The kind of people who walk out of the middle of this movie because of moral indignation are the kind of people I wouldn’t mind if they were all gassed.  On a similar note, the kind of parents who buy beer for their thirteen year old children because “they’ll be drinking anyway, so at least this way I can keep an eye on them” should take their five to fifteen year old children to see this movie.  That way they can be exposed to every horrible thing imaginable under strict parental supervision.

The movie is a documentary about a joke.  In many ways it encompasses everything I love about documentaries.  It takes the viewer into a sort of subculture, in this case the subculture of comedians, and gives us a tip of the iceberg look from which we can divine quite a bit about the subject.  In some ways a documentary about stand up comedians might have been less eye opening.  By studying the tool of their craft through one specific example much is revealed.  That having been said it’s not a very good documentary technically speaking.  The pixilation of images and apparent lack of composition and lighting gives the film an extremely amateurish feel which at times draws attention away from the subject matter.  This is especially true with the editing.  The filmmakers often attempt to “spice up” the interviews (which is basically what the entire movie is made up of) with rapid cutting between bizarrely framed shots.

This film was a whole experience I hadn’t quite expected.  At 12:45 on a Monday afternoon I wasn’t surprised that there weren’t many people in the theater.  Besides myself there was one gentleman seated one row behind me across the isle and another seated on my side of the isle several rows back.  This positioning made it fairly obvious which of us was laughing at what times.  It became very apparent that I was going to be the only one laughing at the truly depraved and horrible bits.  There was a certain amount of nervousness and trepidation that came with that.  Because of the subject matter of the movie I almost felt as if these two men were judging me because of what my demented little mind found funny.  That in and of itself made me laugh harder.  In one scene the audio of the film cuts out completely.  It’s hard to describe the feeling of watching the equivalent of comic pornography with two strangers in a completely silent, darkened room.  By the end of that scene I was laughing so hard I was doubled over in my seat, the only sound in the room was my gasping laughter.  It was a bizarre mix of actual “haha that’s funny” laughter and “dear god I hope these two men don’t rise up and slay me lest I be released on an unwitting population” laughter.  There were a few moments like this through out the screening and it was defiantly the hardest I’ve laughed at a movie in months.

ADDED ON 10/9/05

Assault on Precinct 13 is a movie written and directed by John Carpenter, released in 1976. A lot of people call John Carpenter the “father of horror” or “the founder of ‘modern’ horror” or something else equally as lame. John Carpenter has made a large handful of my absolute favorite movies of all time, none of which really being in the horror genre. Namely They Live, Big Trouble in Little China, Halloween, my personal favorite Escape from New York and this movie, Assault on Precinct 13.

Originally, John Carpenter wanted to make a Western. He had for sometime. But with the amount of money he was given to make his next movie, he didn’t think he could make one, so he decided he would make an inner city version of a Western. That eventually became Assault on Precinct 13. So yeah, that’s pretty much about as cool as it sounds. A fucking Western taking place in a deserted ghetto in the middle of L.A. The movie opens with a gang who appears to murder and pillage for no real reason at all. They’re just bad guys. Kind of like in Westerns. Bad guys are bad guys, that’s just who they are. So in the movie, an old police station is about to be shut down. Only an officer and two secretaries are in it preparing for it to be shut down the next morning. Also, three death row inmates are being transported by bus to another prison. But one of them gets sick and the bus has to stop at the nearly abandoned precinct. ALSO, a man sees his daughter and an ice cream man get shot by this gang and then chases them down and kills their leader. Unfortunately, he runs for cover from the other gang members into Precinct 13. So everything is now set up for the assault, as advertised in the title, on Precinct 13. And what an assault it is. Probably the best assault I’ve seen in a long time. It’s a good assault, really. The officers can’t hold the gangs alone, so they unleash the death row inmates, give them guns, and everyone fights. So it’s officers, inmates and secretaries verse unruly and downright rude gang members, who will stop at nothing for the blood of the man who killed their leader. Who by the way, is a complete asshole. Dude just runs into the precinct in a daze, won’t tell anyone what happened, and then passes out in some office while the whole assault went down and people died. So nobody knows why this bloodthirsty gang is out for them the whole movie, and they never find out.

Another thing, I’d like to comment on is the score. John Carpenter usually performs all of his films’ scores. And they’re usually always awesome, this one included. Most times they’re real dark synthesizer tunes that make me feel like I’ve just shot a bad guy in the face. Notably, the Escape from New York score is excellent.

So Assault on Precinct 13 is just a real fun movie to watch. One might determine that the movie didn’t take much money to make (I just looked it up and it said around $100,000). The whole thing takes place in one building essentially, and a majority of the movie is long shoot outs where gang members keep climbing through windows and getting shot. It’s chock full of gratuitous violence and sweet one-liners and little girls getting shot. So if that sounds interesting to you, like it does to me, then go rent this. And be sure not to rent the shitty remake that was made last year. It is not good.