Assault on Precinct 13

Even thought it's dated now, Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) is still an entertaining piece of action trash, the first critical success and second feature film of writer-director John Carpenter, who drew from Howard Hawks' Western Rio Bravo in telling the story of Assault. It's about a dilapidated, soon-to-be-closed police station (the power is scheduled to be shut off within twenty-four hours) that is besieged by several youth gangs who have joined forces against the police after six of their own were killed by cops.

Assault on Precinct 13 captures the beautiful sunlit Los Angeles by day, as well as the dark, blue-tinted vastness of Los Angeles by night. Or at least, the L.A. that exists solely in our cinematic imagination. Pauline Kael once remarked that Carpenter didn't seem to have a life outside of movies, and you can see that in his work on Assault on Precinct 13. If he's not borrowing from Howard Hawks (even the leading lady, Laurie Zimmer, has a Lauren Bacallishness that reminds you of Hawks' The Big Sleep), he's borrowing from George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. The two films essentially have the same story, except they exist in different genres.

Nevertheless, Assault has an exciting, compulsively watchable efficiency to it. Carpenter enlists the usual help of his synthesizer to make the action sequences pop, and all the visual tricks that eventually became cliches in his work find their impetus in this movie, from the way the creepy monster/villain emerges into frame unexpectedly, to the generally successful use of lighting, and point-of-view camera shots, to provide a tense atmosphere. Carpenter's "look" somehow manages to be almost claustrophobic and yet spatially sprawling enough to generate that creeping sense of isolation that makes thrillers work.

It's got enough violence to sate the exploitation fan, and enough (apparently) intentionally bad dialogue to amuse the lover of movies, both good and bad. Darwin Joston, as the anti-hero, Napoleon Wilson (who's on death row), utters one corny line after another: "I was born out of time," he remarks; and when he's not making mock-philosophical small-talk, he's asking somebody for a cigarette. Austin Stoker does a successful job at carrying the film as just-promoted Lieutenant Ethan Bishop, sent to Precinct 13 to oversee the last-minute preparations before the station is retired for good, never knowing how intense his first night on the job would be. With Tony Burton, Martin West, Nancy Loomis, Charles Cyphers, and Frank Doubleday as a blond gang member who might have been a precursor to Carpenter's unstoppable maniac, Michael Myers. Oh, how I love unknown actors, who always--even when they're not as polished as trained Hollywood actors--provide that valuable sense of normalcy. These could be your neighbors, in your city. It makes the movie that much more fun. A forgettable remake followed in 2005. 90 min. ★★★

Halloween

John Carpenter's films between Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) and Christine (1983) were supreme examples of how atmosphere can make a movie, and how it can compensate for other less successful attributes. Halloween (1978) is the apex of Carpenter's early career (and ultimately, of all time), full of cinematographer Dean Cundey's ominous tracking shots, and lots of creepy blue lighting, plus Carpenter's chilling--if redundant--score, reminiscent of Mike Oldfield's eerie Exorcist tune.

The story of Halloween is about as simplistic as it gets: a maniac escapes from a mental institute and returns to his hometown of Haddonfield, Illinois, which was the scene of his first crime 15 years earlier when he stabbed his teenage sister to death. For reasons unknown, he goes after three teenage girls: Jamie Lee Curtis, making her film debut, is the most resourceful among them, and P.J. Soles and Nancy Loomis play her friends, who are too busy with their boyfriends to be aware of the masked killer lurking around the corner.

A lot of Halloween is delayed gratification: Carpenter keeps you waiting for the bogeyman to strike, but often times he doesn't. His patience is almost miraculous, except for his horrible intentions. But why is he so patient? And why does he continually let Laurie (Curtis) out of his grasp? Perhaps he's playing a game with her, but because he's supposed to represent evil incarnate, the script--by Carpenter and producer Debra Hill--doesn't try to explain him, or his motivations.

Donald Pleasence classes things up as the obsessive psychiatrist Dr. Loomis, who tried to rehabilitate the child murderer for 15 years, obviously unsuccessfully. He follows the killer--named Michael Myers--to Haddonfield, convinced something bad is going to happen. Pleasence was well-known for playing villains and heels (such as Blofeld in the Bond picture You Only Live Twice). Halloween revived and redirected his career, inaugurating him as the prototype for all the old farts who permeated slasher films in the 1980s. (He's just the slasher era's Van Helsing, really. Wiser than the stupid teenagers, and cunning enough to rival the killer.)

While Halloween isn't a perfect picture, it still ranks as the best of its ilk (with the original Black Christmas just behind it). I can't think of a better "slasher" film, although it's hard to really put it in the same category as the movies it inspired (such as Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Scream). It's not all that violent, and there's almost no blood. Carpenter tries to rely on suspense to make you jump. And while he's not as sophisticated as he's been credited, Carpenter achieves the quality of a Hollywood nightmare: something controlled and very deliberate, but enjoyable when you're able to watch it at work, hitting all the right marks. It's the ultimate popcorn horror flick.

With Charles Cyphers, Nick Castle as The Shape (although it's not his face you see when Laurie briefly unmasks him, but Tony Moran's), Kyle Richards, and Brian Andrews. Followed by seven (!) sequels. Avoid the wretched remake.

The Fog

John Carpenter's The Fog (1980) may be ludicrous as a thriller, but as an exercise in creepiness, it's wonderful fun. Carpenter and co-conspirator Debra Hill had just come off the phenomenal success of their low-budget thriller Halloween (1978), so by comparison The Fog seemed tame to audiences who were by now growing accustomed to more shocks and splatter, and less patient with an atmospheric, deliberately paced ghost story.

The plot involves a cadre of vengeful spirits bent on doling out vengeance (and murky weather) to a small California town on its 100th anniversary. The founding fathers of the community apparently betrayed a group of lepers, leading them to their deaths at the bottom of the sea. Now the lepers have come back to celebrate.

Carpenter relies too much on plodding slasher-film death sequences as the film progresses, but overall it's still one of his best mood-pieces. You find yourself enjoying all the little stories being weaved together throughout the film.

Carpenter imitates two masters in The Fog: Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks. The movie feels like a noirish, supernatural re-imagining of The Birds (the setting reminds you of that film's coastal locale, Bodega Bay, and the fog serves as a stand-in for the birds, creating a similar feeling of apocalyptic doom). Simultaneously, Carpenter invests his scenes with a Hawks-esque film noir feel. That feel is best developed in the scenes of the main character, a local deejay named Stevie Wayne (played by Adrienne Barbeau). Stevie sits solitarily perched in a lighthouse, from which she runs a radio station that plays old jazz standards. From the lighthouse, she has a bird's-eye-view of the whole town. As she observes the fog and begins linking it to a series of deaths, Stevie becomes a voice of warning to the community. Barbeau is perfectly cast as the heroine: she's gutsy and smart, and carries the film well, especially since she's hardly on screen with any other actors.

The Fog deflates a little at the end. The whole movie is a big buildup, layering the scary atmosphere with relish, but there's not a whole lot beneath the atmosphere. Evidently, there were attempts to punch things up by adding a little more violence to the movie after the first cut was finished, but the movie's problem isn't lack of violence but lack of a genuinely scary threat. Fog almost always adds to a horror film, but when the things in the fog are only moderately scary, fog ceases to be effective.

Most of the cast members compensate for the movie's lack of follow-through. Janet Leigh makes a good impression as a local busybody who's spearheading the town's centennial anniversary gala. Jamie Lee Curtis (Leigh's daughter in real life) returns to Carpenter-land, this time not quite as helpless as Laurie Strode was in Halloween. However, she's not memorable in this movie. Her part feels unnecessary to the story, and because there are stronger female characters around her, she fails to stand out. She's even overshadowed by fellow Halloween co-star Nancy Loomis, who plays Leigh's droll assistant in this. The two have an endearingly irritated-with-each-other relationship. With Tom Atkins, Hal Holbrook as an alcoholic priest, Charles Cyphers, and John Houseman, in a creepy bit at the beginning, giving us the town's dark secret in perfect ghost-story fashion.

It might be thinking too deeply to call The Fog an indictment of colonialism, but it certainly points out the irony of celebrating people who murdered and stole to get what they wanted.