'Escape From New York': 10 reasons why I love it to death

I've said many times before that the '70s are my favorite decade for films -- but the '80s are my personal favorite decade for what I call "pop" movies.

These are films that may not have any great social or political messages, but are just plain, unadulterated fun.

Before the '90s made cynicism cool, the previous ten years provided some of the best action, adventure, laughs and diverting entertainment ever made. Sure, the '80s may be to blame for our modern, blockbuster-obsessed movie landscape, but I really do believe there were at least better creative juices flowing in those days than there are now.

The 1981 film Escape From New York, made during director John Carpenter's most creatively fulfilling period, is a perfect example of this kind of above average B movie, and I've grown to really love it as a longtime New Yorker and as a fan of the genre.

Escape From New York is not a particularly moving film or a complicated one, it's just aesthetically pleasing to me and I am proud to say it's one of my favorite movies of all time. Here are ten reasons why:

10) The premise: The entire concept behind this film is so delightfully ludicrous that I find it irresistible. The film, being made at the height of New York City's reputation as a crime-ridden cesspool, presents a bleak future (in 1997, no less) in which the Big Apple serves as a walled in penitentiary for all the criminals in the country. This idea presents so many limitless possibilities for stories that I am thinking someone should pitch a TV series on the subject ASAP.

9) The clock: The hero of the film, Kurt Russell's iconic Snake Plissken, is injected with charges that will explode if he doesn't complete his mission in a set number of hours. His mission: to retrieve the president (an inexplicably British wuss played by Donald Pleasance) who has crash landed in NYC after Air Force One is hijacked. The time limit keeps the stakes high throughout.

Kurt Russell as Snake Plissken

8) The Kurt Russell performance: If Clint Eastwood and John Wayne had a baby, it'd be Kurt Russell in nearly every John Carpenter film. He's wonderfully cartoonish here, with his sneer and rebellious cool. Everywhere he goes he's greeted with, "I thought you were dead," and by the end of the film he's been put through the ringer, but through it all he never stops being cool.

7) The rest of the cast: This movie has one of the wildest, most eclectic casts of all time. The great Lee Van Cleef, Harry Dean Stanton, Isaac Hayes as the bad guy, Ernest Borgnine as the comic relief and the voluptuous Adrienne Barbeau as a shotgun-packing babe. You just don't get ensembles like this anymore -- and that's a shame.

6) The use of models: The movie is very low budget so nearly all of it's modest effects are through in-camera trickery and models, which is part of why it holds up so well. I watched Poltergeist recently, which in my opinion relied too heavily on visual optics, and that dated it immediately. Escape From New York avoids this fate; although this film couldn't afford to shoot in New York, it's production design and look are top notch.

5) The score: Somehow director John Carpenter manages to surpass his iconic work on Halloween here. The throbbing, keyboard heavy score is both epic and ominous -- and, of course, unapologetically '80s. It always gets stuck in my head in the best way and clearly had a huge impact on future sci-fi/action hybrids, like The Terminator films, particularly the original, which seems to have been heavily influenced by Escape From New York.

4) The darkness: This is a brooding film, that takes place largely in the shadows and I love that. Even though it's not a horror film, Carpenter throws in a few jump scares just for the hell of it and the use of the dark helps the world of the movie feel more expansive and claustrophobic at times. With this film and The Thing, Carpenter's work stood apart from the more bright, sunny and optimistic Hollywood output of the early '80s. He was ahead of his time in that way.

3) The homages: Carpenter is a real student of Hollywood history, particularly the western and this film is full of cinematic homages, from the casting of spaghetti western star Van Cleef to the funky coterie of unlikely allies who band together towards the end.

2) The New York-ness: I love New York City films, really of any era. It's my town, my favorite place I've ever been. So I can really appreciate what a quintessential NYC movie this is. Along with The Warriors, this film really finds this futuristic aesthetic but pairs it with a grimy, hardbitten attitude that could only be described as New York swagger.

1) The ending: Without spoiling it, I will say this film has a great final twist. In a documentary about the making of the film which is included on both the bluray and DVD, Carpenter says he is fundamentally anti-authoritarian and that theme runs throughout this movie up to the very last frame. This is the ideal fantasy, escapist movie for all the badasses out there.