50 Years Ago Today: John Carpenter Directed A Gritty Action Thriller That Became A Cult Classic
by Devin Meenan · /FilmAdd SlashFilm on Google:
Google Discover
We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.
Retired filmmaker John Carpenter is best known for his horror films. After all, we don't have the modern slasher film without "Halloween." But before Michael Myers returned to Haddonfield on Halloween night 1978, Carpenter tried his hand at an action-exploitation film: 1976's "Assault on Precinct 13," which opened in theaters 50 years ago today.
Carpenter was born in 1948, the perfect age to grow up on cowboy movies. He dreamed of going to Hollywood to make Westerns, not horror films. But, by the time he enrolled in University of South California film school in 1968, Westerns had already faded as Hollywood's biggest genre. Throughout his decades-long filmmaking career, Carpenter never directed a Western — but you can see that longing in "Assault on Precinct 13." The movie has a courageous lawman who has to hold his ground against the black hat gangs. The catch? The movie is set in contemporary Los Angeles, not the Wild West.
Lieutenant Ethan Bishop (Austin Stoker) is overseeing the closure of the LAPD's Precinct 13. A prison bus, carrying convicted murderer Napoleon Wilson (Darwin Joston), also stops at the precinct for a respite. Before long, the building is under siege by bloodthirsty gang members. Bishop, Wilson, and surviving secretary Leigh (Laurie Zimmer) are in a literal fight for their lives as unlikely allies.
Made on a meager budget of $100,000, "Assault on Precinct 13" wasn't an instant mega-hit. Reviews weren't too enthusiastic either. Whitney Williams of Variety was ambivalent, writing backhanded praise like, "some exciting action in second half packs enough interest to keep this entry alive for the violence market." Ellen Edwards of The Miami Herald condemned the film for its "hideous, unmotivated violence." But "Assault on Precinct 13" found its audience. It even got a remake in 2005, starring Laurence Fishburne and Ethan Hawke.
The influences of Assault on Precinct 13
One of John Carpenter's acknowledged influences for "Assault on Precinct 13" is one of the most beloved Westerns ever: Howard Hawks' "Rio Bravo," about a sheriff (John Wayne) and his deputies trying to keep a murderer with a rich brother and many hired guns locked up. But "Rio Bravo" is not a tense thriller; often called a hangout movie, it's leisurely paced with only bursts of gun violence.
In "Assault on Precinct 13," the threat is everywhere. There's not even a reason for the siege beyond violence for its own sake; there's nothing of value inside the precinct besides more lives to end. That leads into one of the other movies that inspired Carpenter: George Romero's 1968 "Night of the Living Dead," the first modern zombie movie. When asked if "Night of the Living Dead" inspired "Assault on Precinct 13," Carpenter said, half-seriously, "Everybody who made a low-budget film was inspired by ['Night of the Living Dead']."
The comparison rings even more true here. Both movies are about people trapped inside a small building, surrounded by a horde outside that wants to break in and kill them. Both films also cast a Black man as their hero: Stoker as Lt. Bishop in "Precinct 13" and Duane Jones as Ben in "Night of the Living Dead." That was a bigger deal in the 1960s and '70s than it is now, and one spot where Carpenter's exploitation movie is rather progressive. "Living Dead" ends on a famously cynical note, with Ben shot by white men who mistook him as a threat. In "Precinct 13," Bishop and Napoleon Wilson achieve mutual respect; at the end of the movie, they walk out of the basement together as equals.
Assault on Precinct 13 pushed the boundaries of movie violence
After its U.S. theatrical release in 1976, "Assault on Precinct 13" played along the European festival circuit, including the Cannes Film Festival and the London Film Festival. (At the latter, it received "deafening applause" per a contemporary review by The Guardian's Derek Malcolm.) Seeing the movie at Cannes, George Romero paid forward the compliment of Carpenter modeling his movie after "Night of the Living Dead."
The most shocking scene in "Assault on Precinct 13" is when a little girl, Kathy (future reality TV star Kim Richards), is shot in the chest after buying an ice cream cone. It's a jaw-dropping scene, and the movie is clearly having perverse fun turning such a taboo of violence against children into a spectacle and sick joke.
Quoted in Jason Zinoman's "Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror," Romero testified to this scene's impact: "John Carpenter at Cannes wiped us off the face of the earth with 'Precinct 13.' Right from the scene when the little girl gets blown away, I was blown away." (The same book reports that, to get an R instead of an X rating, Carpenter cut the girl's death from the rating review board then added it back in before the film went to theaters.)
This sort of gang violence is echoed in Carpenter's later "Escape From New York," which is all about a future where the gangs like those in "Precinct 13" have taken over the Big Apple. Like "Escape from New York" and many of his other movies, Carpenter also composed the score for "Precinct 13." The title sequence theme, a synthesized anthem of droning dread, is still the most perfect mood setter for an action thriller even 50 years later.