of rescuing the President (Donald Pleasance) from a crime-ridden Manhattan Island. As far as cult cinema goes, this is an uncontested all-time great.

New York, 1997. Due to an enormous rise in the crime rate the entire city has become a walled maximum-security prison. Breaking out is impossible. Breaking in is insane. The bridges are mined, the rivers are patrolled and the United States police force has everything under control. Or so they think. When a group of convicts grab a bargaining chip right out of the air by bringing down the Air Force One with the President on board, gruff Snake Plissken - a former Special Forces, one-eyed warrior turned criminal - is coerced into bringing the President out of this land of undesirables in exchange for his own freedom.

When Carpenter met fellow composer/sound designer Alan Howarth, it marked a new diversity in his now signature sonic aesthetic. Making terrific use of synthesisers, his simple compositions gained more textural complexity as he began scoring for the screen, rather than incorporating pre-recorded tracks - the staccato synth-plod title theme the perfect encapsulation of the nocturnal dystopia that Snake must endure. Quirky, thrilling and tough, this is as vivid a nightmare vision of the city-as-hellscape as anything Carpenter came up with before or since.

---