Assault on Stagecoach: An Intertextual Analysis

This article contributes to debate about the political meanings of John Carpenter’s 1976 film Assault on Precinct 13. Existing scholarship has considered how meaning is constructed in Assault via its relationship to the horror genre and from this analysis divergent interpretations have arisen that conceptualise Carpenter’s politics as either “unconsciously reactionary” or liberal. This article utilises an intertextual approach to reconsider how meaning in Assault can be constructed through and with the 1939 John Ford film Stagecoach. An intertextual analysis helps us to arrive at a new interpretation of political meaning that centres the viewer as the maker of this meaning and, because of this, explores how space can be made to reconcile seemingly irreconcilable political interpretations and allow films to hold ambiguity, contradiction and ambivalence in their political meanings.