Tower Defense: John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 Gets a Medieval Supernatural Makeover
One of John Carpenter’s greatest films is providing the blueprint for an intriguing new supernatural action fantasy, with Paramount Primal picking up Tower Defense, an original project from Snow White and the Huntsman writer Evan Daugherty. Details are deliberately being kept under lock and key for now, but the description alone is enough to get our attention: think Assault on Precinct 13, only transplanted into a medieval world filled with supernatural forces.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Tower Defense is being described as a medieval and supernatural fantasy variation on the central concept of Carpenter’s 1976 siege classic. The intention is reportedly to make the film R rated, which immediately suggests Paramount Primal isn’t looking for a family friendly fantasy adventure. There is currently no director attached, and specific story and character details have not yet been revealed.
That leaves plenty to the imagination. A remote castle or fortified tower, a small collection of people trapped inside, something extremely unpleasant gathering outside and nowhere to run? We can work with that. More importantly, Assault on Precinct 13 is one hell of a film to use as your starting point.
Before Halloween, Carpenter Laid Siege to a Police Station
Two years before Halloween turned John Carpenter into one of the defining filmmakers in horror history, he made Assault on Precinct 13, a brutally economical independent thriller that already contained many of the qualities that would become Carpenter trademarks: widescreen compositions, an unforgettable electronic score, stripped down storytelling, characters who reveal themselves through actions rather than speeches and an apparently unstoppable enemy closing in from the darkness.
The story centres on Lieutenant Ethan Bishop, played by Austin Stoker, who is assigned to oversee the final hours of a Los Angeles police station that is being shut down. What should be a quiet assignment turns into a nightmare after a traumatised man arrives at the precinct, pursued by members of the Street Thunder gang. Soon the almost empty building is surrounded and under attack.
Inside, cops, civilians and prisoners are forced into an uneasy alliance. Among them is convicted killer Napoleon Wilson, played brilliantly by Darwin Joston, who quickly becomes one of the film’s most memorable characters. Laurie Zimmer’s Leigh is every bit as important, remaining remarkably composed as the situation deteriorates around her. The beauty of Carpenter’s set up is its simplicity. The people inside do not particularly trust one another, but whatever differences they have suddenly become considerably less important when an army of armed attackers is trying to get through the windows.
Carpenter made the gang deliberately mysterious. Rather than spending time explaining their individual personalities and motivations, he increasingly presents them as an almost anonymous attacking force. That is one reason Assault on Precinct 13 frequently feels closer to horror than a conventional crime thriller. Carpenter himself acknowledged Night of the Living Dead alongside Rio Bravo as a major influence, and you can feel George A. Romero’s film in the relentless waves of attackers surrounding a small group of survivors.
There is also that infamous ice cream van sequence. Even today, knowing exactly what is coming does little to soften its impact. In 1976 it must have felt positively outrageous. Carpenter wanted to establish that the people attacking the precinct were capable of absolutely anything, and he certainly accomplished that.
The film initially struggled to make much impact in America, but its reputation grew significantly after European festival screenings, including its acclaimed reception in Britain. It eventually became recognised as one of Carpenter’s essential early works and one of the great siege movies.
And Before Assault, There Was Rio Bravo
The DNA goes back even further because Carpenter was never shy about the debt Assault on Precinct 13 owed to Howard Hawks’ magnificent 1959 Western Rio Bravo.
Starring John Wayne as Sheriff John T. Chance, alongside Dean Martin, Ricky Nelson, Angie Dickinson and Walter Brennan, Rio Bravo revolves around a sheriff attempting to hold a prisoner while powerful forces outside threaten to overwhelm him and his unlikely group of allies. Rather than filling the film with enormous battles, Hawks spends considerable time allowing us to know the people who are going to have to stand together when the inevitable confrontation arrives.
That principle became fundamental to Assault on Precinct 13. Carpenter wanted to make a Western but didn’t have the resources, so he effectively moved the Western into contemporary Los Angeles. The sheriff’s office became a closing police precinct. The gunfighters became a street gang. The mismatched defenders remained. Carpenter even edited Assault under the pseudonym John T. Chance, the name of Wayne’s character in Rio Bravo.
There are smaller Hawksian touches scattered throughout the film as well, but Carpenter wasn’t simply copying Rio Bravo. He took its dramatic machinery and combined it with the relentless threat of Night of the Living Dead, exploitation cinema and his own emerging filmmaking style. The result feels unmistakably like Carpenter.
And now, half a century later, Tower Defense appears ready to perform another transformation.
From Western to Urban Thriller to Medieval Horror
That lineage could be what makes Tower Defense particularly interesting. Rio Bravo established a brilliant dramatic situation. Carpenter took that situation and demonstrated how easily it could survive transplantation into another genre and era. Now Daugherty appears to be taking the same basic siege framework somewhere completely different.
A medieval supernatural setting offers enormous possibilities. The attackers no longer need to be gunmen or gang members. They could be monsters, undead creatures, demons or something we haven’t seen before. The police station can become a fortress, castle or isolated stronghold. Guns can become swords, bows and whatever supernatural weaponry the story allows.
But the element that should survive is the pressure cooker.
What makes Assault on Precinct 13 work isn’t simply people firing through windows. It is the gradual reduction of options. Communications disappear. Ammunition dwindles. People who would ordinarily have nothing to do with each other suddenly depend upon one another for survival. Outside is an enemy that cannot be reasoned with. Inside is a collection of personalities who have to decide whether they are capable of standing together.
Put that inside a medieval tower and throw supernatural horror at the walls and you have the potential for something very entertaining indeed.
The planned R rating is another encouraging sign. It doesn’t guarantee anything, of course, but it at least indicates that the filmmakers aren’t necessarily intending to soften the material. If you’re going to invoke Assault on Precinct 13, a film whose reputation was partly built upon just how merciless it could be, going for the throat seems considerably more appropriate than playing things safe.
Daugherty is best known for writing 2012’s Snow White and the Huntsman, and his credits also include Divergent, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Tomb Raider. With Tower Defense, he has created an original concept rather than adapting an existing property, although its acknowledged Carpenter influence gives us a useful indication of the kind of movie being envisioned.
The project has been acquired by Paramount Primal, Paramount’s genre focused label headed by J.D. Lifshitz and Raphael Margules. No cast, production date or release date has been announced, and without a director currently attached there is clearly plenty still to fall into place.
But the pitch is already difficult to resist. Howard Hawks made Rio Bravo. John Carpenter took its bones and turned them into Assault on Precinct 13. Now somebody wants to take Carpenter’s siege machine, drag it back hundreds of years, lock the doors of a medieval stronghold and unleash something supernatural outside.
