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Last week's Movie Quiz winners

Filed under: Imported

Almost three decades ago, when cable was still new and Cinemax was almost 100% movies, a little film called Assault on Precinct 13 became somewhat of a mainstay during the late-night hours. When a friend told me I should watch it, I laughed at him-- the title sounded like countless other generic action movies the cable service used to fill time with in those days, and they were almost always lousy. But one night, while showing off his new videotape-recorder (the Sony Betamax, all $1200 and 100 pounds of it), he popped in a tape of it that he'd made, and before I knew it, I'd become a fan of both the picture and its director, John Carpenter.

Originally titled The Anderson Alamo, it was the young movie-loving director's attempt to make a western (more precisely, to re-make one of his favorites, Rio Bravo) during a time when westerns were dead. So for less than $200,000, he made a movie about an abandoned precinct house under siege by an inner-city gang, with characters, situations and shoot-outs that could have come directly from Howard Hawks himself. And while it shows its age today, primarily in the pacing and its budgetary limitations, there was so much right about it originally that it still holds up as the breath of fresh, action-filled air that it felt like in the late '70s.

The three main actors were basically unknowns, and, unfortunately, stayed that way. Austin Stoker, who played the lead (and a black main character in a non-blaxploitation movies was still a rarity in those last-gasp days of the drive-in), seemed unable to continue his "star" status, and he's listed in only 10 other films at imdb.com, the majority of which had him playing characters called "Officer" and "Guard." The real star of the picture was Darwin Joston, who played the imprisoned killer Napoleon Wilson, and he fared no better, finally becoming a driver (or "transportation captain") on things like Back to the Beach, until his death in 1998. The oddest cast story, though, is that of Laurie Zimmer, who played the tough precinct secretary: after making one other film, she apparently stopped acting altogether, but became the subject of a 2003 French documentary called Do You Remember Laurie Zimmer?, in which she appears. They all deserved better.

Assault on Precinct 13 has only grown in stature over the years, and it can still engage an audience; I watched it recently with a jaded 11-year-old Matrix fan, and he was thrilled by it. Of course, the parasites of Hollywood (a Carpenter title if ever there was one) have already put the moves on it, and a remake with the dread Ethan Hawke is already in the works. I shudder to think how loud, violent and bloated it will be. But it doesn't matter-- Carpenter's film, with its inventive action scenes and fun dialogue, will retain its position as one of the most memorable and important independent films of the past. Even if we never do learn how Napoleon Wilson got his name.

So smokes and congrats to the following quiz winners for getting this one right: Joe Rosenberg, Wayne A. Palmer, Hank Parmer, Mike Everleth, John Anthony, Christopher Bahn and E. Yarber.

Posted by Steve Monaco at February 16, 2004 7:35 PM

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