VEILED THREATS by Phil Mershon
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      • The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
  • No Particular Place to Go
  • The Pits
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    • Eat The Document
    • Hitler: The Last Ten Days
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ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13
Written and directed by John Carpenter
Starring Austin Stoker
​Released in 1976
Picture
Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) is Rio Bravo crossed with Night of the Living Dead. It is also a thoroughly enjoyable movie, because in the spirit of the best westerns and horror movies, Assault has an undeniable energy and, yes, even a sense of integrity. It also has a lot of people in it who couldn't act to save their lives, the sole exceptions being Austin Stoker, who plays Lieutenant Bishop, a new cop assigned to what he anticipates will be a boring night in charge of a police precinct that is being closed down, and Darwin Joston, who plays Napoleon Wilson, a convicted murderer on his way to doing either a life stretch or death row, depending on which scene we're in. For those keeping score, Stoker plays a black John Wayne and Joston plays a resourceful and trustworthy scalawag with a wit as dry as dirt. The zombies are played by half a million teenagers of all races and nationalities. They aren't actually zombies, though. They're gang kids in Anderson, a ghetto in Los Angeles, at least in this movie. As the film begins, two anonymous policemen shoot down six gang members under curious circumstances. The rest of this enormous group wages a "cholo" or blood oath against the father of a little girl they murdered. The father, who does probably the worst acting job in the entire film, even though he was likely doing what Carpenter told him to do, seeks refuge in the soon-to-be-deserted police station. Given the nasty sun spots the man on the radio keeps talking about, we know bad times are on the rise. 

    In the real world outside the theatre, a cholo is a Mexican gangster, but this movie is not the real world, which is one of the great things about it. Oh, there's all types of realism going on, mind you. Carpenter probably spent more money on the synthesizer he used for the music he played and composed than he did on sets, and that is, now that I think of it, entirely appropriate considering he was not a movie-house common name in those days. So we have city streets that are deserted even though in real life L.A. they would be choked with people. We have an old-style phone system that no longer existed in 1976. We have a team of police officers with all the personality of mildew and--well, okay, maybe Carpenter did get that part right. Otherwise, however, the movie is complete and total bullshit from beginning to end, just like any of a thousand wonderful movies from the world of science fiction, horror, or westerns. None of it matters. It doesn't matter that a potential victim runs like hell while the attackers walk after him and somehow the walking attackerscatch up with the running victim. It doesn't matter that we don't really see about half the cast inside the precinct getting shot; somehow we just accept that they have been. And it doesn't matter that most of the costly pyrotechnics don't actually happen on-screen at all because that would have been too expensive. Look, this was only the writer-director's second full-length film, and he followed it up with Halloween, so let's get off the dude's back. 
    What matters is that Assault on Precinct 13 stays on point for its duration, doesn't go off on some pointless deeper meanings nonsense, and does not attempt to solve all of society's problems. Indeed, it is the film-maker's responsibility to create problems for society rather than to solve them. This movie is simply a lot of fun, you can probably watch it for free on YouTube, and you won't be bothered by anything approximating society for a full ninety-four minutes. With a set-up like that, how can it miss?
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  • Home
  • Links
  • The Deluge
    • Veiled Threats >
      • 1939-1945
      • 1946-1963
      • 1964-1975
      • 1976-1985
      • Born Losers
      • Don't Look Back
      • Bonnie and Clyde
      • Cool Hand Luke
      • The Graduate
      • Up Tight!
      • Cycle Savages
      • Wild in the Streets
      • Never a Dull Moment
      • Yellow Submarine
      • Night of the Living Dead
      • Faces
      • The Love Bug
      • Midnight Cowboy
      • Easy Rider
      • Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
      • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
      • They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
      • The Magic Christian
      • Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
      • The Landlord
      • The Ballad of Cable Hogue
      • Getting Straight
      • The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
      • Five Easy Pieces
      • Godard in America
      • Gimme Shelter
      • Little Big Man
      • The Boys in the Band
      • Joe
      • The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
      • The Big Boss
      • There's a Girl in my Soup
      • The Liberation of L B Jones
      • Klute
      • The French Connection
      • Willie Dynamite
      • Helter Skelter
      • King: A Filmed Record
      • Get Carter
      • Harold and Maude
      • Panic in Needle Park
      • Across 110th Street
      • And Soon the Darkness
      • Deliverance
      • Rolling Thunder
      • Super Fly
      • Busting
      • The Ruling Class
      • The Harder They Come
      • Day of the Jackal
      • Play Misty For Me
      • The Jezebels
      • Sacco & Vanzetti
      • Badlands
      • Cold Turkey
      • Soldier Blue
      • American Graffiti
      • The Falcon and the Snowman
      • Watership Down
      • Scarecrow
      • Walking Tall
      • Frances
      • The Coca-Cola Kid
      • Bob Roberts
      • Bad Company
      • We Are Marshall
      • Patton
      • The Natural
      • The Crossing Guard
      • Reds
      • The Spook Who Sat by the Door
      • Mud
      • Who is Harry Nilsson
      • Ornette: Made in America
      • Six Degrees of Separation
      • This Film is Not Yet Rated
      • Incident at Oglala
      • That Championship Season
      • The Pope of Greenwich Village
      • Little Murders
      • Assault on Precinct 13
      • Capote
      • Inglourious Basterds
      • The Friends of Eddie Coyle
      • Scorpio
      • The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
      • A New Leaf
      • Seven Psychopaths
      • The Last House on the Left
      • The Deer Hunter
      • Let the Right One In
      • Colour Me Kubrick
      • A Time to Kill
      • A Scanner Darkly
      • Salem's Lot
      • Roman Polanksi: Wanted and Desired
      • The Seven-Ups
      • The Contender
      • Hoffa
      • The Pledge
      • American: The Bill Hicks Story
      • Donnie Brasco
      • Bugsy
      • Milk
      • Reservoir Dogs
      • Glengarry Glen Ross
      • V for Vendetta
      • Trumbo
      • Two in the Wave
      • South of the Border
      • Into the Abyss
      • God Bless America
  • Before the Deluge
    • The Bicycle Thief
    • Judgment at Nuremberg
    • Five Minutes to Live
    • The Manchurian Candidate
    • Hud
    • Pressure Point
    • Blow Up
    • Requiem for a Heavyweight
    • Hurry Sundown
  • Human Flood
    • Jean-Luc Godard >
      • Breathless
      • Masculine Feminine
      • Film Socialisme
    • Brian De Palma >
      • Sisters
      • The Fury
    • Stanley Kubrick >
      • Lolita
      • 2001: A Space Odyssey
      • A Clockwork Orange
      • The Shining
      • Full Metal Jacket
    • Francis Coppola >
      • The Conversation
      • Apocalypse Now
    • Woody Allen >
      • Take the Money and Run
      • Bananas
      • Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But were Afraid to Ask
      • Sleeper
      • Love and Death
      • Annie Hall
      • Interiors
      • Manhattan
      • Stardust Memories
      • Zelig
      • Broadway Danny Rose
      • The Purple Rose of Cairo
      • Hannah and Her Sisters
      • Radio Days
    • Robert Altman >
      • M*A*S*H
      • Brewster McCloud
      • 3 Women
      • Nashville
      • The Gingerbread Man
      • Ready to Wear
      • Gosford Park
      • The Player
    • Luis Bunuel >
      • The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
    • Roman Polanski >
      • Cul-de-Sac
      • Rosemary's Baby
      • MacBeth
      • The Tenant
    • Martin Scorsese >
      • Boxcar Bertha
    • Steven Spielberg >
      • Duel
    • Oliver Stone >
      • Talk Radio
    • Orson Welles >
      • F For Fake
    • Akira Kurosawa >
      • DODES'KA-DEN
    • Max Ophuls
    • John Ford >
      • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
    • John Huston
    • Frank Capra
    • Billy Wilder
    • Roger Corman
    • Bernardo Bertolucci
    • Elia Kazan
    • William Wyler
    • Spike Lee
    • Francois Truffaut >
      • 400 Blows
      • Jules and Jim
      • Bed and Board
    • Jean Renoir
    • Federico Fellini
    • Charlie Chaplin
    • John Cassavetes
    • Agnes Vargas
    • Alain Resnais
    • Eric Rohmer >
      • Claire's Knee
    • Ida Lupino
    • Leni Riefenstahl
    • Penny Marshall
    • Costa-Gavras >
      • The Confession
      • Missing
    • Alfred Hitchcock >
      • Spellbound
      • Shadow of a Doubt
      • The Birds
      • I Confess
      • Dial M for Murder
      • Rear Window
      • To Catch a Thief
      • The Wrong Man
      • Suspicion
      • Saboteur
      • Lifeboat
      • Notorious
      • Rope
      • North by Northwest
      • Psycho
      • The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
  • No Particular Place to Go
  • The Pits
    • The Big Chill
    • W. C. Fields and Me
    • Zabriskie Point
    • Eat The Document
    • Hitler: The Last Ten Days
    • A Boy and His Dog
    • A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
    • The Executioner's Song
    • The Visitors
    • Paul McCartney Really is Dead
    • Going Places
    • Pi
    • Erik the Viking
    • Sometimes They Come Back
    • Thinner
    • Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
    • A Bullet for Pretty Boy
  • Links