Tag Archives: Darwin Joston

Film Review: Assault on Precinct 13 (dir by John Carpenter)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

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.

Film Review: Eraserhead (dir by David Lynch)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Jack Nance in David Lynch’s Eraserhead

I’ve been thinking about Eraserhead ever since I first heard the news about David Lynch’s passing.

Filmed in harsh but beautiful black-and-white and first released in 1977 (after a production period that lasted for seven years), Eraserhead tells the story of Henry Spencer (Jack Nance), an awkward young man who has the haircut that gives the film it’s name and who wanders through the film like an alienated character in a Kafka story.  He lives in an industrial landscape and almost every scene seems to have the sound of machinery droning away in the background.  He lives in an dark apartment and it appears that there’s a woman living in a radiator who sings that, “In heaven, everything is fine,” while stomping on sperm creatures.  Occasionally, a mysterious woman in the hallway talks to him.  Henry doesn’t seem to have a job or any sort of interests.  He doesn’t really have much of a personality.  Jack Nance, who would go on to become a member of David Lynch’s regular ensemble, has a permanently dazed expression on his face.  It’s hard not to feel sorry for Henry, even if he isn’t quite sympathetic.  In Heaven, everything is fine but in Henry’s world, it’s much different.

Henry has a girlfriend named Mary X (Charlotte Stewart).  Mary lives with her parents in an apartment near the train tracks.  When Henry goes over to her place for dinner, her father shows off how he can’t feel anything in his arm.  Eating a piece of chicken becomes awkward when it appears to be alive and bleeding.  Mary seems to have some sort of seizure.  Mary’s mother informs Henry that Mary has had a mutant baby and Henry must take care of it.  The baby (represented by a grotesque puppet) has no arms or legs or, it would appear, skin.  It cries constantly, despite Henry’s attempts to care for it.  The baby is the only truly sympathetic character in the film.

Eraserhead is often described as being a film that’s difficult to understand but, by Lynch standards, it’s not that hard to figure out.  Lynch himself said that the film was fueled by his own anxiety over being a father and, throughout the film, Henry tries to take care of the baby but everything he does just makes things worse.  As is often the case with Lynch’s film, many viewers get caught up in wondering why when they should just be paying attention to what happens.  Why is the baby a mutant?  Because it is.  Why does Henry live in the middle of an industrial park?  Because he does.  Who is the scarred man who appears at the start of the film and who apparently pushes the levers that lead to Mary’s pregnancy?  Again, it’s less important who he is and more important that he’s there and now, Henry is a father despite being woefully unprepared.  Even if the viewer learned the scarred man’s identity (or if Henry even learned of his existence), it wouldn’t change Henry’s situation.  (Technically, of course, the man is Sissy Spacek’s husband and frequent Lynch collaborator, Jack Fisk.)  Eraserhead is a visually surreal film but it’s also an very emotionally honest one.  Henry may be stuck in, as Lynch once put it, a “dream of dark and disturbing things,” but his fears and his anxiety are portrayed realistically  That emotional honesty is something that would appear in all of Lynch’s work and it’s why he was one of our most important filmmakers.

Sadly, David Lynch is now gone.  So is Jack Nance.  But their work will live on forever.

Eraserhead (1977, dir by David Lynch, DP: Frederick Elmes, Herbert Cardwell)

Horror On The Lens: Time Walker (dir by Tom Kennedy)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s horror on the lens is 1982’s Time Walker!

Time Walker tells the story of what happens when a mummy that’s actually an alien awakens on a college campus.  As you might guess, mayhem and bad fashion choices ensue.  To be honest, Time Walker is not the best horror film ever made.  In fact, it’s actually pretty bad.  However, it is definitely a time capsule of the era in which it was produced and it has one of those WTF endings that you kind of have to see for yourself.

Enjoy!

Scenes I Love: Assault on Precinct 13

Posted on by Arleigh

I think by now both fellow writers for the site and those who frequent said site know of my love for all and everything John Carpenter. I consider him one of the most underappreciated American filmmakers. All his films contribute something even those where one wonders if he has lost his mojo (I’m looking at you Ghosts of Mars). One of his very first films and one that still resonate with many of his fans is the low-budget and modern remake of Howard Hawk’s Rio Bravo. The latest “Scenes I Love” come from this remake which was called Assault on Precinct 13.

This was a film made for just $100,000 and while the low-budget shows it doesn’t stop Carpenter from creating a grindhouse classic. One of my favorite scenes in this film is the scene chosen. It’s very close to the beginning of the film as a violent street gang called the Street Thunder has vowed a blood vendetta against the LAPD and the citizens of LA. The scene in question show just how far these gangbangers were willing to go with their vendetta.

There’s always been several cardinal rules of grindhouse filmmaker and this scene definitely stays true to the notion that nothing is off-llimits. Carpenter shows just how much he understands this rule. In mainstream films children are oft put in danger but never to the point that they actually die on-screen. There’s always some adult to save them in the end and give the film a happy Hollywood ending. Carpenter doesn’t care for that and this scene proves just how much he doesn’t.

The first time I saw this scene I was surprised, shocked and left speechless. Carpenter had the stones to kill that young girl (and a blond in pigtails at that) with her ice cream cone right on the screen. From that moment on I knew I was in for a ride and I wouldn’t know whether Carpenter would take it easy on his audience or just continue to mess with them. This scene begins a chain reaction of why I love Carpenter films and will continue to love his past, present and future work.