Escape From New York

Despite being nearly 25 years old, the picture quality is of a very high standard. The look of the film is dark, but never unclear. There was one small problem with the remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 track: one set of punches sounded unbelievably fake. As my system can't play DTS tracks, I'm not sure whether this also exists there. Otherwise, the remastered audio is very impressive. Subtitling is available on the main feature, but not on the extras.

There are two commentaries to choose from, one by Kurt Russell and director John Carpenter and the other by producer Debra Hill and production designer Joe Alves. Both are excellent, with almost no repetition between the two. All four commentators have plenty of interesting issues to raise and it doesn't become tiresome listening to them in any way - in fact, the opposite.

The retrospective featurette is standard fare, particularly in comparison with the commentaries, but it could have been much worse. You certainly won't want to watch it more than once, but it's better included than not.

Deleted scenes are always a welcome inclusion. It's both interesting to see Snake Plissken's backstory and to appreciate why the film works better without every last detail being explained.

I would have liked to have seen an attempt at re-doing the poor animations from the early part of the film, to modern standards. Whilst this might have turned out like the Special Editions of Star Wars, if it was treated as optional, it might just have improved the film above its already very high standards.

All in all, Escape From New York is an excellent DVD package, primarily for the commentaries, but ably supported by the other extras.