Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
Also known as "John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 "
L.A.'s deadliest street gang just declared war on the cops.
Starring: Austin Stoker, Darwin Joston, Laurie Zimmer, Martin West, Tony Burton, Charles Cyphers, Nancy Loomis, Peter Bruni, John J. Fox, Marc Ross, Alan Koss, Henry Brandon, Kim Richards, Frank Doubleday, Gilbert de la Pena, Peter Frankland, Al Nakarchi, James Johnon, Gilman Rankin, Cliff Battuelo, Horace Johnson
Director: John Carpenter
Running Time: 87 minutes
US MPAA rating: RUK BBFC rating: 18
Action, Crime, Thriller
On DVD Now that its big-budget Hollywood remake is about to hit our screens, it is high time to reassess the original, ultra-low-budget remake of 'Assault on Precinct 13'. Only the second feature film (after the hilarious '2001: A Space Odyssey'-parody 'Dark Star') of B-grade king John Carpenter, who went on to make such genre classics as Halloween, 'The Fog', 'The Thing', Big Trouble in Little China and 'Escape from New York', 'Assault on Precinct 13' is an object lesson in how the limitations of meagre funds (it was made for a mere $100,000) and a cast of unknowns can be overcome by tight scripting, able direction and pacy editing.
On his first evening of duty as a police lieutenant, Ethan Bishop (Austin Stoke) is assigned what should be an easy task - to oversee the skeleton staff of a decommissioned police station in a Los Angeles ghetto called Anderson. Yet owing to a sequence of events beyond his control, Bishop and his resourceful colleague Leigh (Laurie Zimmer) find the station under siege from a heavily armed coalition of street gangs who have sworn to kill everyone inside - and with no way of contacting the outside world, the only help to which the beleaguered officers can turn is Napoleon Wilson (Darwin Joston) and Wells (Tony Burton), two death row prisoners stowed in the station's rear cells. With time and ammunition running out, all must take one final, desperate stand against the forces of darkness closing in.
John Carpenter has never been able to get the money together for the western he has always wanted to make, but by loosely adapting the plot of 'Assault on Precinct 13' from his idol Howard Hawks' 'Rio Bravo' (just as he would later remake Hawks' 'The Thing'), and filling his film with frontier morality, he instead created an urban oater which reveals the oldworld savagery and chaos still thriving behind modern America's fragile veneer of civilisation. "We're in the middle of a city, inside a police station", says an exasperated Bishop - but nowhere, Carpenter suggests, is truly safe once those old wardrums start beating, and nothing is black and white when a convicted killer can also be an honorable hero, while the representatives of the law, like the police sharpshooters who ignite the trouble in the opening scene, or Wilson's abusive prison warden (John J. Fox), can be as brutal and murderous as the hoodlums that they pursue. As traditional values quickly break down, principle is shown to come not from the institutions which society has constructed, but from individuals who do what they have to do - and so Carpenter implies that we are all still cowboys, fighting every day to preserve, or disrupt, order on our own city streets.
In a masterfully taut tour de force of criss-crossing scenes, the film's first third tracks the evolution of a crisis, as a chain of incidents - including the merciless point-blank shooting of a young girl that is still shocking today - lead inexorably to the assault of the title. From there on in the film is a tense siege drama, driven along by the compelling electronic soundtrack composed (for budgetary reasons) by Carpenter himself, who also has a cameo as one of the thugs coming through a shot-out window. Most striking of all, the relentless hordes of attackers never speak, evoking the zombie assailants in George A. Romero's classic 'Night of the Living Dead' - both films, after all, offer protagonists who are black, a morality that is grey, and social commentary in the guise of horror.
DVD Extras: Contender Entertainment Group's special edition DVD, timed to coincide with the theatrical release of the Hollywood remake, is as no-frills as Carpenter's original feature. The only extras are animated menus, scene selection, the original trailer, and a stills gallery - but the film is presented in a restored and remastered widescreen print reviving its original Panavision 2.35:1 aspect ratio, and the DVD includes an excellent collector's booklet.
It's Got: Hitchcockian tension (and Hitchcockian glee in killing off or marginalising major characters); brutal violence; cowboy morality; zombie-like assailants; an early portrayal of drive-by shootings; a driving electronic soundtrack; and a heroine with a confusingly skin-toned sweater which will have you double-taking.
It Needs: To match the title to the script - in the film the assault takes place on "Precinct 9 in District 13".
Alternatives: Assault on Precinct 13' (2004), 'Rio Bravo', 'The Warriors', Night of the Living Dead, 'Nid de Guepes'
Summary: In this tense urban siege drama influenced by westerns and zombie films, thirteen is a very unlucky number.
Review Date: 18th January 2005
External Links
Official Web Site
Assault on Precinct 13 at the IMDB
Comments2 Comments |
| this film is one of my favorites of all time, with cool one-liners and music. when i heard that they were remaking it i couldnt beleive it, now i wish i hadnt, this is the best of the 2(prob) so watch this one first. |
| Comment by:- sam sam bailey | | 23 January 2005 | ip: logged |
| no i wont wathc this one first...bitch |
| Comment by:- gManLA | | 23 January 2005 | ip: logged |
