John Carpenter grew up on classic Westerns, and there’s one John Wayne movie that he’s often paid homage to and remade on two different occasions.
- John Carpenter loves Westerns and cites director Howard Hawks as a major influence.
- Many of Carpenter’s movies are Westerns in disguise because the genre was dying when he entered the movie business during the ’70s.
- Carpenter remade John Wayne’s Rio Bravo in two different movies, Assault on Precinct 13 and Ghosts of Mars, incorporating similar siege setups but adding his own unique style.
There’s one John Wayne
The tragedy is, that by the time Carpenter entered the movie business during the ’70s, the Western genre was all but dead. That’s why so many John Carpenter movies – including Escape From New York and Vampires – are Westerns in disguise. In the aforementioned interview, he also declares his love for director Howard Hawks, who he believes is the only filmmaker to make a great film in every genre. Hawks also collaborated with Western movie icon John Wayne many times.
John Carpenter Remade John Wayne’s Rio Bravo With 2 Different Movies
Assault on Precinct 13 and Ghosts of Mars remixed Rio Bravo into different genres
Carpenter has cited Wayne’s Rio Bravo as a personal favorite, telling Rotten Tomatoes “Oh, I’ve watched it too many times.” This 1959 Western cast Wayne as a sheriff tasked with holding onto a dangerous prisoner in a small town jail, with a gang of killers circling to break him out. Both Carpenter and Quentin Tarantino adore Rio Bravo, with the latter even once claiming to have shown the movie to prospective girlfriends; if they didn’t like it, he would break off the romance.
It’s possible to see many of the themes Carpenter would bring to his later work in Wayne’s film, including outsiders having to work together against a largely faceless threat. Carpenter would essentially remake Rio Bravo’s siege setup with Assault on Precinct 13 and Ghosts of Mars. The former was released in 1976 and was Carpenter’s second film. This sees a cop and a criminal having to defend an isolated L.A. precinct from a street gang, and there are plenty of Hawkian’s homages throughout, including an overt life from the “dripping blood” scene.
Rio Bravo is currently streaming on FuboTV
Carpenter also edited Assault on Precinct 13 using the pseudonym “John T. Chance,” which is the name of Wayne’s Rio Bravo character. He later remixed the film again with his 2001 sci-fi actioner Ghosts of Mars, where a cop (Natasha Henstridge) and criminal (Ice Cube) have to defend a police station on Mars from miners possessed by alien spirits. In a sense, Ghosts of Mars combines themes from much of Carpenter’s own filmography, including The Thing, though Ghosts is often cited as one of Carpenter’s weaker outings. Ghosts of Mars was Jason Statham’s first action movie too.
Why John Carpenter Loves Rio Bravo So Much
Rio Bravo is Carpenter’s favorite movie
There’s also an unofficial Rio Bravo trilogy too, since Hawks and Wayne remade their own movie twice. They first reteamed for 1966’s El Dorado, where Wayne works with Robert Mitchum’s drunken sheriff to take on an evil rancher, while Hawks’ last film Rio Lobo was another loose remake. Carpenter has admitted to taking pieces from the latter two films, with the final scene in Ghosts of Mars with the two gun-totting heroes mirroring El Dorado’s ending. Of course, Rio Bravo is Carpenter’s favorite of the three, and over the years he’s given many interviews and even provided an audio commentary for it.
There’s not much about the Wayne Western the filmmaker doesn’t seem to like. He loves the group dynamic between Wayne and his drunken deputy (Dean Martin), he loves the music, the banter, the bizarre singing scene and much more. Carpenter related to the siege element of the story too, and has spoken about feeling “under siege” in the town he grew up in, as he felt out of place there. The siege motif is present in nearly all of Carpenter’s work, including Prince of Darkness.
John Wayne And John Carpenter Almost Made Their Own Western Together
They nearly teamed up for Western drama Blood River
While the genre was waning in the ’70s, Carpenter still tried to mount his own Westerns, which included penning an epic adventure dubbed El Diablo. He also wrote a screenplay called Blood River, where a young gunfighter would be mentored by an old trapper. Wayne became interested in the latter role and Carpenter developed Blood River for him, but the actor’s ill health during this time killed the project. Wayne’s last film would be 1976’s The Shootist, with the star passing away three years later. Blood River itself became a TV movie starring Wilford Brimley in 1991.
Assault on Precinct 13 and Ghosts of Mars might riff on Rio Bravo, but Carpenter still brings his own personality to them. They pay due respect to Hawks and John Wayne’s adventure, but neither film is a xerox of Rio Bravo either. They have a lot more action and scenes of horror, while Carpenter’s characters are more pessimistic and hard-boiled – though they learn they can only survive by working with others, another recurring element from Hawks’ output.