Assault on Precinct 13 ***** (1976, Austin Stoker, Darwin Joston, Laurie Zimmer) – Classic Movie Review 4,354

The nailbiting 1976 non-stop action thriller film Assault on Precinct 13 about a gang of delinquents besieging a strangely empty Los Angeles police station deservedly helped to catapult its writer-director John Carpenter into the big time. 

A film buff’s delight, the nailbiting, non-stop 1976 action thriller film Assault on Precinct 13 about a gang of delinquents besieging a strangely empty Los Angeles police station deservedly helped to catapult 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.

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 and later changed to The Siege, was inspired by Howard Hawks’s classic Western Rio Bravo and George A Romero’s 1968 Night of the Living Dead. Carpenter said he saw the marauding street gang as dehumanised zombies, hardly talking and almost supernatural in their resilience.

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.

Assault on Precinct 13 is directed by John Carpenter, runs 91 minutes, is made by CKK Corporation, is released by Turtle Releasing (US), Miracle Films (UK), is written by John Carpenter, is shot in Metrocolor and 35 mm Panavision (anamorphic) by Douglas Knapp, is produced by Joseph Kaufman and J S Kaplan, is scored by John Carpenter, and is designed by Tommy Wallace.

It was shot in November 1975 on Los Angeles locations and at Raleigh Studios, 5300 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood.

It was partly shot at the former Venice Police and Fire Station, 685 North Venice Boulevard, Venice, California. This stands in for Anderson Police Station, Division 14.

The assault takes place on Precinct 9, Division 13. There is no Precinct 13 in the film.

Irwin Yablans of distributor Turtle Releasing rejected Carpenter’s titles of The Anderson Alamo and The Siege and came up with Assault on Precinct 13, which he felt sounded more ominous, during post-production.

Some of the gang members are played by USC students, who enjoyed spilling blood over themselves and finding ways of dying.

Carpenter crams in a salute to Alfred Hitchcock, The story that Ethan Bishop tells in the film about his father sending him to a police station when he was six years old with a note is a story Hitchcock regularly told about his own childhood.

It premiered in Tallahassee, Florida, on October 8, 1976. It was screened at Cannes Film Festival in May 1977, Edinburgh International Film Festival on August 26, 1977, and BFI London Film Festival in November 1977.

Release date: November 5, 1976 (US) and March 10, 1978 (UK).

It was released on VHS on the UK by PolyGram Video in 1997.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4,354

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