Given that at the time of writing the filmmaker and musician has been thrilling audiences all over the globe with live performances of his classic synthesizer scores, I find myself wanting to open this review with the note that John Carpenter is very much in fashion at this moment – but that seems a moot point. He may have never made billions at the box office or been showered with awards, but for most film fans – particularly those with a preference for genre-based material – the films of John Carpenter have never gone out of style, and I very much doubt they ever will. He may have produced the real meat of his filmography in that most equally revered and reviled of decades in pop culture history, the 1980s, yet there’s a distinctly timeless quality about his work which makes it stand apart and, in most instances, head and shoulders above most mid-budget genre fare produced in Hollywood at the time.
Generally speaking, the first film anyone will mention in relation to Carpenter was his breakthrough hit Halloween, and that’s entirely fair given how influential that film became, and how it launched the director into his most prolific period; but at the same time we shouldn’t forget that Halloween was in fact Carpenter’s third feature film. His debut, Dark Star, was an extension of an ultra-low budget student film made with his classmates at UCLA, and while it’s not without its entertainment value, it’s pretty far removed from what we would typically identify as a John Carpenter movie. However, his sophomore effort – Assault on Precinct 13 – is in many respects the real starting point for Carpenter, boasting many of the key themes, motifs and fetishes that generations of film fans would come to know and love him for.
Ethan Bishop (Austin Stoker) is an LAPD cop in his first day on the job since being promoted to Lieutenant. Signing on late in the afternoon, his first official assignment doesn’t seem a particularly challenging one, as he’s sent to relieve the commanding officer at the Anderson precinct, where the old police station is in the process of closing down as they relocate to new premises. Assuming command, Bishop meets secretaries Leigh (Laurie Zimmer) and Julie (Nancy Loomis), and braces himself for an uneventful evening. However, as quiet as things initially seem in Anderson, the borough is in fact in the grip of a brutal gang known only as Street Thunder, whose motivations are unclear. When a distraught man runs in off the streets, Bishop and co are unable to find out what has happened to him, particularly as they are interrupted by the unexpected arrival of a prison transfer bus forced to stop for medical reasons, requesting use of Precinct 13’s cells. Reluctantly, Bishop grants permission for the prisoners to be brought inside – when, seemingly out of nowhere, shots are fired upon the station. Soon the only lawman left alive, Bishop finds himself with no choice but to release the surviving prisoners – Wells (Tony Barton), and Napoleon Wilson (Darwin Joston) – and forge an uneasy alliance to fight off the seemingly unstoppable horde outside.
It’s interesting how interpretations of Assault on Precinct 13 can vary according to one’s own cinematic and historical knowledge. The film is frequently spoken of as essentially a modern day remake of Howard Hawks’ classic western Rio Bravo, a film which Carpenter has long declared a personal favourite and has paid homage to more than once; elements of the western come up frequently in his films, and he revisited similar siege set-ups in Prince of Darkness and Ghosts of Mars (and in a different way in The Thing). However, having never been a big western fan myself, I didn’t make that connection on first viewing back in my teens, at which point the film struck me as an urbanised, less overtly supernatural take on Night of the Living Dead. You’ve got a siege scenario in which mismatched individuals are forced to put their differences to one side, whilst a silent, seemingly inhuman mob fights to get in with the sole motivation of killing everyone in sight, with no sense or reason behind any of it.
And to further support the Night of the Living Dead analogy, we can scarcely fail to note that the lead good guy just happens to be black, and just as in NOTLD this is never explicitly made an issue of (Stoker’s Bishop is the only character to make reference to it at all, in a knowingly lame coffee joke). This, combined with the pointedly mixed ethnicity of Street Thunder, opens up Precinct 13 to be read as a progressive, post-civil rights thriller of sorts. Feminism gets a look in too, as Laurie Zimmer’s Leigh proves every bit as vital to the fight and calm under pressure as her male cohorts. Of course, as we’ve seen time and again in Carpenter’s movies (They Live notwithstanding), the director really isn’t that interested in politics; but in a curious way that only makes Precinct 13 feel that bit more progressive, as it shows individuals of different social and ethnic backgrounds banding together to fend off a common enemy for the sake of the greater good. This has a particular potency, as while the protagonists are protecting the distraught stranger, they never learn why the gang was after him in the first place; and for the most part, they don’t care. That’s some good ol’ fashioned cowboy right and wrong values on display there, and not limited to them that have white skin and penises. Stoker, Zimmer and perhaps most notably Darwin Joston as the shady anti-hero Wilson (possible blueprint for Snake Plissken?) give awesome performances, and it’s a pity Carpenter didn’t use them more in his later films.
Of course, this being a low budget genre film from the 1970s, it would hardly have made a mark if it didn’t go to some dark and shocking places at times; and, even by modern standards, you can’t get much more shocking than casting one of the best loved child actors of the day – Kim Richards, best known for Disney’s Witch Mountain movies – and killing her on screen. This was by all accounts a hugely controversial moment at the time, and while it may not be quite so powerful today (it has to be said, it’s not a very convincing squib), it is vital in that it leaves the audience in no doubt as to just how cold-blooded and merciless the gang really are. It’s also vital for, despite the genre trappings, making Precinct 13 feel more like a horror movie than an action thriller. These aren’t the whooping, slobbering, openly sadistic thugs that we’d see Charles Bronson kill so many of in the Death Wish sequels; Carpenter’s villains are notably silent, detached, unemotional, in a manner that would seem to imply something genuinely inhuman about them despite the lack of any outright supernatural traits – all of which can easily be seen as foreshadowing Michael Myers.
All things considered, time may not have been quite so kind to Assault on Precinct 13 as at has been to Carpenter’s subsequent films; the low budget is often glaringly apparent, and the few outright action scenes come off a bit half-baked, the slightly anti-climactic final showdown in particular. But let’s not pick nits. This was the movie that cemented John Carpenter as a true master, and it still holds up 40 years on; way better than its 2005 remake does, at any rate.
Of course, this is another of those instances in which I probably needn’t have written the preceding 1,000+ words as existing fans of the movie will need little persuasion to track this new edition down. It looks and sounds great, and boasts a wealth of enjoyable features including new interviews with Austin Stoker, producer Joseph Kaufman and art director/Carpenter BFF Tommy Lee Wallace, plus older interviews with Carpenter and Stoker, Nancy Loomis, and commentary tracks from Carpenter and Wallace. The Blu-ray also boasts some notable exclusives in Carpenter’s early student short Captain Voyeur, documentary film Do You Remember Laurie Zimmer, five art cards and a bonus CD of the film’s memorable soundtrack. No fan could ask for more, short of the final answer as to just how he came to be called Napoleon Wilson…
Assault on Precinct 13: 40th Anniversary edition is out on DVD and Limited Edition Blu-ray on 28th November, and a standard Blu-ray on 9th January 2017, from Second Sight. It’s also available as a digital download from 21st November.