Adrienne Barbeau

Un ranchero mexicano envia a su hijo para la Guardia Forestal Mexicana tal como lo hizo el en su juventud. El hijo se involucra en un escandalo de corrupcion con la guardia de seguridad de la governacion.

Thorton Melon (Rodney Dangerfield) is a successful and wealthy businessman who owns a nationwide chain of clothing stores for overweight people. Melon himself came from humble beginnings where his father pushed him to succeed in school; however Melon himself, despite his sharp business skills, never attended college. At a meeting of his top staff, he accepts a few new investment ventures and suggests modifying a few more when his son, Jason (Keith Gordon), calls him. Jason is a student at a prestigious school, Grand Lakes University. His father asks him how he's doing with his studies, if he's enjoying being in a fraternity and if he's doing well as part of the diving team. Jason tells him all is fine, but is actually lying to his father; he isn't in a frat, and he's only the towel boy for the diving team. Melon's snooty, mean, spendthrift 2nd wife, Vanessa (Adrienne Barbeau), holds a dinner party for her rich friends at their luxurious house. Thorton mentions that nearly all the people who attend are only there for free food and drink and want to schmooze her for donations. While he raids the fridge for a beer, he catches Vanessa in a tryst with another man, Giorgio (Robert Picardo). Thorton has known about the affair for some time, and when Vanessa demands a divorce, he presents her with papers and shows her several Polaroids of her having sex with Giorgio. After the party, while he practices diving in his pool, Thorton talks to his personal aide and bodyguard, Lou (Burt Young), about how he's let Vanessa weaken his relationship with Jason. He decides he's going to make a surprise visit to Grand Lakes to see his son. When they arrive, Thorton goes to the wrong Greek house - it's a sorority house - and finds out that Jason isn't in a frat or on the diving team. Jason tells him that he's unhappy at the university because he hasn't made very many friends and the frats & diving team don't want him as a member. Thorton tells him that he needs to stay in college so he can be successful in life. He also tells Jason that he'll join him for a semester at the university, enrolling as a freshman. Thorton has no record of his academic achievement to qualify as a student, so he persuades the school's academic dean, Dean Martin (Ned Beatty), by donating money to construct a new building that will house the Thorton Melon School of Business. The school's dean of the business department, Philip Barbay (Paxton Whitehead), is appalled that Thorton is able to bribe his way into Grand Lakes. Thorton counters by saying that he has real-world business experience that trumps Barbay's academic credentials. Thorton and Jason register for classes and both take Barbay's business course. In the first class, Thorton counters nearly every point Barbay makes about his lesson plan for the semester where they will learn about theory by building a fictional company that will make and sell a product. Later, Thorton and Jason attend a literature class taught by Diane Turner (Sally Kellerman), whom Thorton embarrassingly falls for immediately. Though she's seeing Barbay, she seems to enjoy Thorton's freewheeling personality and dates him as well. When Thorton forgets that he's supposed to meet Jason for a study session, Jason instead meets with a young woman who he's smitten with, Valerie (Terry Farrell), and they bond, despite Valerie's attachment to a snobby student, Chas (William Zabka). Meanwhile, Thorton, while partying at a local bar, comes to the aid of Jason's roommate, Derek (Robert Downey Jr.), a politically radical troublemaker who'd earlier disrupted a pep rally for the football team. The team's captain threatens to beat Derek when Thorton has Lou intervene, prompting a huge brawl. Thorton later comments that the football team isn't nearly as tough as his high school team was. Thorton also connects with the school's diving coach (M. Emmet Walsh); the man knew Thorton when he was an entertainment diver on a pier in Atlantic City. The coach tells him that Jason tried out for the team but didn't do well. Thorton has Jason execute a difficult dive for the coach on the spot. Thorton soon finds that he likes the fun aspects of college; hanging out in bars, throwing parties, schmoozing with female coeds, but he doesn't like the academic work involved. He brings in his senior staff and hires people from scientific corporations to do his classwork for him. Jason is angered when his father presents him with an astronomy paper that Jason wants to do himself. Jason becomes further disillusioned with his father when, after he makes the diving team, that his father might have persuaded the coach to let him join. One night during a wild party thrown by Thorton in the dorm room he had luxuriously renovated, Thorton is caught in the hot tub by Diane with several young women. His relationship with her is further hurt when she reads the paper he'd turned in on Kurt Vonnegut, saying that he couldn't possibly have written it himself and that the person who wrote it for him didn't know anything about Vonnegut. (Thorton had called in Vonnegut (Kurt Vonnegut Jr.) himself (who appears in a cameo) for assistance.) Barbay soon goes to Dean Martin with charges leveled against Thorton of academic fraud. Thorton lies and insists the work he did was his own, but Barbay trumps his claim by suggesting that Thorton's final exams be given to him in oral format so he can't cheat. Thorton begins to pack, wanting to leave. Jason convinces him to stay and that he and his roommate, Derek, and Lou will all help him cram for his finals. When Thorton's big day arrives, he's exhausted. Barbay starts the proceedings, giving Thorton a grueling single question composed of 27 sections. Thorton persists and answers all the parts correctly. When he wants to give up, Diane asks him to recite Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle into that good night". Thorton gets a boost and finishes his exams. The Grand Lakes diving team has a match the same day. Jason does very well, earning high points while Thorton watches and waits for his exam results. When the team begins to fall behind their rivals, the diving coach calls Thorton poolside to execute his famous Triple Lindy dive from his Atlantic City days. Thorton is reluctant, but Lou talks him into it. Thorton executes the dive, involving bouncing on several diving boards on 3 different levels of the platform, and the team wins the match. Diane finds him after, telling him he earned all D's in his classes and one A from her. Thorton is allowed to give a humorous address to the graduating class. He tells them to stay in college and become successful, drawing laughter from the crowd.

After a scientist is mysteriously killed while assisting a top-secret bio-engineering project in the swamps of the American South, government worker Alice Cable arrives at the bogs to serve as his replacement. Alice immediately notices that one of the team's swamp sensors has malfunctioned, but her guide, Charlie, introduces her to Harry Ritter, the project supervisor. Charlie tells Ritter a rumour about an evil paramilitary leader named Anton Arcane, who intends to hijack their operation. While Charlie briefs Ritter on the situation, Alice introduces herself to Dr Linda Holland and her brother, lead scientist Dr Alec Holland, who takes her on a tour and encourages her to admire the beauty of the swamps. Upon returning to the site, however, Ritter and Charlie scold Alice for distracting Alec. When Alice mentions the broken sensor, Ritter reveals that her predecessor was attempting to repair it when he was killed. After noting the disappearance of one of their workers, the group hears a loud bang and returns to the laboratory, where Linda shows off her recent breakthrough: a glowing, plant-based concoction with explosive properties. Alec then shows Alice a hybrid plant and animal cell, his prized discovery. Sometime later, Alec notices that droplets of Linda's formula spawned rapid plant growth on the surfaces they touched. Overcome with excitement, Alec kisses Alice before sending her to retrieve Ritter in the control room. Although the room is empty, she sees security camera footage of Charlie being shot. Suddenly, a group of paramilitary agents attack her and raid Alec's laboratory. A man resembling Ritter steps forward, but pulls off his mask and reveals himself as Arcane. When Arcane shoots Linda for attempting to escape with the formula, Alec grabs the beaker, but trips, causing the spilt chemicals to set him on fire. He runs outside and dives into the swamp to extinguish the flames as a series of explosions burst from the water. Overnight, Arcane's henchmen destroy the premises and remove all evidence of the team's work. At dawn, a henchman captures Alice and attempts to drown her in the swamp, but a green, human-like creature drags her ashore and chases two of Arcane's men. Meanwhile, in his mansion, Arcane and his secretary realize that Alec's most recent notebook is missing from the plunder. Alice runs to a nearby gas station to telephone her employers for help; the operator connects to Ritter, who claims to have been called away from the site before the attack. After revealing she stole Alec's last notebook, Alice waits for Ritter's return alongside the young gas station attendant, Jude, but Arcane's men arrive and chase her through the forest. Suddenly, the Swamp Thing appears and again scares the pursuers away, immune to their gunfire. Once alone, Alice attempts to escape the monster, and it reluctantly trudges back into the trees. Jude finds Alice and leads her to a nearby cabin to change clothes. Later, Arcane instructs his men to find Alice, hoping she will lead them to the creature. Alice and Jude boat around the swamp until they reach the dock near the laboratory wreckage. She spies the Swamp Thing crouched among the ruins, holding Linda's locket, and quickly returns to the boat, vowing to bring Alec's final notebook to Washington, D.C. Minutes later, multiple boats of Arcane's men close in on Alice and Jude, luring the creature from its hiding place among the reeds. Despite their bullets and grenades, the Swamp Thing engineers an elaborate boat crash. Although concerned by its intelligence, Arcane orders his lead henchman, Bruno, to continue the search. Moments after instructing Jude to escape with Alec's notebook, Alice hears the boy cry out in distress, but she is kidnapped before she can reply. The Swamp Thing finds Jude's lifeless body and presses a hand against his head, creating a greenish glow that instantly revives him. Regaining consciousness, Jude realizes the creature is a friend of Alice's and gives it the notebook for safekeeping. On Arcane's boat, Alice throws her kidnapper, Ferret, overboard, then dives into the water and swims ashore. Once on land, Alice bumps into the Swamp Thing, which calls out her name. Ferret chops off the Swamp Thing's arm with a machete, but the creature easily snaps Ferret's neck, causing Alice to faint. She awakens in the monster's embrace as it presents her with an orchid plant. The Swamp Thing speaks to her, and she recognizes it as Alec. Later, she strips naked and goes skinny dipping in the water as the monster paces along the banks. After Alice dresses, Arcane's men follow her, capture the Swamp Thing in a net, and retrieve the final notebook. That evening, Arcane invites Alice to a formal dinner party celebrating his duplication of the Hollands' formula. Moments after giving a toast to prospective immortality, Arcane reveals that he secretly slipped the first dose to Bruno, who begins to convulse. The hulking man's body shrinks to half its size as he grows pointed ears and a misshapen skull. Arcane locks him in a dungeon alongside the Swamp Thing, asking the latter creature why the experiment failed. The Swamp Thing reveals that the formula does not produce strength, but instead amplifies a person's natural qualities, explaining that Bruno's timidity caused his diminished stature. After locking Alice in the dungeon with them, Arcane returns to his study and drinks a glass of the formula. A beam of sunlight emitted through the door re-grows the Swamp Thing's missing arm, allowing the creature to free itself, Alice, and Bruno. Upstairs, Arcane transforms into a hairy, boar-like beast, and descends to the dungeons. There, he discovers that his captives have escaped through an underwater tunnel leading back to the swamp. Sometime later, Alice and the Swamp Thing emerge from the water, followed closely by Arcane's monster, which stabs Alice with a sword. The Swamp Thing revives Alice who alerts him to Arcane, whom he ultimately kills. The creature turns to leave, but Alice pleads for him to stay so that she can help him rebuild his work. He refuses but promises to return to her soon. Moments later, Jude emerges from the trees and embraces her as they watch the Swamp Thing lumber away through the marsh.

A stern and tyrannical father named Stan (Tom Atkins) gets angry when he finds his young son Billy (Joe Hill) reading a grisly horror comic book entitled "Creepshow". After arguing with his wife (Iva Jean Saraceni) and slapping Billy, Stan throws the comic in the garbage. A skeletal figure appears outside Billy's window, the Creep, who hosts the stories in the comic book. A wind draws the comic out of the garbage can, and the five stories within come to life, dissolving from illustrated comic frames to live-action frames at the beginning of each story, and vice versa at the end of each story (each story is linked by short, animated interludes). 1st story: "Father's Day" -- The Granthams are a wealthy family with a macabre annual celebration. Sylvia Grantham (Carrie Nye) gathers with her family members Richard (Warner Shook) and Cass (Elizabeth Regan), and the eccentric Aunt Bedelia (Viveca Lindfors) on Father's Day. While they are waiting for Bedelia to arrive, the family members explain Bedelia's back story to Cass's new husband, Hank (Ed Harris). It seems that Bedelia's father, the now-deceased family patriarch Nathan (Jon Lormer), was pathologically jealous of Bedelia. After Nathan had her lover murdered in what was written off as a "hunting accident", Bedelia went over the edge. While caring for the elderly Nathan, Bedelia snapped and bashed Nathan's head in with a marble ashtray. The family conspired to make it look like an accident, and Nathan's massive wealth was divided among them equally. Ever since the time of the murder, which occurred on Father's Day, Bedelia visits her father's grave at the family estate, then joins the others in the mansion for dinner. This year, as Bedelia sits on Nathan's grave, Nathan's rotting corpse (John Amplas) emerges from the ground and attacks her, strangling her to death. Nathan then exacts revenge on the rest of the family. Hank is squashed with a falling gravestone, the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers (Nann Mogg) is killed, and Nathan twists Sylvia's head off of her body. In a final gruesome joke, he 'surprises' Cass and Richard with Sylvia's head, decorated to look like a Father's Day cake, complete with burning candles. Story #2: "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" -- Jordy Verrill (Stephen King) is a simpleton who lives alone on his family's rundown farm. A meteor crashes to Earth, landing in his field, and Jordy has aspirations to sell the meteor to the local college for a small fortune -- two hundred dollars. He tries to pick up the meteor but it's too hot, and burns his fingers. Jordy's solution is to pour a bucket of water on it, but that causes it to split in two. A dejected Jordy sees his dream of a two hundred dollar windfall go down the drain. Still, he resolves to try and sell the halves, which are now covered in a greenish liquid. Later that night, the crater where the meteor landed is now covered in weird green plant life, as is everything the meteor came into contact with. Jordy notices his fingers have green wounds on them, presumably from the burns, but later he discovers the alien vegetation, which has now covered the entire farm. Jordy realizes that the alien plant life is now growing on his skin. As the night progresses, Jordy becomes covered in shaggy green weeds, causing him to itch. Jordy's itching skin causes him to run a bath, but before he can get in, the image of his deceased father (Bingo O'Malley) appears to him in the mirror and warns him against getting into the water, since the water is what makes the weeds grow. Jordy gets in anyway, and when morning dawns, Jordy has become a gigantic lumbering mass of alien vegetation. Desperate, he shoots himself in the head with a shotgun, revealing that the deep green weeds have even penetrated his brain. Afterwards, a radio announcer is heard forecasting heavy rainfall, suggesting that the extraterrestrial plant growth will further spread to surrounding areas. Story #3: "Something to Tide You Over" -- Harry Wentworth (Ted Danson) is awakened by a knock at his door from Richard Vickers (Leslie Nielsen). It seems that Harry has been having an affair with Richard's wife, Becky (Gaylen Ross), and Richard has come to confront him. Instead of attacking him, Richard plays him a cassette of Becky's terrified voice begging Harry for help. Harry accompanies Richard back to his private beachfront estate, where Richard forces him at gunpoint to climb into a hole in the sand on the beach. Burying Harry up to his neck, Richard then connects a television that displays live footage of Becky, also buried up to her neck in another location on the beach. The tide is already starting to come in and wash over her face. Harry realizes that they will both be dead soon; there is no reasoning with Richard, who seems to take great delight in his revenge. Richard abandons Harry and goes back to his beach house, where he watches the drowning deaths of both Becky and Harry on the video monitors. Before the last wave covers Harry's head, he vows revenge on Richard. Later that night, Richard is alone in the beach house when he seems to hear voices calling him. While he showers, two shuffling figures enter his home, defying the many security cameras and alarms that Richard has in place. When Richard emerges from the shower, he hears somebody in his house and immediately thinks it's Harry, somehow still alive. He is terrified to discover that the invaders in his home are the water-logged corpses of both Becky and Harry, both of them zombies covered in seaweed with green, pruning skin. Richard's gun has no effect; the zombies taunt him the same way he taunted them, and we finally see Richard, now completely insane, buried on the beach in the same way, waiting for the tide to come in. "I can hold my breath a looooooooooong time!" Richard yells crazily. Story #4: "The Crate" -- A janitor at Horlicks University, Mike (Don Keefer), discovers an old dusty crate behind a grate under a basement stairwell. He calls Professor Dexter Stanley (Fritz Weaver) to investigate with him, drawing him away from a stuffy faculty gathering. At the gathering is Dexter's good friend, Professor Henry Northrup (Hal Holbrook). Henry is married to an obnoxious shrew of a woman named Wilma (Adrienne Barbeau). Wilma, who is continually drunk, embarrasses herself and Henry at the party, and it seems as if she is about to ruin the friendship Henry shares with Dex. Henry, who is somewhat meek, fantasizes about ways to murder her. Back at the university, Dex and Mike pull the crate out from under the stairs and realize that it appears to have been under there since the late 1800s. A stamp on the outside of the wooden box indicates that it contains specimens from an arctic expedition. When the two of them open it, they sense movement from inside, and Mike is attacked by something when he puts his arm in the crate. Whatever it is pulls Mike inside, apparently eating him as it goes, and Dex catches a glimpse of a horrible, shaggy beast with huge teeth. Dex runs blindly from the lab and finds the only other person in the hall, a student named Charlie Gereson (Robert Harper). Charlie goes down into the the laboratory and finds it covered in blood, with no sign of the crate or the creature. Charlie and Dex find the crate back under the stairs, and when Charlie attempts to investigate, the creature attacks him and eats him, too. Dex is afraid to go to the police; instead he goes to Henry's house, and he arrives while Wilma is away for the evening. He tells Henry the story about the creature, and Henry knows Dexter has to be telling the truth. Henry hatches a plan. He gives Dex sleeping pills and leaves him locked in his study, asleep. Henry writes Wilma a note, concocting a bogus story designed to lure her to the laboratory. He gets there ahead of her and cleans up the evidence of the blood. Wilma can't resist Henry's trap, and she shows up at the university as planned. Henry lures her under the stairs and her obnoxious ranting draws the creature out of its crate. It eats Wilma before Henry's eyes; Henry then chains it inside the crate and dumps the crate into the deep water of a nearby quarry. When Dexter wakes up the next day, he and Henry vow to keep the secret of what really happened, and let the authorities deal with the disappearances. The final frames show the creature in its watery trap, tearing the crate to pieces and presumably escaping. 5th and final story: "They're Creeping Up on You!" -- Upson Pratt (E.G. Marshall) is a neurotic business tycoon who lives in a sterile, white penthouse apartment atop a skyscraper in a major city. He communicates with the outside world via the telephone, treating his employees and subordinates in a cutthroat, heartless manner. One phone caller informs him that an employee, Norman Castonmeyer, has committed suicide because Pratt fired him. Pratt seems delighted rather than upset. Pratt is obsessed with cleanliness and has a huge phobia of bugs. Unfortunately, he keeps finding cockroaches in his apartment, which sets him on a rampage to correct the situation. He places telephone calls to the building superintendent (David Early) and makes thinly veiled racial slurs in an attempt to intimidate the man. As Pratt finds more bugs in his apartment, someone gets through on his private line. Norman Castonmeyer's widow, Lenore (voiced by Gwen Verdon {credits say "Ann Muffly (voice) (uncredited)"}), calls Pratt to curse him for her husband's death. Pratt is amused by her melodramatic sadness, until the cockroaches multiply. He finds them in his food processor, bits of them surfacing in the grain cereal he eats. An electrical blackout occurs, and the roaches attack, swarming by the thousands everywhere in Pratt's apartment. Pratt retreats to his "safe room", a climate-controlled sleep chamber, just as the phone rings. Lenore Castonmeyer's voice curses him over and over "I hope you die! I hope you die!", and Pratt discovers his bed swarming with roaches. The roaches quickly cover him and Pratt suffers a heart attack. The power returns, the lights come back on, and the roaches are nowhere to be seen. Pratt's body lies inside the glass sleep chamber. The superintendent knocks at Pratt's door and laughs when Pratt doesn't answer, asking "Bugs got your tongue?" Suddenly, swarms of roaches burst from Pratt's body, so many that they nearly fill the glass chamber. The wraparound story with Billy concludes the next morning, when two garbage men (Marty Schiff and Tom Savini) discover the comic book next to the trash can in front of Billy's house. They leaf through it reverently and discover that someone has clipped a mail-in coupon for a genuine Haitian voodoo doll. Inside the house, Billy's father, Stan suddenly suffers neck pain, while up in his bedroom, Billy stabs a voodoo doll in his form of his cruel father repeatedly with a pin as payback for Stan tossing out his favorite comic book. Like each story in the comic book, this live action scene of Billy stabbing the voodoo doll becomes an illustrated comic book picture, and as the camera pulls back, we see that the comic's macabre "host", "The Creep", is holding the second issue of the "Creepshow" comic book in his boney hands, with Billy and his voodoo doll adorning the cover. The Creep titters, and a nearby candle flame goes out, plunging the scene into darkness. Credits begin to roll... (At the end of the credits, we once again hear The Creep's laughter).

In a voice-over we learn that the story is set in a dystopian 1997. World War III is nearing an end, both the United States and the still-existing Soviet Union suffered greatly in the conflict and both are looking for a peaceful resolution. The island of Manhattan has been turned into a maximum security prison in 1988 because of a nationwide crime increase of 400% in the United States due to a gas attack by the Soviets at the start of the war in which New York was worst hit. Surrounded by a 50-foot (15 m) containment wall, all inmates are sentenced to life imprisonment, and have formed gangs which rule over the crumbling, garbage-strewn city. The opening scene shows the dark skyline of Manhattan as two men in a makeshift raft attempt to paddle away from the island when the raft they are in is blown to pieces by a hovering helicopter gunship. The chopper returns to its base on Liberty Island where the overland entrance to the prison is located and the command center of the US police force surrounding the island. Traveling to a three-way summit between the United States, the Soviet Union and China, Air Force One, the plane of the President of the United States, is hijacked by a sole member of a revolutionary organization opposed to the government; a woman impersonating a stewardess (Nancy Stephens) kills the pilots and takes control of the plane. The nameless militant female anarchist crashes the plane in a suicide mission into a Manhattan skyscraper but the unnamed President (Donald Pleasence) is safely sealed in an escape pod and survives. The United States Police Force Commissioner Bob Hauk (Lee Van Cleef) arrives at the Liberty Island command center where he and the chief of security Remy (Tom Atkins) witness the crash on monitors in their control center. Hauk assembles a platoon of soldiers and they travel to the crash site in a fleet of helicopters. When they arrive, they find the escape pod empty, indicating that the President has been taken hostage. An emissary of the inmates, named Romero (Frank Doubleday), appears and tells Hauk and the soldiers that they have the President and if they do not leave the island in 30 seconds, the President will be killed. Romero offers them one of the President's severed fingers as evidence. With no other choice, Hauk orders his men to return to the helicopters and they fly back to Liberty Island. In his office, Hauk meets with the recently arrived Secretary of State (Charles Cypress) who puts him in telephone contact with the Vice President in Washington DC where Hauk asks for authorization of a rescue attempt and accepts it. In his office, Hauk offers a deal to a newly arrived prisoner, a scruffy, one-eyed, famous special-forces-soldier-turned-armed-robber named S.D. "Snake" Plissken (Kurt Russell). Plissken prefers to be called "Snake", growling his demand whenever Hauk refers to him by his surname. If Snake rescues the President, and retrieves a cassette tape that contains important information on nuclear fusion, Hauk will give him a full pardon. However, Snake Plissken must complete his mission before the international summit that the President was due to attend, which begins in 24 hours. After Snake Plissken reluctantly agrees to the rescue plan, Hauk secretly has him injected with microscopic explosives that will blow open his carotid arteries in 24 hours. The explosives cannot be defused until the last 15 minutes before they go off, as a way of ensuring that Snake does not abandon his mission and escape, nor find another way to remove them. If he returns with the President and the tape in time for the summit, Hauk will save him by having the charges in his neck neutralized with X-rays. A furious Snake gruffly promises to kill Hauk when he returns. Snake covertly lands atop the World Trade Center in a Gulfire glider similar to the one he piloted in a daring covert operations action over Leningrad, USSR, and then locates the hijacked plane wreckage and the escape pod, but the President is gone. Snake tracks the President's life-monitor bracelet signal to the basement of an abandoned theater, only to find it on the wrist of an incoherent old coot (George "Buck" Flower). At the theater, Snake meets a friendly inmate nicknamed "Cabbie" (Ernest Borgnine), who offers to help. After wandering the dark streets, Snake is accosted by the 'Crazies', a subterranean gang that hunts the streets at night. Snake first seeks refuge in an abandoned Chock Full O' Nuts diner where he meets a seductive young woman (Season Hubley), who asks to take her away to freedom. But the Crazies soon attack the diner, and Snake is forced to run, leaving the nameless young woman to her fate at the hands of the Crazies. After a chase down a back alley, Cabbie shows up in his taxi and rescues Snake, fighting the Crazies off with a Molotov cocktail. Snake demands Cabbie tell him where the President is being held. Cabbie tells him that Brain (Harry Dean Stanton), a savvy and well-educated inmate, knows. Cabbie takes Snake to the New York Public Library where Brain lives, a place he's turned into a veritable fortress. It is here that Snake identifies Brain as a former accomplice of his named Harold Helman, from some heists they did in the past. Forced at gunpoint, Brain tells Snake that a powerful gang leader, the self-proclaimed "Duke of New York" (Isaac Hayes), and the leader of the Gypsies, the largest and most powerful gang in the city, has the President and plans to lead a mass escape across the mined and heavily guarded 69th Street Bridge (the real Queensboro Bridge is the 59th Street Bridge), using the President as a human shield and hostage. When the Duke unexpectedly arrives with a large convoy of henchmen to get a diagram of the bridge's land mines, Snake forces Brain and his girlfriend Maggie (Adrienne Barbeau) to lead him back to The Duke's compound. After stealing a car from one of the Duke's henchmen, Snake, Brain, and Maggie drive through Skulls gang territory along Broadway, barely escaping. Snake finds the President who is being held in an abandoned railroad car in what was the Grand Central Train Station, but his rescue fails and he is captured after Brain betrays Snake. The next day, Snake is forced to fight with a giant power-house brute (Ox Baker). At the same time, Brain and Maggie trick Romero and the Duke's men into letting them have access to the President. After killing Romero and the guards, they free the President and flee to Snake's glider hoping to escape with the President. Meanwhile, Snake defeats his huge opponent, impressing the crowd. When the Duke learns the President has escaped with Brain, he is furious, and he rounds up his gang to chase them down. In the confusion, Snake slips away and manages to catch up with Brain, Maggie and the President at the glider, but during their attempted getaway, a gang of inmates, the Indians, push it off the building. Snake and the others soon find Cabbie, and Snake takes the wheel of his cab, heading for the bridge. When Cabbie reveals that he has the nuclear fusion tape (traded to him from Romero who guarded the President), the President demands it, but Snake takes it for insurance. With the Duke chasing them in his Cadillac, Snake and the others drive over the mine-strewn bridge. After the cab hits a land mine, the cab is destroyed and Cabbie is killed. As the others flee on foot, Brain is killed by a mine and Maggie refuses to leave him. She attempts to hold off the Duke's car by firing at him with a handgun, and she succeeds in forcing Duke's car (a distinctive vehicle with ornate chandeliers mounted on either side of the car's hood) to crash, but he crashes into her, killing her, and he continues his pursuit on foot. Snake and the President reach the containment wall, and the guards raise the President on a cable and harness. The Duke then attacks Snake, but the President shoots the Duke with a sub-machine gun, killing him out of revenge for torturing him during his confinement. Snake is then lifted to safety, and the mini-explosives implanted in his neck are deactivated with X-rays with seconds to spare. At Liberty Island, as the President prepares for a televised speech, he distractedly thanks Snake for saving him. Snake asks him how he feels about the numerous men and women who died saving his life, but the President only offers half-hearted regret that visibly disgusts Snake as he sees the President, a trembling and helpless captive, revert back to his self-assured personality. After Snake is pardoned, he decides he will not kill Hauk at this time and leaves the prison. Hauk thanks him for the rescue, and offers the incredulous anti-hero a job of working for the government in other top secret missions. Snake, alienated with the nation he once served with honor, refuses. Hauk tells Snake to think about the offer and notes: "We make quite a team! Huh, Snake?" In complete contrast to Snake earlier and frequently reminding Hauk to call him by his first name, Snake angrily rebuffs Hauk by replying: "The name's Plissken!" The President's speech commences and he offers the content of the cassette to the summit. To the President's embarrassment, the tape has been switched for a cassette of the swing song "Bandstand Boogie" (the theme from American Bandstand), Cabbie's favorite song. Snake had apparently switched tapes during the chase across the bridge. In the distance unnoticed just outside the Liberty Island prison gate, Snake is seen casually unwinding and tearing apart the all-important nuclear fusion cassette tape (the only thing to save mankind from nuclear war) and smiling while puffing on a cigarette as he walks off alone into the night. On that cynical note, 'Escape from New York' comes to a close.