Written and directed by John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing, Starman)

Starring
Austin Stoker (Battle for the Planet of the Apes)
Darwin Joston (The Fog, Eraserhead)
Laurie Zimmer

Review: by Melissa (e-mail your faithful reviewer)

If there's one thing that sticks in my head after seeing this film, it's the theme music. Carpenter, who is known for doing his own scores, created a score for this film that crawls in your head and dies there. That's not necessarily good or bad, but the musical progression is so predictable that I found myself predicting the notes before I heard them. I'm considering plunging a screwdriver in my frontal lobe in an effort to remove the melody that keeps playing over and over and over...

Fortunately, the movie that goes with this score is loads of fun, and is more than worth risking having the damn theme music in your head. This was Carpenter's second film, and he was already a strong director at that time. Assault on Precinct 13 is tense when it needs to be tense, wryly funny at all the right parts, and tremendously respectful to its characters.

The movie is, basically, Night of the Living Dead with street gangs instead of zombies. A newbie police lieutenant and a convicted felon wind up holing up in an abandoned police station, defending it and a few other survivors against a faceless gang of hoodlums, which moves like a force of nature rather than a bunch of Bad Guys.

The best thing about this flick is its unpredictablility. You find out early on that this is one movie that just doesn't follow the cliches -- you have no idea who is going to live and who is going to die. And that pivotal scene is still shocking, even after this movie has aged almost 20 years. That unpredictablility also makes the movie a tremendous amount of fun, because you wind up rooting for the good guys, instead of just assuming they win.

If you need a great popcorn movie and have never seen this little flick, I highly recommend it. It would make a great double-feature with The Great Escape. Not only are they both great escape-from-prison, root-for-the-good-guys flicks, but if you follow Precinct with Escape, you might have a chance of cleansing that damn theme music out of your head...

DVD Details:

For a no-budget movie made in 1976, this DVD has a lovely transfer. It is further embellished with an audio commentary by John Carpenter, a nice little interview with Carpenter and Stoker, a really intriguing still gallery, and recordings of the radio spots.

Further Information:

Internet Movie Database