Assault on Precinct 13, 1976
Welcome back to another exciting edition of Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers! This week J. Blake and Dion Baia are back, and opening up the Spring/Summer season up with a classic, a debut [of sorts] from a director who went on to become sleepover royalty. The boys are tackling John Carpenter‘s thriller, Assault on Precinct 13, from 1976!
Dion and Blake discuss their history with this film and the horrifying and controversial aspects it presents, and unpack the various influences on John Carpenter that helped him
And we would like to thank this week’s sponsor, Keeps!
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This film has an interesting backstory as that John Carpenter originally declined to direct instead opting to write the screenplay and produce, but then actually took the project away from director Rick Rosenthal, adding and directing additional scenes to make the film gorier than the original, so to compete with the other ‘slasher’ films of the time. This may have ended up confusing audiences because the film had a notorious ‘TV‘ or ‘Producers‘ Cut, which not only changes the fate of some central characters, but also varied the degree of gore associated with each of Michael Myer’s victims. Was this really the first time a sequel picks up seconds after the original ended, since Bride of Frankenstein some 50 years earlier? Did Rosenthal actually get Orson Welles-ed by Carpenter? How does this compare to the original, a classic that practically jump started an entire subgenre? What was the controversy some years back with the omission of legendary Producer Moustapha Akkad‘s credit on the 2011 Blu-ray rerelease that so enraged the loyal fans of the franchise? How awesome was Donald Pleasance‘s performance? Did Lance Guest‘s character actually die or not? And what the heck happened to Ben Tramer?! Plus, hear Blake talk about the afternoon he spent with Joe Bob Briggs in all places- a hotel room? All these questions and more will be answered in this exciting, Halloween Edition of Saturday Night Movie Sleepovers!