Film Screenings / Programs / Retrospectives
2 BY JOHN CARPENTER
June 16 – June 22
This summer we offer screenings of the first two films by the great John Carpenter. The still-not-adequately celebrated DARK STAR is a bizarre, hilarious, and strangely soulful stoner sci-fi feature whose stylistic confidence and technical resourcefulness show all the hallmarks of Carpenter’s later cinematic mastery, but whose tone and sensibility are highly influenced by his collaborator, Dan O’Bannon (the future screenwriter of ALIEN and writer-director of THE RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD, who wrote the script of DARK STAR with Carpenter, and contributes an unforgettably deadpan, inspired performance as Sergeant Pinback). Made two years later, ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 finds Carpenter’s more personal, uniquely characteristic preoccupations, influences, themes, and stylistic proclivities emerging fully formed, resulting in a modern classic that is one of the era’s most stripped down, muscular, and expressive action films.
Special thanks to Bret Berg (American Genre Film Archive) and Harry Guerro.
