Alan Koss | Through the Shattered Lens

Legend has it that, when John Carpenter originally offered the role of Dr. Sam Loomis to Donald Pleasence, Pleasence was reluctant to accept it. To Pleasence, Halloween sounded like it would just be another forgettable horror film.

However, when Donald mentioned to his daughter, actress Angela Pleasence, that he had been offered a role in a film by a young director named John Carpenter, Angela immediately told him to accept. She assured him that it would turn out to be a great film. When Donald asked her why she was so sure about this, Angela replied that she had seen Assault on Precinct 13 at the Cannes Film Festival.

1976’s Assault on Precinct 13 was John Carpenter’s second feature film. (The first was Dark Star, which started out as a student film and, even after being extended to feature length, still ended up feeling very much like a student film.) The film takes place in Los Angeles, at an isolated police precinct house that is scheduled to be abandonedd. When the father (Martin Lawson) of a girl (Kim Richards) who was murdered earlier in the day seeks refuge at the precinct, a Che Guevara-influenced street gang launches a relentless late night attack on the building. (Frank Doubleday, who later played Romero in Escape From New York, appears as a member of the gang.) Lt. Ethan Bishop (Austin Stoker) is forced to work with criminal Napoleon Wilson (Darwin Joston) to defeat the gang.

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976, dir by John Carpenter. DP: Douglas Knapp)

John Carpenter later said that Assault of Precinct 13 was his attempt to make a Howard Hawks-style western and, despite taking place in the modern era, it is very much a western. Ethan Bishop is the strong and moral lawman who refuses to allow the untamed land around him to change who he is and what he believes. Napoleon Wilson is the outlaw who finds redemption. In most westerns, the attackers would represent the last gasp of the lawless frontier fighting against encroaching civilization. In the case of Assault on Precinct 13, the opposite is true. The attackers represent the collapse of society and the people in the precinct find themselves fighting not only for their lives but also the ideals of modern civilization. With their relentless drive to attack, the members of the street gang resemble the zombies from George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. They’re so nihilistic and destructive that even a hardened criminal like Napoleon Wilson knows that they have to be stopped. The film’s ultimate message seems to be that, even if Bishop and Wilson and Leigh (Laurie Zimmer) survive the night, the assault on Precinct 13 will never truly end. In a way, we’re all trapped in that abandoned precinct house.

Wow, that sounds pretty grim! And really, it is a grim film. This, after all, is the film in which little Kim Richards is graphically shot in the chest while trying to buy ice cream. (From the start, Carpenter understood the importance of shocking the audience.) That said, there are unexpected moments of dark humor to be found in the film. (Even Kim Richards’s indignation over being given the wrong flavor ice cream is rather humorous, up until she asks for a replacement and gets shot as a result.) Both Bishop and Wilson make for compelling heroes. As Angela Pleasence realized when she saw the movie at Cannes, John Carpenter was and is a natural-born storyteller. Assault on Precinct 13 is a film that wastes no time in getting started and is relentless in both its suspense and its action.

Assault on Precinct 13 has been overshadowed by Carpenter’s subsequent successes but it’s still one of Carpenter’s best films. Without Assault on Precinct 13, we would never have gotten Donald Pleasence as Dr. Sam Loomis. That alone is reason enough to celebrate the film.

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show is currently streaming on Tubi and several other services!

This week, Dick Van Dyke has a puppet show.

Episode 3.15 “Wally”

(Dir by Michael Landon, originally aired on January 14th, 1987)

Jonathan and Mark’s latest assignment is Wally (Dick Van Dyke), a lovable old man who lives in a box in an alley, puts on a streetside puppet show, and goes out of his way to show kindness to everyone, from a dying boy to a woman who, like Wally, is an alcoholic trying to stay sober to the blind men who line the street and ask for help from people walking by. Wally is destined to die, at which point he’ll become an angel. The show suggests that Wally already is angel, having devoted his life to helping other.

Let’s see …. Dick Van Dyke as a saintly, homeless, recovering alcoholic who puts on a puppet show where the puppets discuss the difficulty of being poor in America. Look, you all know how I usually feel about this stuff. I usually take real issue with any film or television show that I find to be overly manipulative or heavy-handed. I’ve also mentioned more than a few times that I think a lot of films and television shows tend to idealize homelessness, an instinct born from good intentions but one that often ignores the very real reality and which is often counter-productive. Too often, being homeless is treated in such a sentimental manner that it actually becomes a bit insulting. Maybe, someday, someone should ask the people who live at the bus stop across the street from the Frank Cowley Courthouse how they feel about things. Speaking as someone who once got called all sorts of names — and yes, one of them started with a C — because she refused an offer of a drink from a bottle in a brown paper bag while she waited for the bus to take her back to the DART train station after a day of jury duty, I could tell you a few things. (Another person who could tell you a few things is a friend of mine in Florida who got evicted from his apartment and who spent a month alternating between living on the street and in a shelter. He told me recently that the main thing he learned from the experience is that no one helps anyone.) When you add that Wally was being played by Dick Van Dyke, a good actor but one who can go a little overboard when cast in a serious role, you can maybe understand what I was expecting from this episode.

And, to a certain extent, I was right. This is Highway to Heaven. It’s not subtle show and this was not a subtle episode. This was an episode where everyone was so charmed by Dick Van Dyke and his puppets that they would happily let him into their homes to perform for sick children but no one was willing to help him get off the streets. This was also an episode where Wally revealed that the money he did make all went to providing a home for someone else. This is an episode where Wally’s kindness literally heals a dying child. This episode was sentimental, heavy-handed, and a little preachy but it worked. The show is just so earnest and Dick Van Dyke’s performance was just so heartfelt that it cast a spell that pretty much negated all cynicism for an hour. (Despite my fears, Van Dyke did not go overboard as Wally, giving a performance that felt genuine and heartfelt.) This was an episode that perhaps should not have worked but it did. It worked wonderfully.