Assault on Precinct 13
Encyclopedia
Assault on Precinct 13 is a 1976 American action-thriller film written and directed by John Carpenter
. It stars Austin Stoker
as a police officer who defends a defunct precinct against an attack by a relentless criminal gang, along with Darwin Joston
as a convicted murderer who helps him. Laurie Zimmer
and Tony Burton
co-star as other defenders of the precinct. The story was inspired by the Howard Hawks
western
film Rio Bravo and the George A. Romero
horror film Night of the Living Dead
.
Upon original release the film was met with mixed reviews and unimpressive box-office returns in the United States
, but it won critical and popular acclaim in Europe
. It gained a considerable cult following
and was later re-evaluated as one of the best action films of its era. A remake
appeared in 2005, directed by Jean-Francois Richet
and starring Ethan Hawke
and Laurence Fishburne
.
Los Angeles
. Members of a local gang, called 'Street Thunder', have recently stolen a large number of automatic rifles and pistols. The film begins the previous night, as a team of heavily armed LAPD
officers ambush and kill several members of the gang. In the morning, the gang's warlords swear a blood oath of revenge, known as a "Cholo", against the police and the citizens of Los Angeles.
During the day, three sequences of events occur in parallel in and around Anderson: First, Lieutenant Ethan Bishop (Stoker), a newly promoted CHP
officer, is assigned to command the old Anderson police precinct during the last few hours before it is permanently closed. The station is manned by a skeleton staff composed of one officer, Sergeant Chaney (Brandon), and the station's two secretaries, Leigh (Zimmer) and Julie (Kyes). Second, a member of Street Thunder shoots and kills a little girl and the driver of an ice-cream truck. The girl's father, Lawson, pursues and kills the hoodlum, whose fellow gang members chase the man into the Anderson precinct. In shock, he is unable to communicate to the officers what has happened to him. Third, a prison bus commanded by Starker (Cyphers) stops at the station to find medical help for one of the three prisoners being transported. The prisoners are Napoleon Wilson (Joston), a convicted violent killer on his way to Death Row
, Wells (Burton), and Caudell, the sick man.
As the prisoners are put into jail cells, the telephone lines go dead, and when Starker prepares to put the prisoners back on the bus, the gang opens fire on the precinct, using weapons fitted with silencers. In seconds, they kill Chaney, the bus driver, Caudell, Starker, and the two officers with Starker. Bishop unchains Wilson from Starker's body and puts Wilson and Wells back into the cells. When the hoodlums cut the station's electricity and begin a second wave of shooting, Bishop sends Leigh to release Wells and Wilson, and they help Bishop and Leigh defend the station. Julie is killed in the firefight, and Wells is killed after being chosen to sneak out of the precinct through the sewer line. Meanwhile, the gang members remove all evidence of the skirmish in order to avoid attracting outside attention. Bishop hopes that someone has heard the unsilenced police weapons firing, but the neighborhood is too sparsely populated for nearby residents to pinpoint the location of the noise.
As the gang rallies for a third assault, Wilson, Leigh, and Bishop retreat to the basement, taking the still-catatonic Lawson with them. In the climactic scene, the gang rushes the group's last stronghold and Bishop shoots a tank full of acetylene
gas, which explodes violently, killing all the hoodlums. Finally, two police officers in a cruiser radio for backup after discovering the dead body of a telephone repairman hanging from a pole. When more police officers arrive and secure the station, they find the only survivors of the assault - Bishop, Leigh, Wilson, and Lawson. Bishop asks Wilson to walk out of the station with him, rather than be lead away in chains.
failed to secure a directing career for Carpenter, an investor from Philadelphia, the CKK Corporation, took a gamble on Carpenter, putting up the money for a new exploitation film he was planning and giving him a free rein to make any kind of picture he desired. Carpenter had hoped to make a Howard Hawks
-style western like El Dorado or Rio Lobo
, but when the $100,000 budget prohibited it, Carpenter refashioned the basic scenario of Rio Bravo into a modern setting.
As with most of Carpenter's antagonists, Street Thunder is portrayed as a force that possesses mysterious origins and almost supernatural qualities. The gang members are not humanized and are instead represented as though they were zombies or ghouls--they are given almost no dialogue, and their movements are stylized, with a slow, deliberate, relentless quality. Carpenter has acknowledged the influence of George A. Romero
's Night of the Living Dead
on his portrayal of the gang.
, was a reference to Rio Bravo scribe Leigh Brackett
. The day and time titles were used to make the film feel more like a documentary.
The running gag of having Napoleon Wilson constantly ask "Got a smoke?" was inspired by the cigarette gags used in Howard Hawks's westerns.
, who had appeared previously in Battle for the Planet of the Apes
and Sheba, Baby
, and Darwin Joston
, who had worked primarily in television and was also Carpenter's next-door neighbor. After an open casting call, Carpenter added Charles Cyphers
and Nancy Loomis to the cast.
Behind the scenes, Carpenter continued to work with art director Tommy Wallace, property master Craig Stearns, and script supervisor (and future girlfriend) Debra Hill
. Carpenter also hired Douglas Knapp, a fellow USC
student, to be cinematographer.
in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio
. This film was Carpenter's first experience with Panavision cameras and lenses. The interiors of the police station were shot on the now-defunct Producers Studios set while the exterior shots were of the Venice Police station. According to Carpenter, Zimmer "hated herself" after seeing her performance in the dailies while he thought she did "a great job." Carpenter also refers to this film as the most fun he has ever had directing.
The first scene, in which several gang members of Street Thunder are gunned down by cops, was shot at USC. The gang members were USC students who, Carpenter said, had a lot of fun finding ways of dying while spilling blood over themselves.
According to Carpenter, the editing process was very bare bones. One mistake Carpenter was not proud of was one shot "cut out of frame," which means the cut is made within the frame so a viewer can see it. Assault was shot on Panavision
, which takes up the entire negative, and edited on Moviola
, which cannot show the whole image, so if a cut was made improperly (i.e., frame line not lined up properly) then one would cut a half of a sprocket into the film and "cut out of frame," as happened to Carpenter. In the end, it did not matter because he said "It was so dark no one could see it, thank God!"
was later used as the title of another very controversial film, a 1998 drama about terrorist attacks in the U.S.). The moniker "Precinct 13" was used in order to give the new title a more ominous tone.
The most infamous scene in the movie occurs when a gang member, without hesitation, shoots and kills a little girl standing near an ice-cream truck. The MPAA threatened to give the film an X-rating
if the scene was not cut. Following the advice of his distributor, Carpenter gave the appearance of complying by cutting the scene from the copy he gave to the MPAA, but he distributed the film with the "ice cream truck" scene intact.
For reasons unknown, the German title of the original theatrical release was "Das Ende" ("The End"), a title unrelated to the movie's content.
, where it was one of the festival's best-received films, and garnered tremendous critical and popular acclaim. The overwhelmingly positive British response to the film led to its critical and commercial success throughout Europe. Subsequently, the film underwent a reassessment by American critics and audiences, and it is now generally considered one of the best action films of the 1970s. John Carpenter has said that the British audiences immediately understood and enjoyed the film's similarities to American westerns, whereas American audiences were too familiar with the western genre to fully appreciate the movie at first.
gave the film three and a half stars, calling it "a lean, mean exciting horror motion picture... a movie of ingenuity, cunning and thrills." Leonard Maltin
, who also gave it three and a half stars, calls the film a "knockout." Brian Lindsey of Eccentric Cinema gave the film 6 out of a scale of 10, saying the film "isn't believable for a second — yet this doesn't stop it from being a fun little B picture in the best drive-in tradition."
Assault currently has a 96% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes
.
put Assault on its list of 50 Unsung Classics in the July 1999 issue. As a result of this film, Donald Pleasence
would go on to star in Carpenter's Halloween
, as his daughters were big fans of Assault. Film historian David Thomson
described Assault as "a Hawksian set of a police station besieged by hoodlums - economical, tense, beautiful and highly arousing. It fulfills all Carpenter's ambitions for gripping the audience emotionally and never letting go."
Film director Edgar Wright
and actor Simon Pegg
are big fans of Assault. "You wouldn't really call it an action film," claims Pegg, "because it was pre- the evolution of that kind of film. And yet it is kind of an action film in a way." "It's very much his [Carpenter's] kind of urban western", adds Wright, "in the way it is staging Rio Bravo set up in downtown 70s LA... And the other thing is, for a low budget film particularly, it looks great."
In 2002, the film inspired Florent Emilio Siri
's 2002 quasi-remake The Nest, and three years later Assault was remade
in by director Jean-Francois Richet
. The Richet remake has been praised by some as an expertly made B-movie, and dismissed by others as formulaic.
Critics and commentators have often described Assault as a cross between Howard Hawks
's Rio Bravo and George A. Romero
's Night of the Living Dead
. Carpenter acknowledges the influence of both films.
's score to Dirty Harry
and Led Zeppelin
's "Immigrant Song
". Besides these two themes the soundtrack also features a series of ominous drones and primal drum patterns which often represent the anonymous gang gathering in the shadows. The theme tune would be somewhat reworked in 1986 as an Italo-disco 12", and more famously as the 1990 UK-charting rave-song Hardcore Uproar. Carpenter made roughly three to five separate pieces of music and edited them to the film as appropriate.
Carpenter had several banks of synthesizers that would each have to be reset when another sound had to be created, taking a great deal of time. He was assisted by Dan Wyman in creating the musical score. The score was written in three days.
Beyond its use in the film, the score is often cited as an influence on various electronic
and hip hop
artists with its main title theme being sampled by artists including Afrika Bambaataa
, Tricky
, dead prez
and Bomb the Bass
.
Despite this influence, except for a few compilation appearances, the film's score remained available only in bootleg form until 2003 when it was given an official release through the French label, Record Makers. In early 2004, Piers Martin of NME
wrote that Carpenter's minimalist synthesizer score accounted for much of the film's tense and menacing atmosphere and its "impact, 27 years on, is still being felt."
The film is available on both DVD
and Blu-ray Disc
as a "Restored Collector's Edition" in 2008 and 2009, respectively. Both releases have all of the special features found on the previous "Special Edition" DVD.
John Carpenter
John Howard Carpenter is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, editor, composer, and occasional actor. Although Carpenter has worked in numerous film genres in his four-decade career, his name is most commonly associated with horror and science fiction.- Early life :Carpenter was born...
. It stars Austin Stoker
Austin Stoker
Austin Stoker is an American actor known for his role as Lt. Ethan Bishop, the police officer in charge of the besieged Precinct 9, Division 13, in John Carpenter's Howard Hawks-inspired, 1976 film, Assault on Precinct 13...
as a police officer who defends a defunct precinct against an attack by a relentless criminal gang, along with Darwin Joston
Darwin Joston
Francis Darwin Solomon was an American actor known professionally as Darwin Joston...
as a convicted murderer who helps him. Laurie Zimmer
Laurie Zimmer
Laurie Zimmer is an American former actress best known for her role as Leigh, the courageous secretary of the besieged police station, Precinct 9, Division 13, in John Carpenter's 1976, Howard Hawks-inspired, action film, Assault on Precinct 13.-Acting career:Zimmer had a brief acting career...
and Tony Burton
Tony Burton
Anthony "Tony" Burton is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Tony "Duke" Evers in the Rocky series, and is one of three actors who have appeared in all six Rocky films....
co-star as other defenders of the precinct. The story was inspired by the Howard Hawks
Howard Hawks
Howard Winchester Hawks was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era...
western
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
film Rio Bravo and the George A. Romero
George A. Romero
George Andrew Romero is a Canadian-American film director, screenwriter and editor, best known for his gruesome and satirical horror films about a hypothetical zombie apocalypse. He is nicknamed "Godfather of all Zombies." -Life and career:...
horror film Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent black-and-white zombie film and cult film directed by George A. Romero, starring Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea and Karl Hardman. It premiered on October 1, 1968, and was completed on a USD$114,000 budget. After decades of cinematic re-releases, it...
.
Upon original release the film was met with mixed reviews and unimpressive box-office returns in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, but it won critical and popular acclaim in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
. It gained a considerable cult following
Cult following
A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...
and was later re-evaluated as one of the best action films of its era. A remake
Assault on Precinct 13 (2005 film)
Assault on Precinct 13 is a 2005 action thriller film directed by Jean-François Richet, starring Ethan Hawke and Laurence Fishburne. The cast also includes John Leguizamo, Maria Bello, Ja Rule and Drea de Matteo...
appeared in 2005, directed by Jean-Francois Richet
Jean-François Richet
Jean-Francois Richet is a French screenwriter, director, and producer, born on July 2, 1966 in Paris. He grew up in Meaux, a suburb east of Paris.-Selected filmography:* État des lieux - named at the César Awards 1996 in the Best Debut category....
and starring Ethan Hawke
Ethan Hawke
Ethan Green Hawke is an American actor, writer and director. He made his feature film debut in 1985 with the science fiction movie Explorers, before making a supporting appearance in the 1989 drama Dead Poets Society which is considered his breakthrough role...
and Laurence Fishburne
Laurence Fishburne
Laurence John Fishburne III is an American film and stage actor, playwright, director, and producer. He is perhaps best known for his roles as Morpheus in the Matrix science fiction film trilogy, as Cowboy Curtis on the 1980's television show Pee-wee's Playhouse, and as singer-musician Ike Turner...
.
Plot
The story takes place on a Saturday in Anderson, a crime-infested ghetto in South CentralSouth Los Angeles
South Los Angeles, often abbreviated as South L.A. and formerly South Central Los Angeles, is the official name for a large geographic and cultural portion lying to the southwest and southeast of downtown Los Angeles, California. The area was formerly called South Central, and is still widely known...
Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
. Members of a local gang, called 'Street Thunder', have recently stolen a large number of automatic rifles and pistols. The film begins the previous night, as a team of heavily armed LAPD
Los Angeles Police Department
The Los Angeles Police Department is the police department of the city of Los Angeles, California. With just under 10,000 officers and more than 3,000 civilian staff, covering an area of with a population of more than 4.1 million people, it is the third largest local law enforcement agency in...
officers ambush and kill several members of the gang. In the morning, the gang's warlords swear a blood oath of revenge, known as a "Cholo", against the police and the citizens of Los Angeles.
During the day, three sequences of events occur in parallel in and around Anderson: First, Lieutenant Ethan Bishop (Stoker), a newly promoted CHP
California Highway Patrol
The California Highway Patrol is a law enforcement agency of the U.S. state of California. The CHP has patrol jurisdiction over all California highways and also acts as the state police....
officer, is assigned to command the old Anderson police precinct during the last few hours before it is permanently closed. The station is manned by a skeleton staff composed of one officer, Sergeant Chaney (Brandon), and the station's two secretaries, Leigh (Zimmer) and Julie (Kyes). Second, a member of Street Thunder shoots and kills a little girl and the driver of an ice-cream truck. The girl's father, Lawson, pursues and kills the hoodlum, whose fellow gang members chase the man into the Anderson precinct. In shock, he is unable to communicate to the officers what has happened to him. Third, a prison bus commanded by Starker (Cyphers) stops at the station to find medical help for one of the three prisoners being transported. The prisoners are Napoleon Wilson (Joston), a convicted violent killer on his way to Death Row
Death row
Death row signifies the place, often a section of a prison, that houses individuals awaiting execution. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution , even in places where no special facility or separate unit for condemned inmates exists.After individuals are found...
, Wells (Burton), and Caudell, the sick man.
As the prisoners are put into jail cells, the telephone lines go dead, and when Starker prepares to put the prisoners back on the bus, the gang opens fire on the precinct, using weapons fitted with silencers. In seconds, they kill Chaney, the bus driver, Caudell, Starker, and the two officers with Starker. Bishop unchains Wilson from Starker's body and puts Wilson and Wells back into the cells. When the hoodlums cut the station's electricity and begin a second wave of shooting, Bishop sends Leigh to release Wells and Wilson, and they help Bishop and Leigh defend the station. Julie is killed in the firefight, and Wells is killed after being chosen to sneak out of the precinct through the sewer line. Meanwhile, the gang members remove all evidence of the skirmish in order to avoid attracting outside attention. Bishop hopes that someone has heard the unsilenced police weapons firing, but the neighborhood is too sparsely populated for nearby residents to pinpoint the location of the noise.
As the gang rallies for a third assault, Wilson, Leigh, and Bishop retreat to the basement, taking the still-catatonic Lawson with them. In the climactic scene, the gang rushes the group's last stronghold and Bishop shoots a tank full of acetylene
Acetylene
Acetylene is the chemical compound with the formula C2H2. It is a hydrocarbon and the simplest alkyne. This colorless gas is widely used as a fuel and a chemical building block. It is unstable in pure form and thus is usually handled as a solution.As an alkyne, acetylene is unsaturated because...
gas, which explodes violently, killing all the hoodlums. Finally, two police officers in a cruiser radio for backup after discovering the dead body of a telephone repairman hanging from a pole. When more police officers arrive and secure the station, they find the only survivors of the assault - Bishop, Leigh, Wilson, and Lawson. Bishop asks Wilson to walk out of the station with him, rather than be lead away in chains.
Cast
- Austin StokerAustin StokerAustin Stoker is an American actor known for his role as Lt. Ethan Bishop, the police officer in charge of the besieged Precinct 9, Division 13, in John Carpenter's Howard Hawks-inspired, 1976 film, Assault on Precinct 13...
as Ethan Bishop - Darwin JostonDarwin JostonFrancis Darwin Solomon was an American actor known professionally as Darwin Joston...
as Napoleon Wilson - Laurie ZimmerLaurie ZimmerLaurie Zimmer is an American former actress best known for her role as Leigh, the courageous secretary of the besieged police station, Precinct 9, Division 13, in John Carpenter's 1976, Howard Hawks-inspired, action film, Assault on Precinct 13.-Acting career:Zimmer had a brief acting career...
as Leigh - Martin West as Lawson
- Tony BurtonTony BurtonAnthony "Tony" Burton is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Tony "Duke" Evers in the Rocky series, and is one of three actors who have appeared in all six Rocky films....
as Wells - Charles CyphersCharles CyphersCharles Cyphers is an American actor who has starred in many films and on television. He is known in the horror movie community for his work in the films of John Carpenter, especially his role as Sheriff Leigh Brackett in Carpenter's 1978 hit horror movie Halloween. He reprised this role in the...
as Starker - Nancy KyesNancy KyesNancy Louise Kyes is an American film and television actress. In most of her film appearances, she is credited under her stage name Nancy Loomis. She is known for her role as the teenage babysitter, Annie Brackett, in John Carpenter's 1978 horror classic slasher film Halloween.-Early life:Kyes was...
as Julie - Peter Bruni as Ice Cream Man
- John J. Fox as Warden
- Marc Ross as Patrolman Tramer
- Alan Koss as Patrolman Baxter
- Henry Brandon as Chaney
- Kim RichardsKim RichardsKimberly "Kim" Richards is an American actress, former child actress, and television personality. She had roles in several Disney movies in the 1970s and later TV shows in the late 1970s and early 80s before returning to the screen with her sister Kyle Richards on Bravo's The Real Housewives of...
as Kathy Lawson - John CarpenterJohn CarpenterJohn Howard Carpenter is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, editor, composer, and occasional actor. Although Carpenter has worked in numerous film genres in his four-decade career, his name is most commonly associated with horror and science fiction.- Early life :Carpenter was born...
as Gang member
Development
After Dark StarDark Star (film)
Dark Star is a 1974 American comedic science fiction motion picture directed by John Carpenter and co-written with Dan O'Bannon.-Backstory and plot:...
failed to secure a directing career for Carpenter, an investor from Philadelphia, the CKK Corporation, took a gamble on Carpenter, putting up the money for a new exploitation film he was planning and giving him a free rein to make any kind of picture he desired. Carpenter had hoped to make a Howard Hawks
Howard Hawks
Howard Winchester Hawks was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era...
-style western like El Dorado or Rio Lobo
Rio Lobo
Rio Lobo is a 1970 Western movie starring John Wayne. The film was the last film directed by Howard Hawks, from a script by Leigh Brackett. The film was shot in Technicolor with a running time of 114 minutes...
, but when the $100,000 budget prohibited it, Carpenter refashioned the basic scenario of Rio Bravo into a modern setting.
As with most of Carpenter's antagonists, Street Thunder is portrayed as a force that possesses mysterious origins and almost supernatural qualities. The gang members are not humanized and are instead represented as though they were zombies or ghouls--they are given almost no dialogue, and their movements are stylized, with a slow, deliberate, relentless quality. Carpenter has acknowledged the influence of George A. Romero
George A. Romero
George Andrew Romero is a Canadian-American film director, screenwriter and editor, best known for his gruesome and satirical horror films about a hypothetical zombie apocalypse. He is nicknamed "Godfather of all Zombies." -Life and career:...
's Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent black-and-white zombie film and cult film directed by George A. Romero, starring Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea and Karl Hardman. It premiered on October 1, 1968, and was completed on a USD$114,000 budget. After decades of cinematic re-releases, it...
on his portrayal of the gang.
Screenplay
Carpenter joked, "The script came together fast, some would say too fast." He spiced the screenplay with a variety of in-jokes as an homage to his inspirations for the film. For example, the character of Leigh, played by Laurie ZimmerLaurie Zimmer
Laurie Zimmer is an American former actress best known for her role as Leigh, the courageous secretary of the besieged police station, Precinct 9, Division 13, in John Carpenter's 1976, Howard Hawks-inspired, action film, Assault on Precinct 13.-Acting career:Zimmer had a brief acting career...
, was a reference to Rio Bravo scribe Leigh Brackett
Leigh Brackett
Leigh Douglass Brackett was an American author, particularly of science fiction. She was also a screenwriter, known for her work on famous films such as The Big Sleep , Rio Bravo , The Long Goodbye and The Empire Strikes Back .-Life:Leigh Brackett was born and grew up in Los Angeles, California...
. The day and time titles were used to make the film feel more like a documentary.
The running gag of having Napoleon Wilson constantly ask "Got a smoke?" was inspired by the cigarette gags used in Howard Hawks's westerns.
Casting
Carpenter assembled a main cast that consisted mostly of experienced but relatively obscure actors. The two leads were Austin StokerAustin Stoker
Austin Stoker is an American actor known for his role as Lt. Ethan Bishop, the police officer in charge of the besieged Precinct 9, Division 13, in John Carpenter's Howard Hawks-inspired, 1976 film, Assault on Precinct 13...
, who had appeared previously in Battle for the Planet of the Apes
Battle for the Planet of the Apes
Battle for the Planet of the Apes is a 1973 science fiction film directed by J. Lee Thompson. It is the fifth and last entry in the original Planet of the Apes series produced by Arthur P...
and Sheba, Baby
Sheba, Baby
The action movie Sheba, Baby is a 1975 blaxploitation film starring Pam Grier as Sheba Shayne. In the film, Sheba returns to her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, to confront thugs who are trying to intimidate her father into dissolving or handing over his family business...
, and Darwin Joston
Darwin Joston
Francis Darwin Solomon was an American actor known professionally as Darwin Joston...
, who had worked primarily in television and was also Carpenter's next-door neighbor. After an open casting call, Carpenter added Charles Cyphers
Charles Cyphers
Charles Cyphers is an American actor who has starred in many films and on television. He is known in the horror movie community for his work in the films of John Carpenter, especially his role as Sheriff Leigh Brackett in Carpenter's 1978 hit horror movie Halloween. He reprised this role in the...
and Nancy Loomis to the cast.
Behind the scenes, Carpenter continued to work with art director Tommy Wallace, property master Craig Stearns, and script supervisor (and future girlfriend) Debra Hill
Debra Hill
Debra Hill was an American screenwriter and film producer, who co-wrote the horror film Halloween, its first sequel Halloween II, and The Fog.-Early life:...
. Carpenter also hired Douglas Knapp, a fellow USC
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
student, to be cinematographer.
Principal photography
Working within the limitations of a $100,000 budget, the film was shot in only 20 days in 1975. The film was shot on 35mm PanavisionPanavision
Panavision is an American motion picture equipment company specializing in cameras and lenses, based in Woodland Hills, California. Formed by Robert Gottschalk as a small partnership to create anamorphic projection lenses during the widescreen boom in the 1950s, Panavision expanded its product...
in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio
Aspect ratio (image)
The aspect ratio of an image is the ratio of the width of the image to its height, expressed as two numbers separated by a colon. That is, for an x:y aspect ratio, no matter how big or small the image is, if the width is divided into x units of equal length and the height is measured using this...
. This film was Carpenter's first experience with Panavision cameras and lenses. The interiors of the police station were shot on the now-defunct Producers Studios set while the exterior shots were of the Venice Police station. According to Carpenter, Zimmer "hated herself" after seeing her performance in the dailies while he thought she did "a great job." Carpenter also refers to this film as the most fun he has ever had directing.
The first scene, in which several gang members of Street Thunder are gunned down by cops, was shot at USC. The gang members were USC students who, Carpenter said, had a lot of fun finding ways of dying while spilling blood over themselves.
Post-production
Carpenter also edited the film using the pseudonym John T. Chance, the name of John Wayne's character in Rio Bravo. Carpenter also employed the John T. Chance pseudonym for his original version of The Anderson Alamo script, but he used his own name for the writing credit on the completed film. Carpenter has said that the trick with shooting a low-budget film is to shoot as little footage as possible and extend the scenes for as long as one can.According to Carpenter, the editing process was very bare bones. One mistake Carpenter was not proud of was one shot "cut out of frame," which means the cut is made within the frame so a viewer can see it. Assault was shot on Panavision
Panavision
Panavision is an American motion picture equipment company specializing in cameras and lenses, based in Woodland Hills, California. Formed by Robert Gottschalk as a small partnership to create anamorphic projection lenses during the widescreen boom in the 1950s, Panavision expanded its product...
, which takes up the entire negative, and edited on Moviola
Moviola
A Moviola is a device that allows a film editor to view film while editing. It was the first machine for motion picture editing when it was invented by Iwan Serrurier in 1924.-History:...
, which cannot show the whole image, so if a cut was made improperly (i.e., frame line not lined up properly) then one would cut a half of a sprocket into the film and "cut out of frame," as happened to Carpenter. In the end, it did not matter because he said "It was so dark no one could see it, thank God!"
Distribution
Although the film's title is Assault on Precinct 13, the action mainly takes place in a police station referred to as Precinct 9, Division 13, by Bishop's staff sergeant over the radio. The film's distributor was responsible for the misnomer. Carpenter originally called the film The Anderson Alamo before briefly changing the title to The Siege. During post-production, however, the distributor rejected Carpenter's title in favor of the film's present name (The SiegeThe Siege
The Siege is a 1998 American thriller film directed by Edward Zwick. The film is about a fictional situation in which terrorist cells have made several attacks on New York City...
was later used as the title of another very controversial film, a 1998 drama about terrorist attacks in the U.S.). The moniker "Precinct 13" was used in order to give the new title a more ominous tone.
The most infamous scene in the movie occurs when a gang member, without hesitation, shoots and kills a little girl standing near an ice-cream truck. The MPAA threatened to give the film an X-rating
X-rated
In some countries, X is or has been a motion picture rating reserved for the most explicit films. Films rated X are intended only for viewing by adults, usually legally defined as people over the age of 17.-United Kingdom:...
if the scene was not cut. Following the advice of his distributor, Carpenter gave the appearance of complying by cutting the scene from the copy he gave to the MPAA, but he distributed the film with the "ice cream truck" scene intact.
For reasons unknown, the German title of the original theatrical release was "Das Ende" ("The End"), a title unrelated to the movie's content.
Release
The film was originally released in the United States in 1976 to mixed critical reviews and unimpressive box office earnings. The following year, however, it was screened at the 21st London Film FestivalLondon Film Festival
The BFI London Film Festival is the UK's largest public film event, screening more than 300 features, documentaries and shorts from almost 50 countries. The festival, , currently in its 54th year, is run every year in the second half of October under the umbrella of the British Film Institute...
, where it was one of the festival's best-received films, and garnered tremendous critical and popular acclaim. The overwhelmingly positive British response to the film led to its critical and commercial success throughout Europe. Subsequently, the film underwent a reassessment by American critics and audiences, and it is now generally considered one of the best action films of the 1970s. John Carpenter has said that the British audiences immediately understood and enjoyed the film's similarities to American westerns, whereas American audiences were too familiar with the western genre to fully appreciate the movie at first.
Critical reception
Jeffrey Wells of Films In Review wrote, "Skillfully paced and edited, Assault was rich with Hawksian dialogue and humor, especially in the clever caricature of the classic 'Hawks woman' by Laurie Zimmer." In his book The Horror Films of the 1970s, John Kenneth MuirJohn Kenneth Muir
John Kenneth Muir is an American literary critic. He has written twenty-one reference books in the fields of film and television, with a particular accent on the horror and science fiction genres....
gave the film three and a half stars, calling it "a lean, mean exciting horror motion picture... a movie of ingenuity, cunning and thrills." Leonard Maltin
Leonard Maltin
Leonard Maltin is an American film and animated film critic and historian, author of several mainstream books on cinema, focusing on nostalgic, celebratory narratives.-Personal life:...
, who also gave it three and a half stars, calls the film a "knockout." Brian Lindsey of Eccentric Cinema gave the film 6 out of a scale of 10, saying the film "isn't believable for a second — yet this doesn't stop it from being a fun little B picture in the best drive-in tradition."
Assault currently has a 96% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
.
Legacy
Assault on Precinct 13 is now considered by many to be one of the greatest and most underrated action films of the 1970s. PremierePremiere (magazine)
Premiere was an American and New York City-based film magazine published by Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., published between the years 1987 and 2007. The original version of the magazine, Première , was started in France in 1976 and is still being published there.-History:The magazine originally...
put Assault on its list of 50 Unsung Classics in the July 1999 issue. As a result of this film, Donald Pleasence
Donald Pleasence
Sir Donald Henry Pleasence, OBE, was a British actor who gained more than 200 screen credits during a career which spanned over four decades...
would go on to star in Carpenter's Halloween
Halloween (1978 film)
Halloween is a 1978 American independent horror film directed, produced, and scored by John Carpenter, co-written with Debra Hill, and starring Donald Pleasence and Jamie Lee Curtis in her film debut and the first installment in the Halloween franchise. The film is set in the fictional midwestern...
, as his daughters were big fans of Assault. Film historian David Thomson
David Thomson
David Thomson may refer to:* David Coupar Thomson , Scottish publisher, founder of D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd* David Thomson, 3rd Baron Thomson of Fleet , Canadian businessman and currently the wealthiest individual in Canada...
described Assault as "a Hawksian set of a police station besieged by hoodlums - economical, tense, beautiful and highly arousing. It fulfills all Carpenter's ambitions for gripping the audience emotionally and never letting go."
Film director Edgar Wright
Edgar Wright
Edgar Howard Wright is an English film and television director and writer. He is most famous for his work with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost on the films Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, the TV series Spaced, and for directing the film Scott Pilgrim vs...
and actor Simon Pegg
Simon Pegg
Simon Pegg is an English actor, comedian, writer, film producer, and director. He is best known for having co-written and stared in various Edgar Wright features, mainly Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and the comedy series Spaced.He also portrayed Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in the 2009 Star Trek film...
are big fans of Assault. "You wouldn't really call it an action film," claims Pegg, "because it was pre- the evolution of that kind of film. And yet it is kind of an action film in a way." "It's very much his [Carpenter's] kind of urban western", adds Wright, "in the way it is staging Rio Bravo set up in downtown 70s LA... And the other thing is, for a low budget film particularly, it looks great."
In 2002, the film inspired Florent Emilio Siri
Florent Emilio Siri
Florent Emilio Siri is a French film director born in Lorraine.He studied cinema at the Sorbonne University and ESRA in Paris....
's 2002 quasi-remake The Nest, and three years later Assault was remade
Assault on Precinct 13 (2005 film)
Assault on Precinct 13 is a 2005 action thriller film directed by Jean-François Richet, starring Ethan Hawke and Laurence Fishburne. The cast also includes John Leguizamo, Maria Bello, Ja Rule and Drea de Matteo...
in by director Jean-Francois Richet
Jean-François Richet
Jean-Francois Richet is a French screenwriter, director, and producer, born on July 2, 1966 in Paris. He grew up in Meaux, a suburb east of Paris.-Selected filmography:* État des lieux - named at the César Awards 1996 in the Best Debut category....
. The Richet remake has been praised by some as an expertly made B-movie, and dismissed by others as formulaic.
Critics and commentators have often described Assault as a cross between Howard Hawks
Howard Hawks
Howard Winchester Hawks was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era...
's Rio Bravo and George A. Romero
George A. Romero
George Andrew Romero is a Canadian-American film director, screenwriter and editor, best known for his gruesome and satirical horror films about a hypothetical zombie apocalypse. He is nicknamed "Godfather of all Zombies." -Life and career:...
's Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead
Night of the Living Dead is a 1968 American independent black-and-white zombie film and cult film directed by George A. Romero, starring Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea and Karl Hardman. It premiered on October 1, 1968, and was completed on a USD$114,000 budget. After decades of cinematic re-releases, it...
. Carpenter acknowledges the influence of both films.
Soundtrack
One of the film's distinctive features is its score, composed and recorded by Carpenter. The combination of synthesizer hooks, electronic drones and drum machines sets it apart from many other scores of the period and creates a distinct style of minimalist electronic soundtrack with which Carpenter, and his films, would become associated. The score consists of two main themes: the main title theme, with its familiar synthesizer melody, and a slower contemplative theme used in the film's more subdued scenes. The main theme was partially inspired by both Lalo SchifrinLalo Schifrin
Lalo Schifrin is an Argentine composer, pianist and conductor. He is best known for his film and TV scores, such as the "Theme from Mission: Impossible". He has received four Grammy Awards and six Oscar nominations...
's score to Dirty Harry
Dirty Harry
Dirty Harry is a 1971 American crime thriller produced and directed by Don Siegel, the first in the Dirty Harry series. Clint Eastwood plays the title role, in his first outing as San Francisco Police Department Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan....
and Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin were an English rock band, active in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Formed in 1968, they consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham...
's "Immigrant Song
Immigrant Song
"Immigrant Song" is a song by the English rock band Led Zeppelin. It was released as a single from their third album, Led Zeppelin III, in 1970.-Overview:...
". Besides these two themes the soundtrack also features a series of ominous drones and primal drum patterns which often represent the anonymous gang gathering in the shadows. The theme tune would be somewhat reworked in 1986 as an Italo-disco 12", and more famously as the 1990 UK-charting rave-song Hardcore Uproar. Carpenter made roughly three to five separate pieces of music and edited them to the film as appropriate.
Carpenter had several banks of synthesizers that would each have to be reset when another sound had to be created, taking a great deal of time. He was assisted by Dan Wyman in creating the musical score. The score was written in three days.
Beyond its use in the film, the score is often cited as an influence on various electronic
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
and hip hop
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
artists with its main title theme being sampled by artists including Afrika Bambaataa
Afrika Bambaataa
Afrika Bambaataa is an American DJ from the South Bronx, New York who was instrumental in the early development of hip hop throughout the 1980s. Afrika Bambaataa is one of the three originators of break-beat deejaying, and is respectfully known as the "Grandfather" and the Amen Ra of Universal...
, Tricky
Tricky
Tricky is an English musician and actor. As a producer and a musician, he is noted for a dark, rich and layered sound and a whispering sprechgesang lyrical style. Culturally, Tricky encourages an intertwining of societies, particularly in his musical fusion of rock and hip hop, high art and pop...
, dead prez
Dead Prez
Dead Prez stylized as dead prez is a hip hop duo from the United States, composed of stic.man and M-1, formed in 1996 in New York City, New York. They are known for their confrontational style, combined with socialist lyrics focused on both militant social justice and Pan-Africanism...
and Bomb the Bass
Bomb the Bass
Bomb the Bass is the umbrella title for the output of British musician and producer, Tim Simenon. The band, which has evolved its style over the years, has been classed as electronic or dance....
.
Despite this influence, except for a few compilation appearances, the film's score remained available only in bootleg form until 2003 when it was given an official release through the French label, Record Makers. In early 2004, Piers Martin of NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
wrote that Carpenter's minimalist synthesizer score accounted for much of the film's tense and menacing atmosphere and its "impact, 27 years on, is still being felt."
Track listing
- "Assault On Precinct 13 (Main Title)"
- "Napoleon Wilson"
- "Street Thunder"
- "Precinct 9 - Division 13"
- "Targets / Ice Cream Man On Edge"
- "Wrong Flavour"
- "Emergency Stop"
- "Lawson's Revenge"
- "Sanctuary"
- "Second Wave"
- "The Windows!"
- "Julie"
- "Well's Flight"
- "To The Basement"
- "Walking Out"
- "Assault On Precinct 13"
Home video releases
Assault on Precinct 13 was released on DVD on March 11, 2003 in a widescreen "Special Edition" release. Brian Lindsay of Eccentric Cinema gave this DVD release 10 out of 10, the website's highest rating. Special features include:- Q & A interview session with writer/director John CarpenterJohn CarpenterJohn Howard Carpenter is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, editor, composer, and occasional actor. Although Carpenter has worked in numerous film genres in his four-decade career, his name is most commonly associated with horror and science fiction.- Early life :Carpenter was born...
and actor Austin StokerAustin StokerAustin Stoker is an American actor known for his role as Lt. Ethan Bishop, the police officer in charge of the besieged Precinct 9, Division 13, in John Carpenter's Howard Hawks-inspired, 1976 film, Assault on Precinct 13...
at American CinemathequeAmerican CinemathequeThe American Cinematheque is an independent, non-profit cultural organization in Los Angeles dedicated exclusively to the public presentation of the Moving Image in all its forms. It is considered among the premier organizations of its kind in America....
's 2002 John Carpenter retrospective - Original theatrical trailer
- 2 radio spots
- Behind-the-scenes and lobby card stills gallery
- Full-length audio commentary by writer/director John Carpenter. The audio commentary was ported from a mid-90s LaserdiscLaserdiscLaserDisc was a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium. Initially licensed, sold, and marketed as MCA DiscoVision in North America in 1978, the technology was previously referred to interally as Optical Videodisc System, Reflective Optical Videodisc, Laser Optical...
release. - Isolated music score
The film is available on both DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
and Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
as a "Restored Collector's Edition" in 2008 and 2009, respectively. Both releases have all of the special features found on the previous "Special Edition" DVD.
External links
- Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) on the Official John Carpenter website
- Assault on Precinct 13 Trailer on YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
- Listen to the original soundtrack for Assault on Precinct 13