January 6, 2010 - Assault on Precinct 13

I'm pretty excited that John Carpenter is tied with George Lucas for the single most represented director in our 40 Years/40 Movies series. That's due in part to our regularly scheduled monthly event for January being the Carpenter/Kurt Russell holy trinity, but mostly because I had to make room for his pre-Halloween classic, Assault of Precinct 13.

I took to the film in the early days of home video, no doubt because it's a siege film along the lines of Romero's Night of the Living Dead. It's got a fantastic Carpenter score, and a great anti-hero in Darwin Joston's Napolean Wilson. While it's Carpenter's homage to Rio Bravo, for this viewer it's a far superior entertainment than the dated western. And it's got Disney sweetheart Kim Richards in a pivotal role, to boot!

We hope you'll join us for a Vanilla Twist on January 6th.