LAST SHIFT (2014)

The more learned viewer will definitely notice right off the bat that Last Shift is borrowing from John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13, but this time instead of a small band of cops and clerks taking on roving attacking gangs, it's just one rookie cop taking on the demons/ghosts/bloody secret history of the decommissioned police station of which she's in charge for its final shift. And it's not just thematically that director Anthony DiBlasi (Dread) is looking to Carpenter for inspiration, but also for the old-school approach.

Like Assault on Precinct 13, there are very few visual effects employed to scare the viewer; except for the minor use of green screen, nearly every gag is done with editing and camera tricks, and all of them work. There is no CGI on hand to offend the eye. And the cast is limited to just a handful of people, with most of Last Shift being a one-woman show (Juliana Harkavy).

Last Shift feels comprised of other horror films, some celebrated and some not (and that's not a condemnation). Along with Assault, there are shades of Silent Hill, The Shining, and Jacob's Ladder, mixed with real-life horror aspects, especially Charles Manson and his so-called family. Though a digital shoot, a '70s-era level of grain has been applied, preserving that old school approach toward which Last Shift is striving. What that ultimately achieves is something old and something new - old techniques married to new sensibilities - and it's created an effective horror offering that manages to out-scare most major horror theatrical releases all the way back to 2013's The Conjuring.

Most importantly? Last Shift is seriously scary, falling back on another '70s concept beyond Carpenter and that specific era of cinema: the fear of encroaching satanism. The boogeyman and his followers featured in the flick are not Charles Manson and his Family, and are never called such (his name is John Michael Paymon, the surname being that of a demon most recently immortalized by another seriously scary flick, 2017's Hereditary), but at the same time, they are. The hallmarks are there: the long-haired, crazy-eyed, charismatic leader; the hippie chicks who follow him around; and his very disturbing agenda.

DiBlasi's efforts in the horror genre have so far been worth at least a single watch, with each subsequent film being superior to the previous. Last Shift is his best effort to date. If this trend continues, his name will be one to watch with each new project he announces.

One of the best-kept secrets of 2015, Last Shift’s intimate location and strong performance by the lead heroine really helps to put you in the middle of the horror she's experiencing. Whether or not you'll find it creepy obviously depends on your sensibilities as a horror fan, but one thing that's certain is Last Shift is going to try its damnedest. Once the horror starts, it doesn't let up until its vicious finale, and for that alone, Last Shift is worth praising.

ESCAPE FROM L.A. (1996)

Escape from L.A. is the punchline in John Carpenter’s career, and there’s all sorts of reasons for this, which we'll get into in a second. It's not just the only sequel he’s ever directed, but it's a sequel to one of his most celebrated (and you know how sequels go...). Escape from New York, made in 1981 during the beginning of Carpenter’s directorial career, was a scrappy, low-budget, grindhouse-lite action/sc-fi romp that seemed like the first time Carpenter made a film that showed his true voice and passion as a filmmaker. Sure, by then, Halloween had come along and, after a few false negative first impressions, finally caught on with audiences and critics, making his career one to follow. That Carpenter hasn’t made a film that feels like Halloween since then shows that his worldview was a bit more audacious. His interest in earlier western filmmakers like Howard Hawks and John Ford, and those particular films which saw a small motley band of gunfighters working together in isolated environments to fend off siege-like attacks from a larger, deadlier threat has been a major part in a dozen of his films. In a way, Escape from New York is his thesis statement as a director, as it contains all his technical hallmarks, boasts all the different storytelling facets through which he would express himself during his entire career, and finally, stars his longtime actor collaborator, Kurt Russell.

While Escape from L.A. is almost the antithesis to Carpenter as a director, which sees him applying a big studio, bullshit approach to the same story he was able to tell with better results at a tenth of the budget, it’s right on par with his tendency as a storyteller to skewer certain societal aspects, whether it be religion (Prince of Darkness), pop culture (In the Mouth of Madness), or the unholy alliance between politics and the media (They Live). Though Escape from L.A. isn’t interested in tackling such heavy topics, it’s still successful in its goal, which is to skewer the superficiality of Hollywood and the culture of the greater Los Angeles area while telling the kind of story that Carpenter likes to tell: a band of gunfighters up against impossible odds. Whether or not you consider Escape from L.A. a failure (most people do), there’s a certain romanticism of the film that can’t be denied...but that’s only if you take the film as just one small part in a long career of its three main collaborators: co-writer/director Carpenter, co-writer/co-producer/actor Russell, and co-writer/co-producer Debra Hill. All three (mostly) reprise their roles and responsibilities from Escape from New York, only now they’re doing it after having found success in the studio system, alongside its many pitfalls and trappings that can ruin the enthusiasm and idealism of young, budding filmmakers. Following his pre-classic release of The Thing, Carpenter learned the hard way how quickly a career trajectory can change once studios begin to view you as a wild card director who may not deliver a film to an audience that’s ready for it. Escape from New York was the result of three collaborators making a movie with the enthusiasm and idealism of uncorrupted filmmakers. Escape from L.A. was the same story retold with an organically accumulated hostility toward the very industry that took this thing they once loved and made it harder and harder for them to do it. Once Snake “agrees” to his latest search-and-rescue mission and is sent via underwater into the prison known as Los Angeles, one of the first images the audience sees is the appearance of a battered sign for Universal Studios and a great white shark trying to take a bite out of Plissken’s sub. It’s hard not to read between the lines at what Carpenter and co. are saying: ever since JAWS brought about the advent of the big summer tentpole movie, working in the studio system has never been the same.

Of course, if you’re examining Escape from L.A. as nothing more than a standalone movie without reference or knowledge of the people who made it, their relationships to each other, or their various endured hardships over the years, then yes, it’s a cartoonish, underwhelming, at times incoherent title that struggles to maintain that line between high-stakes sadistic action and audience-pleasing studio product. The visual effects are bad, the basketball sequence is worse (in spite of Russell’s purportedly genuine full-court basket shot), and most of the characters seem to be taking over for their counterparts from Escape from New York. (Steve Buscemi succeeds Ernest Borgnine while Valeria Golino succeeds Adrienne Barbeau and Season Hubley.) It should come as no surprise that Kurt Russell’s as good as ever as the eye-patched antihero Snake Plissken, and his Clint Eastwood sneer hasn’t diminished in any way in the fifteen years between entries. The problem is the hero can’t be nearly as interesting if he’s not up against a viable foe, and unfortunately, Cuervo Jones (George Corraface) is the least interesting villain in Carpenter’s body of work, even when recognizing that very few of his villains were human. There’s nothing wrong with the actor’s performance; it’s just that the character is a pale shade of Isaac Hayes’ Duke from Escape from New York, who didn’t need large, explosive scenes to embody his tough-guy swagger. 

If Carpenter has ever been good at one thing, like the best science fiction writers, it’s been foretelling the future of society. They Live presented a future where people were mindlessly controlled by the media while living in squalor, accepting that it was all part of the plan. With Cliff Robertson’s unnamed role of The President, Escape from L.A. easily foretold the arrival of Donald Trump in the highest office. While Carpenter’s version of the President was of a religious fundamentalist building walls to keep out a certain element, Trump is doing nearly the same, only his own narcissism won’t allow him to recognize a force out in the universe that’s greater than himself. That both the fictional and real president each have a daughter to whom the underrepresented populace of the United States were looking for some kind of hope, it’s sadly ironic that only the fictional one had the wherewithal to stand up to her fascist father and reject his fundamentalist leadership. And, that Robertson very subtly quotes infamous nazi leader Joseph Goebbels in the film’s final moments is a stark reminder to the current reality we’re all being forced to share in which the real so-called president goes on national television and defends...nazis.

As time goes on, and Carpenter teases us with film projects that are probably never going to become reality, his fans are forced to accept that he’s more content to be a producer and a rock star these days, and that’s fine. His body of work speaks volumes and he’s already inspired the next generation of filmmakers who aren’t ashamed to admit it. While I’d love to see him and Kurt Russell collaborate on the long-mooted Escape from Earth (seems like a good way to work climate change into the mix, since Planet Earth is pretty well fucked anyway), both of them have already gone on record as saying they’re simply too old to entertain such a notion. Though it’s natural to take a filmmaker’s body of work and war its films against each other, I’ll always be grateful for every film bearing the name of John Carpenter, Director—even the so-called duds like this one.

[Reprinted from Daily Grindhouse.]

NEW YEAR'S WATCHING: ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 (2005)

Remakes of John Carpenter’s films so far haven’t really yielded anything considered a total success in that they were both critically and commercially successful. Even though Rob Zombie’s awful Halloween remake somehow has its defenders, the 2005 remake of The Fog is universally derided, and rightfully so (though both made obscene money at the box office). Meanwhile, the maiden voyage of the Carpenter remake trend was 2005’s Assault on Precinct 13, directed by French filmmaker Jean-François Richet (the similarly underrated Blood Father with Mel Gibson) and boasting a pretty excellent cast of Ethan Hawke, Laurence Fishburne, Gabriel Byrne, Brian Dennehy, Maria Bello, Drea de Matteo, John Leguizamo, and lots more recognizable faces. It came and left theaters quickly, doing moderately well with critics, who apparently were the only ones who saw the thing, which is a shame, because—remake of a beloved cult film or not—it’s pretty damn entertaining.

Like any good remake should do, Assault on Precinct 13 takes the basic concept of the original, maintaining the setting, the characters, and the siege-like component, and throws it all into a blender along with some shake-ups to the story. This time, instead of gang members descending on a decommissioned police precinct, it’s a horde of corrupt cops trying to assassinate gang leader Marion Bishop (Fishburne), who has done his fair share of dirty dealings with those cops and has the power to put them away for good—if he survives New Year’s Eve and testifies against them in court. (Bishop was the name of the hero in the original, played by Austin Stoker; though Fishburne steps into the villain role, it’s without the name “Napoleon Wilson,” which I guess didn’t sound as bad-ass thirty years later.)  Naturally, once the corrupt cops descend on the police station, which lacks any kind of communication lines since the place is no longer “on duty,” and with a blinding New Year’s Eve snowstorm isolating them even further, the precinct’s cops and crooks must band together if they want to survive the night.

The screenplay was handled by James DeMonaco, who had just written the very successful hostage thriller The Negotiator with Samuel L. Jackson and then-beloved Kevin Spacey. Interestingly, DeMonaco would become a force ten years later in Hollywood alongside Blumhouse by writing and directing the Purge series, which DeMonaco had said from the very beginning was inspired by Carpenter and his penchant for siege and anti-order films. Obviously, the original Assault on Precinct 13 was a very low budget affair bordering on grindhouse cinema, made by an unknown and untested director (who in typical Carpenter style also wrote, edited, and scored the film) and starred a cast of unknown or obscure actors. Meanwhile, 2005’s remake is big, glossy, and made with as much spectacle as director Richet can get away with while remaining faithful to the claustrophobic setting. Carpenter has admitted over the years that the original Assault on Precinct 13 was a loose remake/combination of Rio Bravo and Night of the Living Dead, referring to it nearly as a zombie movie, and the redux maintains that same kind of claustrophobic environment where hope for rescue dwindles by the hour.

Appropriately, Richet and DeMonaco are very aware of Carpenter’s overall career as a horror director, even though he’d wandered away from that genre several times to make action-thrillers (Escape from New York), comedies (Memoirs of an Invisible Man), dramas (Elvis), and, as Carpenter likes to put it, “girly movies” (Starman). Because of this, even though this Assault on Precinct 13 is still well within the action-thriller genre, it unfolds almost like a slasher movie, in that several members of its ensemble cast are picked off one by one in violent ways, with many of them not being characters (or actors) you’d ever expect to see bite the big one.  

Ethan Hawke jumps from genre to genre as well, never hanging his hat too long in any one place, though he seldom played the role of action hero even in his youth. Besides the terrible Getaway and the obscure but decent 24 Hours to Live, Assault on Precinct 13 sees Hawke in a rare full-on popcorn action role and you can tell he’s having fun with material that doesn’t require as much psychological pathos as the parts he ordinarily likes to play. (He was phenomenal in last year’s First Reformed, for example.)  Like the geekiest of directors, Hawke respects and enjoys different kinds of films, and he puts in a laudable amount of effort to make his character of Sgt. Jake Roenick more than just your typical apprehensive hero.  As for Fishburne as the “bad guy,” well, as most actors will tell you, it’s always much more fun to play the villain, and he knows it, and he does it well. Fishburne’s intensity and swagger has always cast an intimidating pallor over many of his roles, even when playing the good guy, so it’s not exactly necessary to suspend disbelief when seeing him in this kind of role. 

Carpenter has been sly over the years when asked for his opinions on remakes of his films, saying that though the remakes were based on his movies, those remakes belong to other filmmakers and it wouldn’t be his place to comment. (Me thinks this was mostly his way of having to avoid publicly calling Rob Zombie’s Halloween a piece of shit considering they were friends, even though he basically did that very same thing later on.) Still, Carpenter had kind things to say about Assault on Precinct 13, saying in an interview, “I thought it was terrific. I thought the cast was sensational. I just loved it.” 

He’s not the only one.

JOHN CARPENTER: LIVE RETROSPECTIVE

"I'm a director of horror movies. I love horror movies. Horror movies will live forever." 

After thirty years, John Carpenter is finally getting his due. And he's having fun again.

For those who have followed the trials and tribulations of the cult director, everyone knows that he's a man who has consistently proven to be ahead of the times. One of his most celebrated films, Halloween, was met with critical dismissal and audience disinterest upon its initial release, but which saw a total reversal on both of those fronts over the coming months. It was "the little indie film that could," as the dearly departed co-producer/co-writer Debra Hill once put it, and it would go on to become one of the most respected horror films of all time and spawn a franchise comprising eleven films, with two more entries on their way. A similar fate would befall The Thing, perhaps the director's most respected film, which would not only have its own reversal in the minds of critics and hearts of audiences, but nearly derail Carpenter's career, putting him on a different path of safer studio fare (Christine, Starman) to show audiences he was capable of telling less icky, mean-spirited stories.

But the 2010s have shown that Carpenter's impact hasn't just been on audiences, for whom he's provided decades of nightmares, but on a legion of filmmakers who have grown up under his tutelage. Adam Wingard with The Guest. Jim Mickle with Cold in July. Jeff Nichols with Midnight Special. David Robert Mitchell with It Follows. And this list is endless, as new films are announced all the time that cite Carpenter as their inspiration. None of these filmmakers hide their love and respect for a man who, for much of his career, received too little of both. The current iteration of Hollywood, which so far has remade four of Carpenter's best efforts, with more on the way, and where Halloween and Vampires have been sequelled into mediocrity, is the same land where Carpenter can't find funding for his own projects. To film fans, that can be especially aggravating. But as he's so far proven during his John Carpenter: Live Retrospective tour, he has gotten the last laugh, night after night. Because try as producers might to keep re-purposing Carpenter films through remakes or sequels in a blind effort to achieve mastery through affiliation, they will never even begin to touch the majesty of seeing him perform his most famous themes as part of a six-piece band (which includes his son Cody Carpenter, Daniel Davies, John Konesky, Scott Seiver, and John Spiker).

In July of 2016, I got my chance.

Much like Carpenter's filmmaking style, musical style, and much like the man himself, John Carpenter: Live Retrospective featured zero bullshit. There was no opening act, and no intermission. There were no pyrotechnics, no surprise guests, no gimmicks. The presentation was simplistic, to the point, and somewhat dorky (said in the lovingest way possible). During performances of his film themes, a large screen behind the band played a muted montage of the appropriate title. And for cuts from his two Lost Themes albums, that screen either displayed abstract light shows, or nothing at all. During The Fog, the stage filled with...you guessed it...fog. For They Live, the band paused after the song's intro to slip on some Ray-Bans. During Big Trouble in Little China, which Carpenter introduced as being a search for "the girl with green eyes," the lights illuminated solid green. And for every single one of these tracks, film themes or otherwise, Carpenter was chewing gum and dancing adorably behind his keyboard. He was beckoning to the crowd for rhythmic hand claps, the devil horns, and during Big Trouble in Little China's "Porkchop Express," the hand gesture shown off by several of its characters, known as the "Buddha finger." And the crowd, who waited with bated breath for the most recognizable horror theme of all time, lost their minds as the band launched into the main titles for Halloween, which they followed up with In the Mouth of Madness, likely the closest thing to rock 'n roll the director has ever scored. Even cuts from the surprise album "Lost Themes II," which is quite different from its predecessor, demanded new evaluation when presented so intimately and enthusiastically by its musical personnel. "Distant Dream" alone proved this.

In a night filled with surprises, the band chose to end the show with an unexpected choice: a track from Christine, a less celebrated title with a less celebrated soundtrack. But as the band performed, you could see why: because they enjoy the hell out of themselves as they play it--more than any other song in their set list.

Some film tracks, such as The Fog, are as you remember them. But so many others, now with the use of a full band, sound electrifyingly new. Never have the main titles from Escape From New York, confined so long to merely synthesizer, sounded so full and tremendous and utterly bad-ass. And with scenes from the film playing out on screen featuring Harry Dean Stanton's Brain and Donald Pleasence's President of the United States, the crowd was reminded that they don't just love Carpenter's films, and they don't just love his music, but they love his music because of his films, and they love his films because of his music.

Seeing John Carpenter embark on a tour during which honors his own legacy--one so often disregarded unless it's being exploited--offered another stark reminder: in this world of endless sequels, remakes, and loving cinema homages, there will only ever be one John Carpenter. The John Carpenter: Live Retrospective tour has come to an end, but a second tour that promoted his movie themes, was immediately announced. Will Carpenter and co. tour again? Never say never. If they do, and you haven't yet had the pleasure, don't miss out. (Or, of course, you can pick up a Blu-ray of the tour from Storm King Productions.)

Set List

Escape From New York (Main Title)

Assault on Precinct 13 (Main Title)

Vortex (from Lost Themes)

Mystery (from Lost Themes)

The Fog (Main Title)

They Live (Coming To L.A.)

The Thing (Main Theme - Desolation) (Ennio Morricone cover)

Distant Dream (from Lost Themes II)

Big Trouble in Little China (Pork Chop Express)

Wraith (from Lost Themes II)

Night (Daniel Davies solo; from Lost Themes)

Halloween (Main Title)

In the Mouth of Madness (Main Title)

Encore:

Prince of Darkness (Darkness Begins)

Virtual Survivor (from Lost Themes II)

Purgatory (from Lost Themes)

Christine: Christine Attacks (Plymouth Fury)

FILMOGRAPHY