Derek Winnert

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This article was written on 12 Sep 2016, and is filled under Reviews.

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Assault on Precinct 13 ***** (1976, Austin Stoker, Darwin Joston, Laurie Zimmer) – Classic Movie Review 4354

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A film buff’s delight, this nailbiting, non-stop 1976 action thriller about a gang of delinquents besieging a strangely empty Los Angeles police station deservedly helped to catapault its writer-director John Carpenter into the big time, along with Halloween (1978) and The Thing (1982).

An imaginative unofficial reworking of John Wayne’s 1959 Western Rio Bravo, the spellbinding movie Assault on Precinct 13 is brilliantly fast paced, exciting and very tough.

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There are exceptional performances by mostly little known actors. But the triumph belongs to Carpenter, who also wrote the driving score. Austin Stoker stars as Lt Ethan Bishop, the police officer in charge of the defunct besieged Precinct 9, Division 13, against a relentless criminal gang, along with Darwin Joston as a convicted murderer who helps him. Laurie Zimmer (as Leigh, the courageous secretary of the besieged police station), Tony Burton, Martin West and Nancy Loomis play other defenders of the precinct.

After the 1974 release of Dark Star, producer J Stein Kaplan asked Carpenter to make a low-budget exploitation film for less than $100,000, with Carpenter offered total creative control. Carpenter’s screenplay, originally titled The Anderson Alamo, was inspired by Howard Hawks’s classic Western Rio Bravo and George A Romero’s 1968 Night of the Living Dead.

It opened in the US on 5 November 1976.

The cast includes Austin Stoker, Darwin Joston, Laurie Zimmer, Martin West, Tony Burton, Nancy Loomis, Kim Richards, Henry Brandon, John J Fox, Peter Bruni and Charles Cyphers.

It was remade as Assault on Precinct 13 by director Jean-François Richet in 2005, with Ethan Hawke, Laurence Fishburne, Gabriel Byrne, Ja Rule, Maria Bello, Drea de Matteo, Brian Dennehy, and John Leguizamo.

RIP Austin Stoker (1930-2022). Trinidadian-American actor Austin Stoker (October 7, 1930 – October 7, 2022) died of renal failure on his 92nd birthday.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4354

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

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