Austin Stoker is a just-promoted lieutenant whose first assignment is to oversee a quiet, final night at a closed-down precinct after its personnel are transferred to a new station. But several unrelated events conspire to create a nightmare: a police ambush of a heavily-armed street gang the day before; a man in shock unable to explain his daughter has just been killed, and a prison bus transferring four men to death row making an unexpected stop. With phone lines cut and a faceless horde attacking under cover of darkness, Stoker will have to trust a hardened convict (Darwin Joston) to aid him in holding off the seemingly endless stream of marauders. Director John Carpenter supplies an expert escalation of dread and chaos, making an astonishingly assured second film, crafting a tough-as-nails cross between Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo and George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.
“A much more complex film than Mr. Carpenter’s Halloween …its eerie power comes from the kind of unexplained, almost supernatural events one expects to find in a horror movie but not in a melodrama…Mr. Carpenter’s ability to construct films entirely out of action and movement suggests that he may one day be a director to rank with Don Siegel.” – Vincent Canby, The New York Times
Garret Mathany discusses Assault on Precinct 13 on the New Beverly blog.
