The Crazies Come Out at Night

Every time I head into Manhattan—whether via train, tunnel, or glider—I can’t help but think that I am entering the the Manhattan Island penitentiary imagined so famously in John Carpenter’s masterpiece Escape from New York (1981). And as soon as I think about that movie, I can’t help but think about one of the most memorable scenes from that film wherein the cannibalistic crazies start surfacing from the depths of the underground world of subways and sewers for their monthly re-stock—and to think this was 3 years before C.H.U.D. (1984) and over a decade before Jennifer Toth’s The Mole People!. What an awesome moment in film that I always have a hard time getting out of my head when walking around NYC after a sustained absence. So, here to all the Mole People out there, whether you’re just the stuff of urban legend or the logical and all too real effect of Reaganomics doesn’t rob you of your abject poetry.