A lot of action for a closed-down station.
It's been quite a while since I visited the TCM Underground, but I had an excellent reason to do so today because this weekend's selection was John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13, which has been long overdue for a re-watch. Made in 1976, it was his follow-up to Dark Star, the student film he made with Dan O'Bannon that provided both of them with their entree into the industry. For O'Bannon, that meant being tapped by Alejandro Jodorowsky to work on the special effects for Dune. For Carpenter, it meant writing screenplays on spec until he could convince somebody to let him make one. As it turned out, this was the one.
Modeled after Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo -- with a dash of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead thrown in -- Assault was Carpenter's opportunity to prove he could write, direct, edit and score a professional-looking picture on a limited budget, and he delivered in a big way. A model of economy, his screenplay patiently establishes all of the major characters and lays out its themes, so that when the decommissioned police station where they've all wound up is besieged by a well-armed South Los Angeles street gang, we know who they are and have a pretty good idea how they're going to act. This is true of Bishop (Austin Stoker), a newly promoted police lieutenant whose first assignment is to babysit Precinct 9, Division 13 (located in his old stomping grounds) on its last night of operation. It's true of Wilson (Darwin Joston), a notorious killer bound for death row whose bus makes an unscheduled stop when one of his fellow prisoners gets sick. And it's especially true of Leigh (Laurie Zimmer), a hard-edged heroine in the Hawksian mold who proves to be a good woman in a tight spot.
Assault on Precinct 13 was in important film professionally for Carpenter since it solidified relationships with a number of people he would work with on his real breakthrough Halloween -- both in front of and behind the camera. On the acting side, there's Charles Cyphers (who went on to play sheriff Leigh Brackett -- another nod to Rio Bravo's screenwriter) as Starker, the special officer transporting Wilson, and Nancy Loomis (who played his daughter Annie) as Julie, the precinct secretary who all but goes to pieces when the bullets start flying. And Tommy Lee Wallace (who had previously worked as an associate art director on Dark Star) handled both the art direction and sound effects, after which he was promoted to production designer and editor. I guess when somebody has been in the trenches with you on a film like this, you're more apt to keep them around.