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The Complete Carpenter: Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

The Complete Carpenter: Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

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Assault on Precinct 13 Mondo PosterWelcome back to this eighteen-part series examining the theatrical movies of one John Carpenter, master genre auteur and gift to movie lovers everywhere. Today we bear witness to the director’s first foray into professional filmmaking, shooting on a schedule and a budget. It’s called Assault on Precinct 13, and I don’t mean to spoil this up front for you, but it is a-ma-zing.

The Story

Precinct 9 (not actually 13) in the fictional South Central L.A. neighborhood of Anderson is due to shut down as its operations relocate. Newly promoted Lt. Ethan Bishop (Austin Stoker) receives the assignment of babysitting the meager staff staying overnight in the building for the final bits of housekeeping.

What should be a quiet evening detail goes bloodily wrong when the precinct turns into an epicenter of urban warfare. Heavily-armed multicultural gang Street Thunder targets civilians for death, but after they splatter-kill a little girl (Kim Richards), her enraged father Lawson (Martin West) shoots one of the gang warlords in retaliation. Fleeing Street Thunder’s fury, Lawson takes shelter in the precinct — unaware there isn’t much help available there. The gang descends on the building with the intent to massacre everyone inside. As Street Thunder’s legions crash in waves against the precinct, Lt. Bishop joins forces with two criminals in the holding cells, Napoleon Wilson (Darwin Joston) and Wells (Tony Burton), and station secretary Leigh (Laurie Zimmer) to attempt to survive the night until relief arrives.

The Positives

John Carpenter has a handful of cinematic masterpieces to his credit, and on only his second outing — his first professional production — he bags one. Although Dark Star has charm and shows an emerging talent, nothing in it prepares for the assurance and mastery on display in Assault on Precinct 13. John Carpenter directed the hell out of this movie, taking a laughable budget of $100,000 and a few weeks of shooting to create something glorious and perennial. It’s one of the finest movies of the director’s long career, and as smashing an action-thriller as anybody could make. Each time watching it is a jolt of how effective the art of cinema can be.

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So, What Time Is It?

So, What Time Is It?

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timelessIt’s not often that we in the Fantasy and SF community get two time-travel related productions – the movie Arrival, and the TV series Timeless – at once. Even better, we’re being served two different theories of time, and time travel. (There might be some spoilers for those of you who haven’t seen either film or TV show, so watch out.)

I’ve talked about time as a literary device before, and I’ve looked at time travel specifically as well. In the earlier piece I mentioned the 17th-century English philosopher John Locke, and his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), in which he suggests that humans don’t experience time (or any other abstraction) directly. What we experience is actually a sequence of events, which he calls “duration.” One thing follows another, in one direction, which give us the idea that time is linear.

Aside, Fun Experiment: ask someone to point at yesterday. As a general rule, they’ll do one of two things. They’ll point behind them, or they’ll point to the left (or maybe to the right, if their culture reads that way)

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Goth Chick News: Game Over Man, Game Over

Goth Chick News: Game Over Man, Game Over

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Having been exceptionally good this year, relatively speaking, Santa brought me the second-most-wished-for item on my list.  I sort of understand why it really wasn’t in Santa’s power to bring my most-wished-for “Men of Black Gate” calendar, but the second item was almost as awesome – a Virtual Reality (VR) headset.

If you’ve had the pleasure of experiencing one of these such as the Oculus Rift, then you know how next-level-amazing it is for total immersion into movies and gaming; so much so that the units come riddled with all manner of warnings about motion sickness and disorientation.

Now, imagine the possibilities when considering using it within the horror genre.

Specifically something like the Aliens franchise.

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Pellucidar on Screen: At the Earth’s Core … The Movie

Pellucidar on Screen: At the Earth’s Core … The Movie

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at-the-earths-core-1976-001-posterFew of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s books offer as much promise to modern filmmakers as At the Earth’s Core. The inner world of Pellucidar is vast and strange, and the potential to craft astonishing vistas from this concave land with a sun that never moves is immense. Plus, the tyrannical Mahars are ideally suited for realization as complex creatures using mo-cap.

However, nobody appears to be working on an At the Earth’s Core movie at the moment. For shame. We have to settle for a movie made in the last glory days of low-budget SF spectacle, before the advent of Star Wars. That shining era when rubber monsters, matte paintings, and Doug McClure ruled fantasy cinema.

The 1976 At the Earth’s Core isn’t a bad way to settle. For those who grew up with it, the movie still holds a special charm because of its colorful spectacle and practical effects. It had to sacrifice some of the fascinating parts of the setting of Pellucidar because of budget limitations, but it’s an accurate rendition of Burroughs’s plot.

At the Earth’s Core is second of a trio of mid-‘70s ERB adaptations from the team of producer John Dark and director Kevin Connor for Amicus Productions and American-International Pictures. The first and third films are a split adaptation of the novel The Land That Time Forgot, The Land That Time Forgot (1975) and The People That Time Forgot (1977). Dark and Connor produced two more fantasy films afterward, the ERB-esque Warlords of Atlantis (1978), made after they realized it was too expensive to mount a John Carter movie; and the mostly forgotten Arabian Adventure (1979).

Although I’m about to say many admiring things about At the Earth’s Core, it’s my least favorite of the Amicus-AIP Burroughs movies. The director shares my opinion: Kevin Connor has called the movie “clunky” compared to the other two, and it’s easy to see what he means in the studio-bound confines and the more awkward pacing and plotting. But it’s by no means a bad film, and when I place it a notch below The Land That Time Forgot and The People That Time Forgot, that isn’t a harsh slam. The special appeal of this vanished era of imaginative filmmaking is hard to resist.

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Goth Chick News: Ralphie and His Red Rider BB Gun vs Zombies – Game Over

Goth Chick News: Ralphie and His Red Rider BB Gun vs Zombies – Game Over

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Much like bacon, we here at Goth Chick News think everything is better with zombies. Pride and Prejudice was better. Brad Pitt was way better. And even Romeo and Juliette was a bit better, in a dead-guy-falls-for-living-girl kind of way.

But honestly, even we were skeptical that zombies could improve upon what may be the best holiday movie ever: Bob Clark’s classic A Christmas Story.

Thanks to Buzzfeed’s Jesse McLaren, those of us who have fantasized about Ralphie turning his Red Ryder against the undead have received this 30-second gift via YouTube last week.

Stand aside Daryl Dixon, because Dead Eye Ralphie makes this look good…

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Belated Movie Review #8: A Correlation of Certain Musical Contents

Belated Movie Review #8: A Correlation of Certain Musical Contents

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My last belated movie review “Towards a Unified Theory of Hudson Hawk” ruffled feathers and inspired what the political class calls ‘spirited debate.’ However! I made the following statement in that review :

Is there any movie genre so thoroughly degraded as the musical? Where once they roamed the Theater Landscape in thunderous, glittering fabulous herds, their numbers are now constrained to a few preserves in boutique dinner theaters, and I suppose, the breeding program that is Glee. Oh sure, a few attempts to re-introduce them to the wild have happened, ending tragically vis-à-vis Moulin Rouge.

It has come to my attention that I made a woeful error (some might even say a merciful deletion) of omission! My sin is compounded by the fact that there was a great and grand musical, that it had a plethora of 80s stars, and it was a sci-fi, and a re-make to boot! I refer, of course, to 1986’s Little Shop of Horrors, itself a remake of the 1960 Roger Corman film of the same name.

I’m not sure how I could have forgotten this. Rick Moranis, Bill Murray, Steve Martin, and with Martin Robinson spearheading ever increasingly complex puppetry/animatronics that would make Jim Henson blush!

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The First Blade Runner 2 Trailer is Out!

The First Blade Runner 2 Trailer is Out!

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Blade Runner is my favorite science fiction movie and it’s probably in my Top 10 Movies of All Time as well. It’s scifi, hard boiled noir with great cinematography. I have the 4-disc Director’s Cut DVD set and a couple soundtrack CDs. I played the PC game through twice and I even have D.K. Jeter’s two not-so-great sequel novels (thank goodness they didn’t turn to those for the sequel!).

I am optimistic that Blade Runner 2049, the sequel out next year, over two decades after the original, will be a good movie. Hampton Fancher, who co-wrote the original Blade Runner script, co-wrote this one as well. And Harrison Ford is back as Rick Deckard. Now, I think that Ridley Scott played a pivotal role in the look and feel of Blade Runner. He is listed as an Executive Producer on the new film, but he is not directing. So, I’m a bit concerned.

In the new film, Ryan Gosling plays Agent K, a young blade runner who discovers a secret which could destroy society. So, he seeks out former blade runner Rick Deckard (Ford), who seems to have been missing for thirty years, for help. Visually, this has the Blade Runner feel. And I can’t stress enough how important that’s going to be. If watching this new film doesn’t take you back to the original, it’s going to be a failure.

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Hammer Films for Your Holiday Joy: Rasputin the Mad Monk

Hammer Films for Your Holiday Joy: Rasputin the Mad Monk

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happy-holidays-christopher-lee-rasputinWhen October disappears over the horizon, horror movie DVDs and Blu-rays go into hiding, and streaming services store their terror title watchlists away for another day. But a certain type of off-kilter movie survives through the end of the year. The winter holidays usher in bizarre “ironic” seasonal favorites. You’ll probably watch Die Hard. Me, I’m a fan of Batman Returns when it comes to dark festive cheer. And Gremlins. We can add The Krampus to the list of holiday-themed horror flicks. Your family may insist on National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, although if you’re of my mind you’d prefer your cartoony Christmas violence via Home Alone. Or In Bruges. The Lord of the Rings films have a certain holiday vibe, and the same goes for the Harry Potter saga. If you want to take in a Bond movie for the Yuletide, there’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service … although you may wish to shut it off two minutes before the end.

But is there a place for Britain’s legendary Hammer Film Productions during Winter Solstice? After the 31st of October, do the Hammer DVDs and Blu-rays need to stay put by the Demon Elf on the Shelf?

No, I say! Hammer has a seasonal holiday treat, Rasputin the Mad Monk (1966). Okay, maybe only I consider it a holiday watch, but I’d like to share it with you.

Rasputin the Mad Monk is not a horror film. I have to make this clear upfront. Although released in many territories on a double bill with The Reptile and later paired with The Devil Rides Out on its first DVD release, Rasputin the Mad Monk is a historical melodrama with violent flourishes. Because the Hammer name is so synonymous today with “horror,” we forget that Hammer Film Productions was a busy studio that also put out comedies, science fiction, crime dramas, psychological thrillers, historical costume pictures, and adventure movies. Their reputation for horror ended up affecting the marketing of some non-horror fare: The Hounds of the Baskervilles (1959), a straight Sherlock Holmes adaptation, was sold with a drooling spectral wolfshead on the posters. Captain Clegg (1962), a swashbuckler about smugglers, was rechristened Night Creatures in the U.S. for no reason except that the distributor had that title lying around and wanted an excuse to use it.

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Always Winter, Never Christmas?

Always Winter, Never Christmas?

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Just a short post this week, since I’m sure we all want to get back to our holiday celebrations.

And speaking of which, I’m sure that everyone who remembers The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as well as I do knows where today’s title comes from. The first time that Lucy finds herself in in Narnia, she meets Tumnus the faun, who tells her that because of the power of the White Queen, in Narnia it’s always winter, but never Christmas.

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Fantasia 2016: An Attempt At A Conclusion

Fantasia 2016: An Attempt At A Conclusion

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The 2016 Fantasia International Film FestivalHaving finally posted reviews of all the movies I saw at the 2016 Fantasia International Film Festival, I want by way of conclusion to think about what I’ve learned. I don’t just mean about film, or about the film industry. But about genre, and what genre does, and how it works on film.

I will start, though, by saying that I feel I have learned a little bit more this year about the way the film industry works. For one thing, I’ve seen how quickly the business moves; a number of works I’ve reviewed have already turned up on Netflix, Amazon, or a video-on-demand service. For another thing, I saw this year how important the length of a movie can be — I saw more films this year than last that pushed the two-hour mark, and if some of them justified that length, others perhaps did not. And: for whatever reason, this year I was struck by the scale of ambition it takes to make a film, in the sense of how many resources it takes and how many moving parts are involved. Even a relatively cheap movie will cost six figures; even a no-budget film probably has a budget, and that budget probably has at least five digits in it. I knew this, of course. But for whatever reason, what I heard in the question-and-answer sessions with the directors this year brought home how much making a movie involves project management; how many moving parts are involved in filmmaking, the sheer scale not just of a major production but even of a very small one.

Still: what really hit me this year was the way that film, and people in film, approached genre. Guillermo del Toro’s impassioned discussions of the importance of genre, horror, and monsters helped frame the festival for me. I found myself watching how a movie, how a story, approached the idea of genre. How it played with conventions, referred to other films, or tried to forge its own path. I think I do tend to focus on these things anyway, but at Fantasia this year the movies I saw seemed to come together to demonstrate something about the nature of genre and moviemaking.

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