If it wasn’t for the success of ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 in the UK, we may never have got the horror film revolution that began in the late 1970s with John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN.
Carpenter was establishing himself more as a screenwriter at the time and had sold a screenplay to Columbia called EYES OF LAURA MARS (1978), which was filmed with Faye Dunaway in the title role and directed by Irvin Kershner (THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK)
According to an interview in STARBURST (May 1980), Carpenter found support in a couple of backers and was given carte-blanche to make a film. The film he had in mind was a Western, but unfortunately westerns were not cheap to make at the time, so he basically borrowed influences from the likes of RIO BRAVO (1951) and then reworked it for gangs as opposed to Indians.
ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 is the tale of Lt. Ethan Bishop (Austin Stoker) who has recently been promoted who is given the task of supervising the closure of Precinct 9, Division 13 in the notorious Anderson District of Los Angeles. Not much is going on there, with an ageing policeman, Chaney (Henry Brandon) and clerks Leigh (Laurie Zimmer) and Julie (Nancy Loomis)
Meanwhile, across town, three notorious criminals, among them Wells (Tony Burton) and the baddest of them all, Napoleon Wilson (Darwin Joston) are being transported for Sonora for more life imprisonment. The third criminal gets ill on the bus, so Special Officer Starker (Charles Cyphers) has to make a detour to Bishop’s station.
Finally, a father and daughter (Martin West / Kim Richards) are driving to pick up a grandmother to get her out of ‘this horrible neighbourhood’ but are noted by a group of gang members, who have sworn revenge after the mass killing the night before of some members of a gang of ‘Street Thunder’.
Within two hours, all concerned will have to deal with the gangs, who are out in force – and deadly as hell….
Without question one of Carpenter’s best films, stated as being shot for $100,000 (although on a recent Blu-Ray producer JS Kaplan claimed it was more like $200,000). ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13’s premise, whilst clearly a homage to Hawks (Carpenter remade Hawks’ 1951 version of THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD into his own classic take), has its’ own unique vision from the start.
From the opening sequence which sees the gang members gunned down in early morning (which Carpenter says on the excellent audio commentary for ASSAULT was added later on), through to the intense sequence that doesn’t let up once we are in the police station to its’ heightened climax, ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 has so much to offer. Excellent performances throughout, especially Zimmer as the strong-minded Leigh, but it is Darwin Joston who steals the show as the doomed Napoleon Wilson, with a number of fantastic verbal asides (his conversation in which he reveals why he killed some men on the bus to Mexico to Starker is one funny example)
Still packing a punch over four decades on and a must-have in your thriller collection.