Those who follow careers of great contemporary filmmakers often encounter an interesting phenomenon - quality of their work is often in reverse proportion with the quantity of budget or, especially when the said budget comes from big Hollywood studios. One of the best illustrations of such phenomenon is John Carpenter, one of the most talented members of 1970s "New Hollywood" generation, whose almost cultish reputation nearly sank due to the series of disappointments and failures in 1980s and 1990s. Carpenter's best films are those made in the earlier stage of his career, usually with very small budgets and cast of unkonwns. Those Spartan conditions, like in many other cases, proved to be fertile ground for creativity and Carpenter was praised as truly inovative and talented filmmaker who made probably the best pieces of genre cinema in 1970s. Assault on Precinct 13, 1976 action thriller written and directed by Carpenter, belongs to that group. Although it actually happens to be quintessential film in Carpenter's career and one of the best examples of 1970s genre cinema, it didn't spawn sequels like Halloween, so it is relatively (and unjustly) obscured compared with some other titles.
The plot is set in Anderson, rough L.A. neighbourhood ravaged by crime rate and increasingly organised and well-armed youth gangs. Six members of one such gang got killed in police ambush, and their surviving fellows swear revenge. It is Saturday afternoon and the newly promoted police Lieutenant Bishop (played by Austin Stoker) is given rather routine assignment of overseeing the closing down of Anderson police station, now manned only by desk sergeant (played by Henry Brandon) and two secretaries – Leigh (played by Laurie Zimmer) and Julie (played by Nancy Kaye). The series of events around the station is, however, going to make this assignment anything but routine. First of all, the bus carrying prisoners, including death row inmate Napoleon Wilson (played by Darwin Joston), is forced to make the stop at the police station and temporarily hold prisoners in station's cells. In the meantime, another drama unfolds when young girl Kathy Lawson (played by Kim Richards) gets senselessly shot by gangbangers and her grief-stricken father (played by Martin West) immediately takes revenge that would lead to car chases, shootouts and him finally trying to take refuge in run-down station. Before Bishop and anyone in the station can make sense out of Lawson's incoherent ramblings, the power and phone lines are cut and the station gets sprayed with bullets, resulting with massacre of policemen and prisoners alike. Only five people survive - Bishop, Leigh, Julie, Lawson, Wilson and his fellow inmate Wells (played by Tony Burton) - and soon realise that they are surrounded by dozens of well-armed young thugs, determined to finish them off no matter what the cost. Bishop reluctantly agrees to uncuff and arm Wilson and Wells and they all manage to fend off initial assault. However, this victory is only temporary - they can't call for help, their supplies of ammo are low and it seems that they aren't going to withstand this siege for long.
There are plenty of critics and film scholars who tend to describe Assault on Precinct 13 simply as modern day version of Rio Bravo combined with more than obvious hommage to another low budget cult-classic, Rohmero's Night of the Living Dead. However, after almost quarter of century, real importance of this film is not in the films it was inspired on; its importance could be best seen in the films it had inspired in later years. It is especially so when we realise that Cameron's Aliens and McTiernan's Die Hard - two of the best and most influential action films of 1980s - owe a lot to Carpenter's low budget wonder of 1970s. Cameron's film, like Assault on Precinct 13, features motley crew of individuals forced to withstand the siege by the hordes of relentless enemy; hero of McTiernan's action masterpiece, same as the heroes in Carpenter's film, is forced to fight villains alone due to the failure of law enforcement and all civilisation mechanism we take for granted. But the real irony is in Carpenter's film being made with only ridiculously small fraction of money we usually associate with action spectacles. Those 100,000 US$ were, however, turned into film's advantage - most of the film takes place in the dark, in run-down and sinister locations, which all creates atmosphere of great suspense, claustrophobia and anxiety. Carpenter (who had edited film under alias of John T. Chance) contributes to this atmosphere by applying another of his trademark talents - monotonous synthesiser musical score is used with great effects, with same monotonous passages being used to create suspense in one scene, than work as ironic comment in another.
Lack of budget also forced Carpenter to shrink the length of this film to his trademark format of 90 minutes; that didn't prevent him to make sharp and effective characterisation. But the most of the contribution in that area came from actors who really excelled in one (and for many of them the only) opportunity to play really big roles. Austin Stoker as Lieutenant Bishop is more than capable in the role of the leader and nominal hero, but the real star of this film is Darwin Joston. His role of Napoleon Wilson as desperate anti-hero still bound by honour in some ways resemble much better known character of "Snake" Plissken in Escape from New York; Joston is quite good in this role, with his Joe Average image providing a lot of realism to this film; we could hardly see this film in the same light with some of Hollywood Pretty Boys playing world-weary blue- collar anti-hero. Laurie Zimmer as the chief leading lady is also very good; her transformation from sexy secretary who flirts with Bishop to tough action heroine is quite believable thanks to minimalistic approach; in many ways it could be argued that female action star image of Sigourney Weaver and her blue-collar Ripley heroine of Alien series owes a lot to Laurie Zimmer's role as Leigh. Other actors didn't need to excell that much, especially those playing menacing, always silent and zombie looking gangbangers.
Carpenter is reportedly planning to re-make Assault on Precinct 13 and one of the motives for that (apart from the obvious need to revamp his dwindling career by reminding people of the past glory) is the fact that this film is product of its time. Assault on Precinct 13 resembles many great dystopic films of late 1970s and early 1980s (Hill's The Warriors, Miller's Mad Max and Carpenter's own Escape from New York) by being set in the vague area between present and future, both bleak and marked by the gradual but unmistakeable decline of Western civilisation and its institutions. In almost all of such films, this decline is manifested through the collapse of law enforcement and new barbarians in the form of biker/youth gangs taking over the streets and roads. Unlike some of the other filmmakers, Carpenter in this films offers something of an explanation for this phenomenon; in his view societal collapse isa consequence of leftist/liberal policies of 1970s welfare state and the diminished role of individual responsibility in such society. All those societies experienced new forms of social pathology in the increased use of illegal drugs and alarming crime rate; but the most spectacular, especially in Western Europe, was the phenomenon of nihilist youth engaged in leftist terrorism. In such societies criminal acts aren't consequences of individual choice: they stem out of "objective" circumstances and criminals can be "reformed" if there is benevolent State (in this film embodied in the character of liberal-minded Special Officer Starker, played by Charles Cyphers) which should solve their problems. Carpenter, on the other hand, stresses the importance of individualism - even the convicted killer like Wilson who acts as individual is better alternative for American society than hordes of impersonal and inhuman killers that assumed collective identity. This rather right-wing notion is stressed with some not so subtle details that give flavour of almost Reaganasque Cold War anti-Communism to this film - the most notable of them all is Latino gang leader (played by Gilbert de la Pena) looking a lot like Che Guevara.
However, despite the ideological context of this film being somewhat oudated, Assault on Precinct 13 is still considered to be one of the prime examples of 1970s action genre, a movie that, like many others, makes us somewhat nostalgic towards the times when the future looked bleak.
RATING: 9/10 (++++)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on March 5th 2001)
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Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/17814-assault-on-precinct-13?language=en-US
Critic: AAA