Tom Atkins

A group of friends uncover an otherworldly object in a rural field, which they soon discover holds greater secrets than they could imagine.

The movie starts with radio broadcasts and police communications going back and forth. Through them we learn that there has been a cave-in at the north side of Hanniger Mining Co. Eventually, rescue teams find six people in the shaft -- five of them dead and one of them, Harry Warden (Richard John Walters), in a coma. The local papers are soon accusing Harry of having gone crazy and murdering the other five miners to prolong his air supply, and given the condition of some bodies there is enough evidence to support this. Exactly one year later, on Valentine's Day, we see Harry's brain remembering the last few minutes before the collapse, which consist of him telling Tom (Jensen Ackles), the son of the boss, to not screw up and threatening him a little. Something goes wrong, however, and soon everything is collapsing and Tom barely makes it out alive. Suddenly Harry wakes up and looks around, trying to bring his memory up to date. A nurse enters the room and before she can sound the alarm, gets killed by Harry. Not long after, we see Sheriff Burke (Tom Atkins) and one of his deputies touring the hospital massacre scene (makes the Saw movies look like a Lassie film). They enter Harry's room and see him missing and a nurse with her heart removed and on the counter beneath a message reading "HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY" and are soon giving chase, figuring that he'd head to the mine. Meanwhile, over at said mine, a big senior party is in full-swing for the high-school set. One of the kids, Axel (Kerr Smith), is making out with his girlfriend Irene (Betsy Rue) while waiting for her friend Sarah to arrive, although Axel isn't excited since she'll be bringing Tom in all likelihood. Sure enough, Sarah (Jaime King) does arrive with Tom and the boys are naturally cool towards each other. Axel and Irene head into the mine with Axel telling her that he doesn't trust Tom as Sarah and Tom hang back a second. Tom reassures Sarah that he's fine with being there and they go in. The foursome splits up (as one does in "haunted" houses) and Sarah is soon lost. She calls out for Tom and is surprised by some kid named Jason. He calls for his buddy but instead gets pickaxed from behind by Harry. Sarah screams and runs, but Harry has already been through, killing nearly everyone. She runs into Axel and Irene and the three of them hide just as Jason's friend comes up. The friend inadvertently reveals them before getting killed and the trio heads for the front entrance. They pass Tom and drag him along, but Tom trips on some wires and gets abandoned. Axel shoves the girls into his car despite Sarah's attempts to get to Tom just as Harry throws a pickaxe at them, which comes within centimeters of impaling Sarah (it gets stuck in the windshield). They back out of there just as Burke and his deputy arrive. The two of them shoot at Harry just before he can kill Tom, and Harry heads deeper into the mine as Burke and the deputy give chase... Ten years later, we enter in on now-sheriff Axel having lunch in a diner while watching an interview of himself on TV regarding the ten-year anniversary of the "Valentine's Day Massacre", during which he loudly and profanely tells the reporters to, essentially, get a life (note that that's watered way down). One of the customers, miner Ben Foley (Kevin Tighe), starts sarcastically congratulating Axel about the interview just as one of Axel's deputies, Martin (Edi Gathegi) comes in and pulls him out to work. As he's driving, Axel gets a call from his wife, Sarah (yes, Tom's Sarah), and they talk for a few minutes before she gets back to her job working at a local grocery store (not chain, just....local). A little later, we see Axel pulled up outside his dad's cabin and we see that inside he is having sex with Sarah's co-worker Megan (Megan Boone). She tries to give him a box of Valentine's chocolates with a note that says "Be Mine 4 Ever", and he accepts as graciously as a married man wanting to keep a secret could. Not far away, we see Tom looking out over the mine, watching the workers do their thing. That night he goes over to Ben's house and is told that they're not selling until Monday, which Tom is less than pleased with. Ben says that Tom's dad would be disappointed that Tom is selling the mine, but Tom doesn't care -- he just wants to sell the place and get back out of town. He goes to a motel and grabs a room from the dwarf hotel manager, inadvertently passing a room where he sees Irene and a trucker having very loud sex....in the room right next to his. As Tom tries to shut them out, Irene and the trucker finish up. Irene (completely naked) starts waxing philosophic about Valentine's Day and the Romans (short version: the males were randomly assigned secret sex slaves for the next year by pulling the girls names out of a hat....or something like that). Frank doesn't care and pulls a camera out of his bag, showing that he taped it, and throws some money at Irene, calling her a whore and walking out. Irene throws the money at the door, goes into her bathroom, and grabs a gun from under the sink. She walks into the parking lot (still naked) and demands the tape from Frank, who calls her bluff by pointing out the lack of bullets, which in turn makes her use the gun as a projectile weapon (she throws it at his head and scores a bulls-eye). He curses and opens the truck door...and gets pickaxed by a guy in a miner outfit. Irene screams and runs for the phone in the office, just barely getting through to the cops before moving to hide in the manager's room. She gets under the bed (still naked) just as the miner enters the room. He looks around but doesn't see her in the closet and is about to leave before the manager starts calling for her pug dog. She looks in the closet and gets pickaxed through half her body and into the overhead lights. Irene lets out a squeal and is discovered. She manages to keep the bed frame between her and the miner while carrying it towards the door with her (not bolted down), but eventually she loses it and is pickaxed through the stomach....again....and again.... Not long after, Axel and all his cops are there, including deputies Martin and Ferris (Karen Baum). They look at the mutilated bodies and discover something missing -- Irene's heart. They check the guest log and find Tom's name as the last person who registered for a room. The investigation continues into the next day, when Axel gets a valentine from a secret admirer....and inside it is Irene's heart. Meanwhile, at Sarah's store, she is working the register when Tom comes up to her, wanting to get together with her and talk things out, although she is less than willing to, what with being married. That night, as Axel investigates and Sarah works, we see Tom getting into a bar fight with all the miners who will now be out of work once the mine closes...although the real cause is more the fact that they think he had something to do with the murders. Foley and Burke step in, and Burke tells Tom to get out of there, since he is unwilling to save Tom's life a third time. Later that night, Sarah is putting her and Tom's son Noah to bed and sending their house sitter Nora home when she hears Axel watching the tape from the hotel. He tells her what happened and mentions how Tom is a suspect and some people are saying that Harry Warden is back from the dead. When she tells him that Tom spoke to her earlier at the store, he cautions her and tells her to call him if Tom tries to get in touch with her again. The next morning, Sarah is opening the store when Tom pops up behind her. They take a brief walk and Sarah explains that she can't be with Tom because he spent the last ten years running. She leaves him and he heads up to the mine, determined to talk to Ben and tell him that he's not selling and is staying. He is told that Ben is currently in tunnel 3 and, after being outfitted, is driven down there by a guy named Red. They stop at the main intersection and Red rings 3 as Tom heads to some electrical equipment behind a chain-link door. Something shoves him in there and he turns and sees the miner, which terrifies him into silence. The miner gestures with his pickaxe for him to be quiet and then wedges the lock shut. The miner turns and heads for Red, who manages to see him and fights him off as over the phone the other miners hear his shouts and start converging. The miner gets the upper hand and drives the axe through Red's forehead before starting an attempt to take out his heart. This gets interrupted by the approaching miners, though, and the miner runs off just as the rest of the crew comes running up, at first thinking that it's Tom's fault before saner heads point out how he was stuck in there. They snap the lock open and Tom is taken to a hospital where he gets stitched up while telling his story to Axel, who doesn't believe a word of it, since he knows Harry Warden is dead. Ben, who was stuck in tunnel 3, finally arrives and Axel reveals that he knows what Harry and the sheriff and the other town fathers did with Harry -- namely, dispatch him vigilante-style and bury him in the woods. Less than two hours later, Axel, Sarah, Martin, Tom, Ben, and Burke are hiking through the woods towards Harry's gravesite. Burke is explaining that a bunch of them got together after the massacre and tracked him down into the mine. They shot him full of bullets and then gave him a better burial then he deserved (according to Burke), so he is definitely dead. They come upon an exit from one of the mine tunnels, which Ben and Burke identify as the site but the site has already been unburied. Back at the police station, Axel is interrogating Tom, but Tom is sticking to his story and saying that he's probably gonna stay in town for good this time. Axel gets upset and starts throwing stuff around but Martin breaks it up. Tom is let go and both he and Axel make vows (Tom to Sarah, Axel to Martin) that they will find the guy doing this. Click Here That night, we see Tom hanging around the mines after dark. He approaches the exterior entrance to Tunnel 5. He looks inside and sees....nothing. He steps back outside but the door doesn't close all the way and it creaks open again. He stares back at it but before he can do anything further he sees the miner watching him from the forest. The pickaxe gets pointed at him but the miner simply turns and walks away. Tom gives chase and eventually is led to Axel's cabin, of all places. Tom goes in the open door and looks around. Meanwhile, Ben is drunk at home and playing with a shotgun (it's unloaded) when someone knocks on his door. He yells for who it is but no one answers. He gets up and loads the shotgun. Cautiously, he looks around outside but sees nothing and laughs it off, cursing Harry for making him jump at shadows. He goes back inside and unloads the gun just as Harry/the miner steps out from the shadows. Ben turns and manages to get the shotgun up to defended against the axe. The shotgun gets batted away but Harry misses again as Ben rolls and the axe goes into the floor, pointy end up. Harry manages to get his hands around Ben and, after some more struggling, drives him into the axe. Over at the station, we see Axel getting more and more frustrated, especially since both Tom and Ben are missing-in-action. That record ends, though, when they get a call saying that Ben is dead. Axel orders Ferris over to his house to watch his kid and him and Martin head over to Harry's to check things out there. Meanwhile, Megan and Sarah are busy closing up the grocery store when they hear a noise up front. After verifying that Megan did indeed lock the front door, they check it out and see that the door is still locked and that no one is there. Another noise sounds from in the back and they star looking up the aisles, just barely missing seeing Harry in the back. They split up and Sarah goes up the freezer aisle and is attacked by Harry. He puts his axe in one of the freezers and starts trying to get her but she manages to hit him with a leg of lamb. He chases her, but is distracted by Megan attacking him with a mop. The two girls run to the loading area and into the office, pursued by Harry and his axe. They shove a few things against the door as he tries to get through and Megan starts trying to unlock the exterior screen so they can escape through the window while Sarah quickly calls the cops. She gets it open and is halfway out before they realize Harry has gone. Sarah tries to pull Megan back in but Harry gets to her first and pulls her out. Sarah gets back out of the office and heads for the front door where Axel is just outside (suspicious?). He pulls her out and they head around the corner to find Megan's body flayed with the heart missing and the words "BE MINE 4 EVER" scrawled in blood above her body. A little later, Sarah is being treated by an ambulance team and is about to be taken to a hospital when she tells Axel that she knows that he and Megan were sleeping together. Elsewhere, we see things unfolding pretty much normally at the Palmer household, with Noah watching cartoons and Nora doing laundry....until Harry sneaks up behind Nora and makes quick work of her. Outside, Ferris is in her car almost asleep when Burke knocks on the window and tells her that Harry is inside. Ferris takes point and finds Noah crouched behind the couch and Nora in the washing machine while Burke tries to secure the porch and instead gets axed. Over at the hospital, Sarah is getting her wounds bandaged when she gets a call. She answers and hears Tom on the other end, telling her not to trust Axel and that he found something he needs to show her. He picks her up from the hospital just as Axel gets a call from Martin regarding something about Tom. As Tom is driving Sarah up to the mine and stressing how sure he is that Axel is doing all the killing, Sarah gets a call from Axel. Tom tells her not to answer but she does, and Axel tells her that Martin found out Tom was in a mental institution for seven years. He tells her to try to get away and then call him and they quickly hang up. She tries to tell Tom to stop and when that doesn't work she grabs they wheel and yanks it so hard that the car impales itself on an overturned tree branch. Tom gets knocked out momentarily, and Sarah escapes. She calls Axel and he tells her to go to his dad's old cabin (the one Tom was at earlier). She gets there just as Tom finally crawls out of the car and inside she finds about three hundred heart-shaped candy boxes and one miner trying to kill her. She runs for the front door but can't get it open so she goes with the option of diving out a second-story window onto the sloping roof and running from there to the mine. At the mine, Sarah runs into the wide-open Tunnel 5 entrance and heads into a locker room where she quickly gets lost among the maze of falling miner outfits. The miner shows up and starts hacking through them and she goes out the other end and into the mine proper. She runs throughout the tunnels and runs into Axel. She steals his gun and tells him about the boxes, but he thinks (at first) that she's just talking about the one from Megan and is confused when she points out the other three hundred. Tom comes out a side tunnel and she points the gun at him too, although both are saying the other is the killer. Axel suggests shooting them both and Sarah seems about to do it when Tom points out that "Be Mine 4 Ever", the message over Megan's body, was the same as what she wrote to Axel. Sarah stops breathing and slowly asks Tom how he knows about that, since she didn't tell him. Before he can answer he sees Harry behind Sarah and tries to warn her, but she doesn't believe him and Harry....walks right through her. She tells him that Harry isn't there and Axel realizes that he is there....inside Tom, and we now see Tom digging up Harry's body and taking off the outfit after doing the killings and attacking Irene and seeing Harry in the mirror (make your inevitable Fight Club comparisons now). Axel asks "Harry" if that's right, and Tom grins and says, "Oh yeah," before attacking Axel full-on. The two struggle and Axel gets a pickaxe through the gut (non-lethal). Sarah knocks Tom into some old crates and she and Axel run, hiding behind a corner like they did ten years ago. Tom gets it together and starts for them, knocking out lights as he goes. Axel gives Sarah his gun with one bullet and tells her not to miss. She waits until Tom is right by some gas tanks and then fires. The bullet hits home and then goes right through Tom, hitting the tanks and making them explode and the walls collapse. Some time later, we see a bunch of miners searching the rubble for any survivors. One guy thinks he sees something and heads on ahead. He starts talking to the victim he found, Tom, and telling him he'll be okay. Tom stares at the guy, seemingly not comprehending, and then he picks up a pickaxe and drives it through the guys skull. Outside, Sarah and Axel are being brought out -- her on her feet, him on a stretcher. They tell each other they love each other as Martin approaches. He asks them what happened to Tom and they tell him that Tom is dead. As the ambulance drives away, the rescue team comes out, all accounted for. They start to disperse, heading their separate ways, and one of them pauses at the top of the hill for a look around. He takes off his mask, and glances around. Tom nods, satisfied, and then heads off into the forest...

Coming from a police family, Tom Hardy ends up fighting his uncle after the murder of his father. Tom believes the killer is another cop and goes on the record with his allegations. Demoted then to river duty, the killer taunts Tom. Tom Hardy (Bruce Willis) is a maverick cop in pursuit of a sadistic serial killer. Demoted to river patrol after suggesting to the press the killer may be a police officer, he initiates an unauthorized investigation with his new partner (Sarah Jessica Parker).

An unstable policeman who recently lost his wife is paired with a homicide detective with an impeccable record to investigate a suicide that leads to an international crime ring.

In 1959, on board a space ship, two aliens race to keep an experiment from being released by a third member of the crew. The seemingly possessed third alien shoots the canister into space where it crashes to Earth. Nearby, a college man takes his date to a parking spot when they see a falling star and investigate. Unfortunately, it lands in the path of an escaped criminally insane mental patient. As his date is attacked by the axe-wielding maniac, the boy finds the canister, from which a small leech-like thing jumps out and into his mouth. 28 years later, Chris Romero is pining over a love lost, being supported by his handicapped friend J.C. During pledge week at Corman University, Chris spots a girl, Cynthia Cronenberg, and seems to fall instantly in love. To get her attention, he decides that he must join a fraternity. As a part of their pledge (although the frat leader who is dating Cynthia has no intentions of letting them join), they must steal a cadaver from the university medical center and place it on the steps of the Phi Omega Gamma house. Chris and J.C. find one in a top secret room that is being kept in a state of suspended animation, but when it grabs one of their arms as they try to move it, they lose their nerve and run back to their dorm room. Meanwhile, Detective Ray Cameron, a cop that dated the girl killed back in 1959 and is haunted by the memories of what he found that night, is called in to the cryogenics lab break-in where there were two bodies, but one is now missing. The missing body is the one released from its cryogenics tomb - the same boy who found the alien experiment back in 1959. This missing body makes its way back to the same sorority house where he picked up his date 27 years earlier. The walking corpse comes to Cynthia's window where his head splits open and more of the leech creatures fall out and slither across the ground. Called to the scene, Ray finds the body with a large open wound in the face, similar to one that could have been made by an axe. The next day, Chris and J.C. are confronted by the frat brothers, upset over the fact that they believe they are responsible for the previous night's incident. After surviving their encounter, they are then taken in for questioning by the police. Based on the testimony of a janitor that witnessed them running out of university medical center, "screaming like banshees," they confess to breaking in, but deny taking the corpse out. That night, the attendant found dead gets up from his slab and runs into the same janitor. After the dead and buried cat of one of the sorority sisters comes back, Cynthia confesses it to Chris and J.C. and goes on about the dead body found at the sorority house. Although both are skeptical of her story about them being zombies, J.C. sees that she is leaning on Chris' shoulder, and leaves the two alone to go to the bathroom, where the now-possessed janitor enters and lets loose more of the slugs. As Chris walks Cynthia back to the sorority house, he runs into Cameron who has overheard the entire story. Back at Ray's home, the two talk about their high school sweethearts. Ray's story is more elaborate as he goes on about how they broke up and he became a cop and how he was called out to the site where she had been hacked up by a lunatic. He goes on to tell of how he tracked down the escaped patient, killed him and buried him in the same spot on which the House Mother's cottage now sits. Just then, Ray gets a call where the House Mother has been hacked up to death by the axe-wielding corpse that broke in through the floor. The killer is finally tracked down and cornered by the police, but numerous gunshots have no effect. Cameron then takes his shotgun and blows its head off, which releases more of the little creeps. The next night, everyone is getting ready for the formal when Chris notices a tape recorder on which J.C. has recorded a posthumous message to his friend, telling him that one of the things has incubated in his brain and that he had discovered, after lighting one with a match, that heat can destroy them. Chris then runs into the boiler room, where his friend has told him he was headed in an attempt to kill those inside him. Chris then shows up at Ray's place, which Ray has sealed up, and he fills him in. After grabbing his gun and turning off the gas, he takes Chris to a police armory to get a flamethrower. They come to the sorority house just as Cynthia is breaking up with Brad who has become possessed. After killing him, the Delta fraternity brothers show up - despite having been killed in a bus crash. While Chris and Cynthia team up with shotgun and flamethrower to destroy the dead outside, Cameron does likewise inside. After stopping the horde, Chris spots more slugs racing across the ground that are headed into the house's basement. Cynthia remembers that this is where specimen brains are being kept. When they go down below, they find Cameron, tape across his mouth, prepping a can of gasoline. They also find the creatures gathered in a huge swarm in the corner. Cameron begins counting down as he splashes gasoline everywhere. Cynthia and Chris turn and run out of the house, counting down in sync with Cameron. Cameron fills the basement with gas and just as some of the parasites leap at him, he flicks his lighter and the house goes up in a fiery explosion. Watching the sorority house burn, Chris and Cynthia share a kiss. The scene ends when the dog that caused the bus accident returns, opens its mouth, and a slug jumps out.

In northern California, on the night of Saturday, October 23, we see a man running down a semi-rural road as the movie opens. Obviously being pursued, the man Harry Grimbridge (Al Berry) runs into a junkyard to try to hide or find help. Then we see his pursuers coming down the road in a car and entering the junkyard. The man tries to hide, to no avail; a well-dressed man who is stronger than he looks confronts him and begins choking him. The resourceful man saves himself by pulling a chock out from under a junked car, which rolls forward and pins his attacker against another car, allowing him to break free. Another well-dressed man with gray-silver colored hair (Dick Warlock) gets out of the car, but the pursued man flees across the junkyard on foot to dubious safety. A short distance away, as a storm begins to pass through, a gas station attendant named Walter Jones (Essex Smith) is passing time watching a news report about Stonehenge. The reporter is talking about an unsolved theft from some nine months earlier; someone had stolen a stone weighing several tons from the Stonehenge ruins in England and the local police are baffled. The TV cuts to a commercial for Silver Shamrock masks before the storm knocks out the power. Just then, the man from the junkyard bursts into the gas station, clutching a Silver Shamrock pumpkin Halloween mask, begging for help. The attendant, clearly disturbed, takes the man to the hospital. Meanwhile, not too far away, the recently divorced Dr. Dan Challis (Tom Atkins) stops off at home to see his ex-wife Linda (Nancy Kyes) and their two children. He's late arriving, a not uncommon occurrence with him. He has brought the kids some masks for the upcoming Halloween, but they are disappointed, saying "Mom already got us masks". They were Silver Shamrock masks. While Dan and his ex are talking, the kids turn on the TV and see another Silver Shamrock commercial, which they seem to enjoy immensely. Dan's beeper goes off - he is needed at the hospital. After promising to pick up the kids next weekend, he leaves. At the hospital, Dan meets the guy from the junkyard and talks briefly to the gas station attendant who drove him in. The guy wakes up when he hears yet another Silver Shamrock commercial on a hospital TV, gasping out "They're going to kill us! All of us!!!!" while still clutching his mask. Feeling the man is deranged, Dan has him sedated and put in a hospital bed to recover. There being no further patients at the moment, Dan, making the most of having been recently divorced, goes off to flirt with the nurses, drink some beer, and take a nap in the doctors' lounge. Not long after, a car arrives at the hospital, and another silent, well-dressed man steps out and enters the building. He walks to the junkyard guy's room, where he is sleeping. The man clamps one of his hands over the guy's mouth (waking him up), and uses his other hand to poke his fingers in the guy's eye sockets and pull his skull apart. He is much stronger than he appears. A nurse walks in just then and confronts him; the man just walks away. Seconds later, the nurse sees what just happened and screams. Dan Challis, woken from his nap, comes running, just in time to see the man walk back to the parking lot. Dan runs out to confront him, but the man is already getting back into his car. Rather than drive away, he drenches himself with gasoline and lights himself on fire, causing an explosion that destroys both himself and the car. In the morning, the police are investigating, while Dan is arguing with his ex-wife over the phone. A dark-haired girl (Stacey Nelkin) walks into the room, the daughter of the man who was killed. Her name is Ellie Grimbridge, and we then learn the dead guy's name was Harry Grimbridge. Dan and the police try to comfort Ellie as best they can after she identifies the body. Both Dan and the police are bewildered by the event. After hearing the description, the police thought the well-dressed murderer was on drugs, but Dan, the doctor, said it appeared the man was in complete control of himself. In the middle of the week, Dan goes to see the assistant coroner, a woman named Teddy (Wendy Wessberg), and asks her what she has discovered. The answer is not much, the guy was just ashes. She will be looking at the remains of the burned car for clues for a while yet. Dan asks her to keep him posted. He is still clearly rattled by the event and wants some answers. On Friday, two days before Halloween, Ellie finds Dan alone in a bar, where he had been drinking and watching TV. One of the nurses had told her she would probably find him there. She thanked him for attending her father's funeral and asked him if he had seen anything that might help her figure out what had happened. Dan, still wanting to know what had happened, told her about the mask and her father's last words - "They're going to kill us!" Dan and Ellie go to the late Harry's store downtown. It had been a distressed toy store before Harry's death; now it was "closed until further notice". The new shopping malls had siphoned off a lot of his business, but the town's children had been keeping the store afloat. There, Ellie showed Dan her own investigations. Harry had kept meticulous records at his business, and everything checked out until October 20, when he had gone to pick up more masks - Silver Shamrock masks, which were selling well. Dan remarked that Harry had been holding a Silver Shamrock mask when he was killed. Harry had never made it to his appointments on the 21st. Ellie wanted to go to the Silver Shamrock factory to investigate further, and Dan, intrigued by the mystery (and attracted to Ellie), went along with her. Just before driving out of town in Ellie's car with only a cooler for luggage, Dan calls his ex-wife to back out of his promise to pick up the kids the next afternoon, promising to pick them up on Halloween instead. As Dan and Ellie drive away, we see some TVs in a store window showing yet another Silver Shamrock commercial. In the weeks leading up to Halloween, Silver Shamrock had undertaken a major advertising blitz, saturating the airwaves with a catchy but obnoxious commercial for its Halloween masks, counting down the days until Halloween to the tune of "London Bridge". The announcer in the commercial said that Silver Shamrock would be sponsoring the airing of the movie Halloween (1978) on Halloween night, to be followed immediately (at 9 p.m.) by a "big giveaway" - for which all the children were supposed to wear their masks and watch the TV closely. On Friday afternoon, Dan and Ellie arrive in Santa Mira, home of Silver Shamrock, a small town that seems to give off some weird vibes (a reference to Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), set in a small town of the exact same name). It was founded in 1887 by Irish immigrants, and the principal (almost the only) industry was the Silver Shamrock factory, started after World War II by a man named Conal Cochran. They drive past the factory, which looks like the only major industry there. The townspeople stare at them, making them both uncomfortable. They see loudspeakers and moving video cameras on top of the utility poles. Not knowing exactly what to do next, they go to a cheap motel and rent a room, where they can talk strategy in privacy. While the motel keeper Rafferty (Michael Currie) is showing Ellie the room, Dan goes off to the office, ostensibly to pay the bill, but he checks the register while he was there. Harry Grimbridge's name was on the register. Ellie sees Cochran's car drive past, although she can't see inside the darkened windows. On his way back from the office, Dan meets another motel guest, Buddy Kupfer (Ralph Strait), a Silver Shamrock salesman; and his wife Betty (Jadeen Barbor) and their bratty son "Little Buddy" (Brad Schacter). He also meets Marge (Garn Stephens), a department store owner who sold, among other things, Silver Shamrock masks at her store in San Francisco. Buddy seems to be enjoying the trip, but Marge is put out at having to come all the way to "this dump" because the factory messed up an order. Ellie wants to go to the factory right away and investigate further, but Dan convinces her to hold off for a while. After a moment of awkwardness, in which time Dan isn't sure how well an advance would be received, Ellie gives him a clear opening, and he pounces on it. Outside, late afternoon is moving towards sunset, and at 6 P.M., the loudspeakers announce that the town is under curfew for the night. After dark, Dan goes out to the liquor store (which is open in spite of the curfew); on the way back, he meets Starker (Jonathan Terry as Jon Terry), a local drunk and homeless man who begs a drink from the bottle off of him. Dan, seizing an opportunity to collect information, asks Starker about Cochran and Silver Shamrock, and he has nothing good to say about him. Starker tells Dan that he had applied for a job there years before, but had been turned away; in fact, all of Cochran's workers had been brought in from outside Santa Mira. In contrast to the motel keeper who had praised Cochran, Starker points out the video cameras and curses Cochran. He then says that he hoped to burn down Cochran's factory someday. Dan gives him a tip for his information and goes back to the motel. However, a few minutes later, the silver-haired well-dressed assassin shows up with another accomplice. Starker tries to back away from his drunken statements, but the men are unmoved, and while one of them restrains him, the silver-haired man pulls his head off of his shoulders with his bare hands. Back at the motel, Ellie meets Marge, and they talk briefly about the factory and the masks. Marge notices that the quality has suffered a little bit - the trademark tag fell off one of the masks. Marge returns to her room, where she accidentally knocks the tag onto the floor, where it falls upside down revealing a small microchip - but she doesn't notice right away, sitting in bed reading. Meanwhile, Dan arrives back at the motel and stops at the office to call Teddy. Teddy's investigation has gone nowhere - she found no human remains and had to assume that someone had mixed up the envelopes, and she had wasted two days examining burnt car parts. Dan returns to the room, where he and Ellie have a drink. While they are enjoying themselves, Marge decides she's had enough reading for the night and gets ready to sleep, but sees the trademark and the microchip on the floor and, being curious, starts to examine it and poke at it with a hairpin. Suddenly, a lightning bolt shoots out of the trademark at Marge's head, burning it almost beyond recognition. A single bug crawls from her mouth as she dies. Dan and Ellie are woken by yet another disturbance outside. It's a van, not an ambulance come to pick up Marge. The men from the van ignore Dan's offer of help, despite the fact that he is a doctor. As the van leaves, Conal Cochran (Dan O'Herlihy) pulls up and we meet him for the first time. Dan overhears the motel keeper telling Cochran that Marge had been hit by a "misfire." (What could that mean?) The next morning is Saturday the 30th. Dan calls Teddy at work again. Teddy has examined all the ashes but has not found a single trace of human remains, and she is wondering if someone has been tampering with the evidence. Dan asks her to investigate Cochran. However, after Dan hangs up, we see that the telephone is bugged. Dan and Ellie go to the factory in the morning, but learn nothing except Harry had picked up his masks and left. They are ready to go, but they meet Buddy Kupfer on their way in for a tour of the factory. Cochran comes out to meet them, and Buddy convinces Cochran to have them along on the tour. They see the workers making the masks. After seeing the masks, Cochran takes them to another room where there are some other Silver Shamrock products besides masks - mostly toys and novelties. Cochran gives Buddy Jr. a mask that has been through "final processing" - but he remains evasive about what final processing entails. He invites the Kupfer family to breakfast the next morning, asking for Buddy's opinion about some more sales materials. While Cochran and Buddy are talking, Dan's attention wanders, and he spots several of the well-dressed guards. While he is telling Ellie in a low voice about it, Ellie spots Harry's car in one of the buildings. She runs forward to check it out, but several more of the well-dressed men step out from their posts and block her path. Dan and Ellie return to the motel room and go over what they know as it gets dark outside. They decide to leave the town and call the police. Dan goes to the office, but he cannot reach anyone on the telephone. No matter what number he dials, he gets a recorded message that the call cannot be completed. Returning to the motel room, he discovers Ellie is gone. She has been kidnapped by a group of well-dressed guards. The well-dressed guards surround him in the parking lot and approach him. Dan runs back to his room and escapes out the bathroom window and gets away from the guards, who are also driving up and down the streets looking for him. Dan tries to use a pay phone, but he gets the same recorded message there, too. Hoping to rescue Ellie, he goes to the factory, sneaks onto the grounds, and breaks into the building. At first, he sees no one, but after a brief search, he finds an old woman knitting. When he confronts her, he finds that the old woman is actually an elaborate machine! Then the silver-haired well-dressed guard finds him. Dan fights him, but he seems to be unaffected by his punches. After Dan punches him again, the guard goes limp, Dan pulls wires out of the guard's stomach and oil flows from his mouth. The guard was a far more elaborate machine! Two more android guards come up behind Dan and capture him. He had trouble beating one, and he has no chance against two. Cochran comes to see them before the guards take Dan to wherever he is to spend the night. On Sunday, Halloween morning, Cochran and several of the well-dressed android guards accompany Dan to the "final processing" room. On the way there, Cochran brags about how realistic his guards and other workers were. Once in the final processing room, Dan sees several workers on a scaffold chipping tiny pieces out of a large rock... the stolen stone from Stonehenge! There are some workstations and TVs arranged in a circle in front of the rock. The workers take a tiny particle of the rock and put it in the microchips on the back of each trademark on the masks. Cochran shows Dan on the video monitors Ellie tied up in one room, Marge's corpse in another room, and then, the room into which the guards are escorting the Kupfer family. The room is ominously labeled "Test Room A". The room is made up to look like an ordinary living room. At Cochran's order, one of the guards pushes the buttons to make a video play on the TV in the test room, where Little Buddy is trying to watch TV. It is the video that will be played later that night - the "big giveaway" video. It opens like any other Silver Shamrock commercial, but as the announcer exhorts his audience to watch, the video gives way to a jack-o-lantern flashing on the screen. After a few seconds, the rapt Little Buddy grasps his head and collapses. Multitudes of bugs and snakes crawl out of the mask. Betty faints; Buddy Sr. freaks out and tries to escape from the locked room, but he is attacked and killed by the snakes. The flashing jack-o-lantern and sounds from the commercial trigger the particle of rock in the microchip - now we see how the death of Marge was an accident, it had gone off when it wasn't supposed to. After a couple of minutes, the entire Kupfer family is dead, and Cochran cuts the video and has the guards lead Dan away. Next, we see children in cities all over the country hearing the commercial reminding them to watch the big giveaway at 9:00 pm, buying Silver Shamrock masks, and trick-or-treating. Challis's own kids are anxious to watch the big giveaway while wearing their masks. In the evening, Teddy is still trying to make sense of the autopsy and tries to reach Dan in Santa Mira, but she gets the same recorded message that Dan heard. She tries the chief coroner instead, realizing that a lot of the things she has found in the ashes didn't look like car parts. Suddenly realizing something, she reaches for the phone once more to call the police, but one of the well-dressed android guards from Silver Shamrock sneaks up behind her and kills her with a power drill to her head. At 7:30 p.m., Cochran leaves Dan tied up in a room in front of a TV playing John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) - to be followed by the big giveaway. Dan asks him why. Cochran explains that the "good" reason is that it's all a great joke, but the "real" reason is he is carrying on an ancient Celtic tradition of ritual sacrifice. Cochran puts one of his masks over Dan's head and wishes him a happy Halloween just before he leaves. Once he has left, Dan looks at the clock and sets to work trying to escape. He manages to scoot his chair over toward the TV, then kicks the screen in. At least the flashing jack-o-lantern can't come on now. Using a piece of broken glass from the TV, he cuts the straps that bind him, removes the mask, and throws it over the video camera watching the room. The room is locked, but Dan escapes through the ventilation ducts. It's after 8 p.m. now and time is running out. An android notices that Dan is no longer in the room, and they set about looking for him. He has, by this time, escaped to the roof of the building, and finds another way back in. He has to play hide-and-seek with the well-dressed android guards again. Then he finds a phone, tries it, and it works - Cochran had cut off the town's access to outside lines, but not from within the factory itself. He calls his ex-wife and desperately tries to convince her to get rid of the Silver Shamrock masks, but she refuses. She is angry that Dan has once again broken his promise (this time to pick the kids up on Halloween and take them trick-or-treating), accuses him of being drunk, and/or jealous that the kids liked the masks better than the ones Dan picked out. She tells him to go to hell and hangs up. He can't try calling her again or someone else because the guards are coming back. Dan searches the building some more and finds the room where Ellie is being held. He releases her, but the guards can now see him on the video cameras and know where he is. He manages to escape them for the time being, coming to the back of the final processing/control room. There he finds a box of the microchips - ready to be installed on the masks. An idea comes to mind. He takes a box of the micro-chipped trademarks, sneaks over to the computers, and pushes the buttons he saw the guard push that morning - the ones that start playing the big giveaway video. This time, it starts playing on all the TVs in the control room. He runs back to the edge of the room and climbs onto a catwalk overhead and dumps the box onto the floor below. The microchips activate as they get near the TV's playing the flashing jack-o-lantern, "killing" the worker-androids - but not Cochran, who looks up at them, unaffected, and applauds. The flashing TVs, forming a circle, and the rock from Stonehenge, start to glow; something supernatural is taking place. Lightning bolts shoot out of both towards Cochran, who is transformed to stone and disappears. Then sparks fly from the stone and everything in the room starts to catch fire. Soon, the entire factory is burning - Starker got his wish posthumously. Dan and Ellie run from the factory, get into Ellie's car still at the motel, and with Dan driving this time they drive away. Dan and Ellie escape from Santa Mira, but the commercial is still set to go on the air at 9 p.m., which is only about 15 minutes away now. Dan asks Ellie if she can think of anything, then notices how strangely passive she has been and... how she hasn't spoken a single word since her rescue. When Ellie turns her head and attacks him, he realizes that the Ellie he rescued was another android, with a new skin to look exactly like the real Ellie (the real one presumably having been killed by the well-dressed guards or perished in the fire). Dan wrecks the car trying to fight off the 'Ellie-bot'. The crash rips one of robot Ellie's arms off, and Dan has little trouble dispatching the rest of her with a tire iron by decapitating her, but now he is without transportation and takes off running on foot. It's about 8:50 p.m. The 'Ellie-bot' continues to function. Panting and desperate to find a phone, he arrives at a gas station.... the same one where Harry took refuge eight days earlier. The attendant, Walter, recognizes Dan from the hospital: "Hey, don't I know you?" It's straight up 9:00 when Dan pleads with the technician at the TV station over the phone to take the commercial off the air, saying that everyone watching will die if it is allowed to air. Walter looks at him kind of funny as he shouts into the phone. Two children run inside to watch the commercial on TV at the gas station. Finally, the technician accedes to Dan's desperate request, and a "technical difficulties" sign appears on that TV station. The children switch to another station playing the commercial - it too goes off the air. They switch to a third station, and this time the commercial continues to play. The flashing jack-o-lantern appears, and Dan continues to beg the technician to take the commercial off the air. Dan becomes ever more hysterical and screams to stop the commercial, as the commercial on the third station continues to run... and the movie suddenly ends on this cliffhanger.

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.