Amazon.com video review:
Assault on Precinct 13, the second feature by John Carpenter
(Halloween, Vampires), has a group of cops and convicts
joining forces as they're besieged in an all-but-abandoned police station
by
Street Thunder, a gang armed with automatic weapons and silencers. The
relationships of those holed up in the police station as they try to
survive
the onslaught form the better part of the movie, borrowing liberally from
the films of Howard Hawks, especially Rio Bravo, to make the point
about who's "good enough" and who isn't. The action is taut and shocking
for its time (1976). Street Thunder is more an irrational force, an embodiment
of
pure evil, than a clearly motivated group with a political agenda, drawing
comparisons with Assault's other main influence, the zombies in
George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead. More than an
action-exploitation flick (though it more than holds its own on that level),
Assault on Precinct 13 is a disguised Western with a horror aspect
that Carpenter would later work out more rigorously in such films as
Halloween and The Thing. The DVD is a true Collector's
Edition, preserving the film's original Panavision aspect ratio of 2.35:1,
and including a fascinating commentary track by John Carpenter. --Jim
Gay
Amazon.com video review:
Before making the original Halloween into one of the most
profitable independent films of all time, John Carpenter directed this
riveting low-budget thriller from 1976, in which a nearly abandoned police
station is held under siege by a heavily armed gang called
Street Thunder. Inside the station, cut off from contact and isolated, cops
and convicts who were headed for death row must now join forces or die.
That's the basic plot, but it's what Carpenter does with it that's
remarkable. Drawing specific inspiration from the classic Howard Hawks
Western Rio Bravo (which included a similar siege on disadvantaged heroes),
Carpenter used his simple setting for a tense, tightly constructed series
of action sequences, emphasizing low-key character development and
escalating tension. Few who've seen the film can forget the "ice cream
cone" scene in which a young girl is caught up in the action by patronizing
a seemingly harmless ice cream truck. It's here, and in other equally
memorable scenes, that Carpenter demonstrates his singular knack for
injecting terror into the mundane details of daily life, propelling this
potent thriller to cult favorite status and long-standing critical
acclaim. --Jeff Shannon
