Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
John Carpenter’s foray into Westerns in a contemporary setting (in this case, a derelict West Los Angeles of the mid 1970s) is a loose adaptation of Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo with lots of additional parallels with George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead: A racially integrated cast (on both sides of the siege); a disregard for the lives of children; a character gone catatonic and useless for most of the film; and never decreasing hordes of attackers explicable only thru nightmare logic.
This last one being one of the most notable elements of the three.
Many American Westerns have been criticized for their dehumanization of Native Americans which, on the surface, George Romero avoided by literally having his inhuman monsters be undead, reanimated bodies with barely any will, memory or personality, (though they work as such only when viewed literally as presented and must be reinterpreted if one sees the film as metaphor. Once I corresponded online with a fellow who insisted the bugs from Starship Troopers were the innocent victims of human Fascism... even extreme dehumanizing to those levels doesn't always work.)
Carpenter does odd things by alternating his audiences’ figures of identification.
The film starts with a gang members mowed down by cops with the media obviously misrepresenting the event, and then has surviving fellows make a blood oath against the cops, but instead of that, then has them begin to cruise the neighborhood looking for innocent victims.
By the time they besiege the near empty precinct, however, they’ve become dark, anonymous silhouettes who can be mowed down with impunity and whose bodies mysteriously disappear immediately after being killed which, while still explained away, nevertheless achieves a near-supernatural quality.
To that negative portrayal of cops at the gang member massacre add additional scenes of (mild) police brutality towards a murderer on his way to death row who is nevertheless charismatic enough to be considered the prototype for Snake Plissken, (which I am sure must have already mentioned by other writers.) Despite initial negative impressions from the side of the law, our cop protagonist is established as a good guy as soon as he appears onscreen. When they find themselves in the middle of a siege, cops, precinct staff and the transported criminals find themselves cooperating in an uneasy truce against the faceless horde and find opportunities for redemption, at least in the audience’s eyes.
I had seen this film before on formatted VHS and recall it barely made an impression. It looked like a cheap, made-for-TV feature. Too much is lost when its Panavision compositions are compromised, and with less-than-optimal image and sound.
Hardly anything else needs be said about this thrilling, suspenseful, action-filled, violent cult classic which can easily be argued to be one of John Carpenter’s best.
With Austin Stoker, Darwin Joston, and Laurie Zimmer (who’s the biggest badass in the film.)
Check it out.
John Carpenter’s foray into Westerns in a contemporary setting (in this case, a derelict West Los Angeles of the mid 1970s) is a loose adaptation of Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo with lots of additional parallels with George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead: A racially integrated cast (on both sides of the siege); a disregard for the lives of children; a character gone catatonic and useless for most of the film; and never decreasing hordes of attackers explicable only thru nightmare logic.
This last one being one of the most notable elements of the three.
Many American Westerns have been criticized for their dehumanization of Native Americans which, on the surface, George Romero avoided by literally having his inhuman monsters be undead, reanimated bodies with barely any will, memory or personality, (though they work as such only when viewed literally as presented and must be reinterpreted if one sees the film as metaphor. Once I corresponded online with a fellow who insisted the bugs from Starship Troopers were the innocent victims of human Fascism... even extreme dehumanizing to those levels doesn't always work.)
Carpenter does odd things by alternating his audiences’ figures of identification.
The film starts with a gang members mowed down by cops with the media obviously misrepresenting the event, and then has surviving fellows make a blood oath against the cops, but instead of that, then has them begin to cruise the neighborhood looking for innocent victims.
By the time they besiege the near empty precinct, however, they’ve become dark, anonymous silhouettes who can be mowed down with impunity and whose bodies mysteriously disappear immediately after being killed which, while still explained away, nevertheless achieves a near-supernatural quality.
To that negative portrayal of cops at the gang member massacre add additional scenes of (mild) police brutality towards a murderer on his way to death row who is nevertheless charismatic enough to be considered the prototype for Snake Plissken, (which I am sure must have already mentioned by other writers.) Despite initial negative impressions from the side of the law, our cop protagonist is established as a good guy as soon as he appears onscreen. When they find themselves in the middle of a siege, cops, precinct staff and the transported criminals find themselves cooperating in an uneasy truce against the faceless horde and find opportunities for redemption, at least in the audience’s eyes.
I had seen this film before on formatted VHS and recall it barely made an impression. It looked like a cheap, made-for-TV feature. Too much is lost when its Panavision compositions are compromised, and with less-than-optimal image and sound.
Hardly anything else needs be said about this thrilling, suspenseful, action-filled, violent cult classic which can easily be argued to be one of John Carpenter’s best.
With Austin Stoker, Darwin Joston, and Laurie Zimmer (who’s the biggest badass in the film.)
Check it out.
statistics: Posted by hermanthegerm — 5:07 PM - 1 day ago — Replies 4 — Views 214