Assault on Precinct 13 is a 1976 American independent action-thriller film written, directed, scored, and edited by John Carpenter. It features Austin Stoker as a police officer who defends a defunct precinct against a relentless criminal gang, and Darwin Joston as a death row–bound convict who assists him. Laurie Zimmer, Tony Burton, Martin West, Charles Cyphers, and Nancy Kyes co-star as other defenders of the precinct, as well as victims of the ensuing siege.
Carpenter was approached by producer J. Stein Kaplan to make a low-budget exploitation film for under $100,000, on the condition that Carpenter would have total creative control. Carpenter's script, originally titled The Anderson Alamo, was inspired by the Howard Hawks Western film Rio Bravo and the George A. Romero horror film Night of the Living Dead. Controversy with the MPAA over a scene involving the violent killing of a young girl nearly caused the film to receive an X rating.
Assault on Precinct 13 opened in the United States on November 5, 1976. It was initially met with mixed reviews and unimpressive box-office returns, but when the film premiered in the 1977 London Film Festival, it received an ecstatic review by festival director Ken Wlaschin that led to critical acclaim first in Britain and then throughout Europe. It has garnered a cult following and reappraisal from critics, with many evaluating the film as one of the best action films of its era and of Carpenter's career.
A remake was released in 2005, directed by Jean-François Richet and starring Ethan Hawke and Laurence Fishburne.
Plot In South-Central Los Angeles, a local gang, Street Thunder, steals a cache of assault rifles and pistols. At 3:00 am on a Saturday in Anderson, a crime-infested ghetto, a team of heavily armed LAPD officers ambush and kill six members of the gang. Later, the gang's four warlords swear a blood oath of revenge against the police and the citizens of Los Angeles.
That afternoon, Lieutenant Ethan Bishop, a newly promoted CHP officer, is assigned to take charge of the decommissioned Anderson police precinct during the last few hours before it is permanently closed. Only a skeleton staff remains, including Sergeant Chaney and the station's two secretaries, Leigh and Julie. A prison bus arrives commanded by Officer Starker, who is seeking medical help for one of three inmates being transported to the state penitentiary: Napoleon Wilson, a convicted murderer bound for death row; Wells; and Caudell, who is sick. Across town, the Street Thunder warlords drive around looking for people to kill. One of the warlords fatally shoots a little girl, Kathy, and the driver of an ice cream van. Kathy's father, Lawson, pursues and kills the warlord before other gang members chase him into the Anderson precinct. In shock, Lawson is unable to communicate what has happened to him.
As Starker's prisoners are placed in cells, the telephone lines go dead, and the station's electricity goes out. While Starker prepares to move the prisoners back onto 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 two officers accompanying Starker. Bishop unchains Wilson from Starker's body and puts Wilson and Wells back into the cells. When the gang members begin a second wave of shooting, Bishop sends Leigh to release Wells and Wilson, and the four of them repel an attempted invasion. However, Julie is killed during the firefight, while Leigh is shot and wounded in one arm.
The gang members remove all evidence of the skirmish to avoid attracting outside attention. Bishop hopes that someone has heard the police weapons firing, but the neighborhood is too sparsely populated, due to most of the housing being scheduled for demolition, for nearby residents to pinpoint the location of the noise. Wells is chosen to sneak out of the precinct through a sewer line. After hot-wiring a nearby car, he is killed by a gang member hiding in the back seat before he can get to a telephone. Meanwhile, two police officers responding to reports of gunfire find the dead body of a telephone repairman hanging from a pole near the police station and call for backup.
As the gang rallies for an all-out final assault, Wilson, Leigh, and Bishop retreat to the station's basement, taking the still-catatonic Lawson with them. They protect themselves with a large, durable metal sign as the gang violently storms the building. Bishop shoots a tank full of acetylene gas, which explodes and kills all the gang members in the narrow basement hallway. The remainder of the gang flees as police arrive to secure the station. Venturing down into the basement, the officers discover that Bishop, Leigh, Wilson, and Lawson are the only survivors. Lawson is strapped onto a stretcher and removed. Another stretcher is offered to Leigh, but, after she and Wilson exchange a long look, she declines it and exits unassisted. When an officer attempts to handcuff Wilson, Bishop angrily intervenes before asking Wilson to walk out of the station with him.
Cast
Production Following the release of Dark Star, Assault and a second script entitled Eyes were supposed to be two low-budget films written and directed by John Carpenter, with financing by J. Stein Kaplan. After reviewing the first draft of Assault and following the sale of the script Eyes to Barbra Streisand and Jon Peters, later renamed Eyes of Laura Mars, Kaplan and Kaufman concentrated on just Assault. "J. Stein Kaplan was a friend of mine from USC," said Carpenter. "He knew Joseph Kaufman from his days in Philadelphia ... Basically their fathers were funding Assault on Precinct 13". The two families of the producers formed the CKK Corporation to finance the film.Kaufman, Joseph (2003). Production Gallery [DVD]. Image Entertainment.
Screenplay 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. Carpenter employed the pseudonym "John T. Chance", after John Wayne's character in Rio Bravo, for his original version of the script, entitled The Anderson Alamo, but he used his own name for the writing credit on the completed film, using 'Chance' for his film editing credit. The script was written in eight days. Carpenter joked, "The script came together fast, some would say too fast."
Carpenter's script makes many allusions to film history and inspirations for this film. It has many references to the films of Howard Hawks. For example, the character of Leigh, played by Laurie Zimmer, was a reference to Rio Bravo writer Leigh Brackett. (Carpenter later featured a character named 'Sheriff Leigh Brackett' in Halloween). The running gag of having Napoleon Wilson constantly ask, "Got a smoke?", was inspired by the cigarette gags used in many of Hawks's Westerns. Also, subtle references are made to directors Sergio Leone and Alfred Hitchcock. The day and time titles were used to make the film feel more like a documentary.
Casting and pre-production Assault underwent several months of preproduction. Carpenter assembled a main cast that consisted mostly of experienced but relatively obscure actors. The two leads were Austin Stoker, who had appeared previously in Battle for the Planet of the Apes and Sheba, Baby, and Darwin Joston, who had worked primarily in theatre and television and was also Carpenter's next-door neighbor. Carpenter cast veteran Western actor Henry Brandon, notably of The Searchers, as police officer Cheney. Boxer-turned-actor Tony Burton, soon to be known as Tony "Duke" Evers in the Rocky films, was cast as the convict Wells, in part due to his own prior stint in prison for armed robbery. After an open casting call, Carpenter added Charles Cyphers and Nancy Loomis to the cast.
Behind the scenes, Carpenter worked with cinematographer Doug Knapp (a fellow USC student), art director Tommy Lee Wallace, sound mixer Bill VarneyLentz, Harris M. (May 3, 2012). Obituaries in the Performing Arts, 2011 (Paperback ed.). Mcfarland. p. 358. . and property master Craig Stearns. "I hardly knew what the job required," said Wallace, "but he believed in me, and, of course my price was right. It was typical of John during those lean days. He made the very best of whatever talent and facilities he had around him."
Carpenter drew storyboards for key sequences, including the "ice cream truck" sequence, the death of the white warlord, Napoleon Wilson struggling to get the keys off the guard after the siege starts, and the failed escape by prisoner Wells."Storyboards - Assault on Precinct 13" . The Official John Carpenter. Retrieved 2012-06-03.
Filming Assault started in November 1975 and was shot in only 20 days, including Thanksgiving, on a budget of $100,000. The film was shot on 35-mm Panavision in a 2.39:1 anamorphic aspect ratio on Metrocolor film stock, and was Carpenter's first experience with Panavision cameras and lenses. Carpenter has referred to this film as the most fun he has ever had directing.
Two weeks of shooting indoors were followed by two weeks on-location. The interiors of the police station were shot on the now-defunct Producers Studios set, while the exterior shots and jail cells were from the old Venice police station. The bus traveling to Sonora was shot on a closed section of the Los Angeles freeway system, with cast and crew having lunch on the freeway. Carpenter's philosophy to making Assault, which he believes can be applied to making any low-budget film, was to shoot as little footage as possible and extend the scenes for as long as he could.
The first scene, in which several gang members of Street Thunder are gunned down by cops, was shot at USC. The gang members were played by USC students, who Carpenter remembered had a lot of fun finding ways of dying while spilling blood over themselves.
"The first night I saw dailies," replied art director Wallace, "projected on a bedsheet in the producer's ratty apartment... My jaw dropped and I sat up so straight I cast a shadow with my head. This looked like a zillion dollars. This looked like a real movie."
Music
One of the film's distinctive features is its score, written in three days by John Carpenter and performed by Carpenter and Tommy Lee Wallace. Carpenter, assisted by Dan Wyman, 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. "When I did my original themes for [Assault] ... it was done with very old technology," replied Carpenter. "It was very difficult to get the sounds, and it took very long to get something simple." Carpenter made roughly three to five separate pieces of music and edited them to the film as appropriate.
The main title theme, partially inspired by both Lalo Schifrin's score to Dirty Harry and Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song", is composed of a pop synthesizer riff with a drum machine underneath that "builds only in texture, but not thematically," according to David Burnand and Miguel Mera. A held, high synthesizer note, with no other changes except inner frequency modulations, becomes the musical motif of the gang members, and reoccurs during certain violent acts in the film. In the film, synthesizers and drum machines represent the city and the gang.Conrich; Woods, 2004, p. 57.