Christian Divine blogs at Oh My Blog, although you can find his writing, passions, and obsessive love for Otto Preminger’s Skidoo at ChristianDivine.com. This piece was originally written for CREATIVE SCREENWRITING, hence the emphasis on the script, but Christian has graciously reupholstered his essay and donated it to noir month. Enjoy. It’s fine eatin’.

While John Carpenter clearly belongs in a class of recognized film auteurs, the scripts for his movies can be wildly uneven. He has an instinctual knowledge of film and music rhythm (he directs in a kinetic comic panel style) but the limitations of the auteur theory come into focus when one watches The Fog, Christine, Memoirs of An Invisible Man, Village of the Damned and Vampire$ (throwing away most of John Steakley’s fastpaced, funny novel was a bad idea). In other words, his unique widescreen vision cannot always compensate for low-priority narrative. It’s to Carpenter’s testament that we’re willing to go along for the ride anyway. Critics and –audiences — rarely note Carpenter’s films are often satirical (even Escape From LA is more humorous than exciting). To his credit, Carpenter remains a child of the 1970’s cinema: his films usually have ambiguous endings.

However, my favorite John Carpenter film and screenplay, the one that probably reveals most about him as a storyteller, remains the cult favorite from 1976, Assault on Precinct 13. The plot is simple, a broad mash-up of Howard Hawk’s Rio Bravo (1959) and Night of the Living Dead (1968), as a multicultural gang, armed with a cache of stolen weapons, attempt to wreck vengeful havoc on a closed police station inhabited by cops and convicts, who must band together to survive the siege.

What sets this low-budget exploitation film apart from others of the grindhouse/drive-in era is how Carpenter frames a world of urban angst (cops; gangs; prisoners; ghettos) as an expressionist horror film with Hawksian heroes. For a film that cost around 100 grand, the cinematography is striking and influential (I bet James Cameron is a fan too). Blue shadows cover the characters as they speak in a highly stylized manner, with bold dialogue that seems incongruous to the gritty 70’s setting. Yet AOP13 delivers the genre’s prerequisite violence all while tweaking and redefining the hardboiled poetry of film noir.

The first clue that Carpenter has something different on his cinematic mind is when newly promoted Lieutenant Ethan Bishop (nicely played by Austin Stoker), an eager African-American police officer on his first night out, receives uninspiring instructions from his superior:

CAPTAIN COLLINS
I’ve got a temporary re-assignment for you. A little supervisory job for the police department. Proceed to Precinct 9, Division 13 and take over from Captain Gordon.

LT BISHOP
Isn’t that the Anderson precinct? Well they’re
closing it down. Nothing for me to do there but pack boxes and stare at packing crates.

CAPTAIN COLLINS
You want to be a hero your first night out, Lieutenant?

LT BISHOP
Yes, sir!

CAPTAIN COLLINS
There are no heroes anymore, Bishop. Only men
who follow orders.

That odd comment about the lack of heroes turns a routine bit of exposition into the main theme of the movie: outcasts who stand united will overcome adversity and become heroes.

Film Noir rarely celebrates valor, instead focusing on the souls trapped or corrupted by a malevolent society. There are exceptions, as in Fritz Lang’s films. He and other German refugee artists helped create the melancholy standards of noir, yet Lang’s subjects usually sought a way out of the darkness. His focus was on those who challenged the masses — which explains why he left Germany right after Goebbels offered him the Nazi film division. Metropolis (1925) presents a future where humans are actual cogs in the fascist machinery. In Fury (1936), the protagonist is lynched by a town mob, until he returns as what I call the “shadow man” seeking justice. The Big Heat (1953) shows how a policeman, stripped of family and badge, aligns with other outsiders (a disfigured waitress; a disabled clerk) to regain his humanity from the oppressive city.

Above all, the urban milieu is integral to film noir. As my former UC Berkeley professor Anton Kaes notes in his excellent 2000 BFI monograph on Fritz Lang’s classic M (1930), “The street is the site of unplanned possibilities and unknown dangers.” Kaes’ visionary theory also posits a society governed under “total surveillance” — the most apt description of our voyeuristic century. He believed that aspect was key to the genre, wherein the protagonist is subjected to the city mobilizing around him or her, the collective anomie creating a fascistic state of violence and observation. Lang obviously had strong feelings about this as his American films often contain this theme in plot or execution. His Hollywood film, Fury (1936), features Spencer Tracy as the “shadow man” who goes underground until he can confront his attackers in a courtroom. And how does he confront them? By showing newsreel footage of their orgiastic faces during the lynching. Lang was quite aware of the power of a mob to drown out all reason.

To this end, AOP13 features a deadly Southern California gang known as “Street Thunder,” who become blood-brothers and prowl the city looking for innocent prey. They prowl the outskirts of the desolate city, watching and judging potential victims through the scope of a sniper rifle. Some critics argued that the ghetto underclass are presented here as cold silent assassins, eliminating any emotional attachment and espousing a reactionary message. Still, this is diffused by the unlikely multi-racial make-up of the gang.

Actually, the arch dialogue and heroic characters place the world in a clearly metaphorical realm: the gang only represents the decadent world out to destroy noble ideals (even his fellow policemen mock Lt. Bishop for his aspirations). The multicultural protagonists are philosophical minorities, oppressed by a desensitized society. They are then forced together for a common cause. The gangs do have their own loyalty (they’ll fight to the death for each other), but their cause is destruction.

The script’s other major character, Napoleon Wilson, an infamous prisoner awaiting execution, represents the “shadow man” — the film noir persona with a dark past who walks the edge of society. One nifty exchange between the police bureaucrat Starker (Carpenter regular Charles Cyphers) and stoic criminal Wilson illustrates how a brief camaraderie forms between the two disparate men:

WILSON
You got a smoke?

STARKER
No, you asked me already. Remember?

WILSON
I never got a definite answer.

STARKER
I don’t smoke.

WILSON
That’s a definite answer.
(beat)
Another one gone. When you’re in my position,
days are like women: each one is so goddamm
precious. They always end up leaving you.
(beat)
What do you want?

STARKER
Why do I have to want something?

WILSON
You’re a cop. Either you’re curious
about me or you want to give me some shit.

STARKER
I don’t understand you, Wilson.

WILSON
Curious.

STARKER
You’re not crazy, you’re not stupid–

WILSON
I am an asshole. Can’t take everything
from me.

STARKER
Why did you kill those men?

WILSON
Everybody always asks me the same thing.
I always tell ‘em the same thing. When
I was young, a preacher told me, “Son…
you got something to do with death.” Being
real young, I believed him.

STARKER
Come on. That’s no answer.

WILSON
I thought it was pretty good.

STARKER
Where did you get a name like
Napolean Wilson?

WILSON
I’ll tell you some time.

STARKER
When?

WILSON
Moment of dying.

STARKER
I’m going to try to be there when
your time comes.

They finish the scene with a smile between them, sealing their outsider’s bond (Starker not liking the way Wilson was roughed in his cell). Wilson’s “Got a smoke?” refrain is a clever way to establish personality (and has a good pay-off). His crime is wisely kept a mystery, except for that obtuse “Why did you kill those men?” One imagines Wilson being motivated by an honorable vengeance. In any case, this is a shadow man clearly headed for redemption.

Carpenter generates suspense by flashing the time onscreen at various points, i.e., “Saturday, 8:00 PM”. This sets up the convergence of the principals, which culminates when a father seeks refuge in the precinct after avenging the murder of his daughter, killed in one of the most shocking scenes of the decade that still packs a wallop. Once the players and motives have been established, the massive “Street Thunder” gang position themselves outside the station and The Assault On Precinct 13 begins proper.

While this allows Carpenter to direct some kick-ass battle scenes, he also develops the forced bond of the trapped ensemble. Lt. Bishop becomes the de facto leader, operating under the proviso, “I want everybody alive tonight.” Arguably, Ethan Bishop remains one of Carpenter’s most decent and uncynical characters (not to mention an unusual African-American lead role in the decade of Shaft and Superfly). This decency inspires Wilson to shed his shadow self — at least for the night. The pair become a true team when Bishop tosses a shotgun to Wilson, who then blasts three incoming gang members in what is to me, Carpenter’s greatest action moment. After this, Napoleon Wilson becomes one of the good guys.

AOP13 features only a hint of romance between Wilson and the tough police secretary Leigh (probably named after screenwriter Leigh Brackett, who wrote for Howard Hawks). Happily, the two never declare cheap movie love, only a quiet mutual admiration born of unrequited passion. For example, Wilson finally gets his cherished “smoke” when Leigh, using one hand (her other arm wounded), brings up a cigarette out of nowhere, places it in his mouth and lights it with a single match. Venetian shadows cover her face as Wilson luxuriates in his cigarette:

WILSON
You are good.

LEIGH
Sometimes.

An archetypal noir moment, worthy of Bogart and Bacall, updated for the New Exploitation Cinema. They briefly acknowledge their attraction as the conversation becomes more hard-boiled:

LEIGH
The very least of our problems is that
we’ve run out of time.

WILSON
It’s an old story with me. I was born out
of time.

While Big Trouble in Little China would mock these John Wayneisms, AOP13 revels in them. Some find the film problematic because of its quasi-poetic language, yet this is right in line with the purple prose of Hammett and Chandler. Carpenter gives these characters similar extravagant (and unwieldy) speech. Yet they do talk like real people and demonstrate real wit, as when convict Welles (played by the excellent Tony Burton) decides to risk his selfish neck to help the others:

WELLES
Ain’t nobody gonna wish me good luck?

BISHOP/LEIGH
(unison)
Good luck.

WELLES
(to Wilson)
Look at that. Two cops wishing me
luck. I’m doomed.

He is, but not without living up to his word.

After an explosive stand against the full suicidal force of Street Thunder, only Bishop, Wilson, Leigh are left standing as the smoke clears (literally) in a strong image of weary victory. The societal misfits have become a powerful team and did their job protecting the father. The final scene aptly sums up their redemptive evolution. As police try to handcuff Wilson, Bishop angrily pushes them back:

BISHOP
I said get away from him!
(To Wilson)
It would be a privilege if you’d walk
outside with me.

WILSON
I know it would.

BISHOP
(laughs)
You’re pretty fancy, Wilson. You know that?

WILSON
I have moments.

As Carpenter’s coolest synth theme rises, Ethan Bishop and Napoleon Wilson walk together down the blasted hall and ascend the steps…as heroes. Noir becomes light. With this coda, what started out as bleak exploitation ends up as urban poetry. Assault on Precinct 13 remains a bold genre statement and strangely, John Carpenter’s most romantic film.