Movies - Street Thunder

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	Movies - Street Thunder

Street Thunder is the name of the fictional, Los Angeles street gang in the 1976 John Carpenter film Assault on Precinct 13. The gang is based in the Los Angeles ghetto district of Anderson. Unusally for such a street gang, it is made up of a multi-racial mix of members, with members from Caucasian, Negro, Latino and Asian extraction. We learn that the Street Thunder are very well armed following the massive theft of automatic weapons from the L.A.P.D. armory. During the film, the gang mainly use handguns equipped with a silencer, molotov cocktails and at one point, a silenced M-16 assault rifle complete with a sniper scope. The age of the gang members appears to be between 18 to 25 years and old and it appears to be made up of exclusively male members, however given the multi-racial make-up of the gang it is quite possible that it does possess a small number of female members.

As with most of Carpenter's antagonists, they are portrayed in a near supernatural way, with little or no actual humanization appearing almost like zombies or ghouls. Despite this, the gang seems to be well organized and highly intelligent, though their most obvious attribute is their ruthlessness and violent nature. Despite certain similarities in the tone of the films and the era and locales in which they are set, the Street Thunder gang can be considered a polar opposite of the gangs featured in the Walter Hill film The Warriors who appear almost camp and jovial.

At the beginning of the film, six Street Thunder gang members are ambushed in Anderson by a heavily armed L.A.P.D. S.W.A.T. Team, resulting in their deaths. Following this attack, several gang member swear a blood oath, known as a "Cholo", against the L.A.P.D. and the citizens of Los Angeles. Following this blood oath, several members of the gang murder a young girl and an ice-dream van driver. The father of the murdered girl finds a revolver and pursues the gang members through the Anderstown ghetto, resulting the death of the "Leader" of the group but he is then chased by other street gang members. Seeking shelter, the man runs into the almost deserted police station, Precinct 9, Division 13 (the film's name, Assault on Precinct 13 is in fact a misnomer) in Anderson. The remaining members of the group, enlist the help of further Street Thunder members and then lay siege upon the police station, with the intent on murdering the father and all inside the building. Though the actual number gang members involved in the assault on the station is ambiguous, it appears to be approximatley 70-100.

The precinct's phone and power lines are first cut, and the gang lay siege from behind distant trees and in an adjacent car park, using cars as cover. Military-like road blocks are set at either side of the police station, to isolate their targets. It also appears that gang members hide in some of the parked cars near the precinct, ambushing anyone who tries using these to escape. A phone company repair man, who attempts to repair the severed phone line is murdered. Police officers killed outside the precinct, along with those gang members killed during the assault, are removed and hidden to ensure that "Driving by, the street looks normal". These tactics, combined with the heavy use of silenced gunfire ensure that in addition to the isolation of the precinct, no one becomes aware of the assault on precinct 13 for several hours.

The Cholo

The cholo is a custom of the Street Thunder gang. It a blood oath, silmar to a Jihad in Islamic extremism. The Cholo means, as described by the prisoner Wells, "To the death" indicating that "They don't care, they're not afraid to die. Any of them" and "They want to rip us apart". Upon the death of a Street Tunder member, the cholo is performed by his commrades dripping blood into a glass bowl. This bowl is then delivered to the intended victims of the Cholo. Wells, who has never been a member of Street Thunder, attributes his knowledge of the Cholo by having spent time in prison with "one of those crazy, young bastards".

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