In John Carpenter's 1976 feature Assault On Precinct 13, Austin Stoker plays Lieutenant Ethan Bishop who is sent into the tough Los Angeles neighborhood of Anderson to watch over a police precinct on its last night of active duty. As the precinct is relocating, it's more or less empty except for a receptionist named Leigh (Laurie Zimmer), a switchboard operator named Julie (Nancy Loomis) and a random cop or two. Things start of calmly enough, no one is really expecting much to happen and things are winding down as you'd expect. Soon enough, a prison transport bus shows up. It seems a few officers were bringing some hoods, most notably Napoleon Wilson (Darwin Johnson) to death row but one of the inmates got sick and the cops don't want anyone else getting contaminated. After a bit of humming and hawing over all of this, Bishop lets the officers lock up the inmates in the precinct's holding cells.

Meanwhile, not too far away, a man makes a call at a payphone while his young daughter (popular child actress Kim Richards) buys an ice cream cone from an ice cream truck. She gets the wrong flavor and heads back just as a street gang is robbing the driver. They gang shoot the girl dead and the father finds the gun that the driver stashed under the dashboard and gives chase. He catches up to them and shoots the assailant down but quickly gets out of there, followed by the remaining gangsters. When he spots the police station across the street, he heads inside to save his own skin but is so taken aback by what he's just gone through that he can't even really begin to describe to Bishop what's happened. From here, the gangsters lay siege to the precinct, using silencers so as not to draw too much attention to their assault, while the survivors hole up inside knowing full well that they are not only outmanned, but outgunned as well…

Assault On Precinct 13 shows John Carpenter wearing his love of John Ford and Howard Hawks directed westerns plainly on his sleeve. Shot under the working title of The Anderson Alamo this is basically a western movie transplanted to Los Angeles, and the comparisons to the ‘good guys' protecting their ‘Alamo' (meaning the precinct) are pretty easy to make and pretty apt that that. This isn't a particularly complicated story but it is told well and affords Carpenter the opportunity to craft some clever scenes of genuine suspense. Here the director shows expert control over mood and pace, letting us get to know the main characters with some quick but effective dialogue exchanges and establishing enough individual personalities amongst the group to let us like them. From here, once the child murder takes place (a scene that still packs quite a punch even by modern standards), the assault builds to a wonderfully tense conclusion in which Carpenter is able to stage some impressive action set pieces. He may not be reinventing the wheel here, but he does what he does very well in this picture.

The performances are pretty strong here as well. Austin Stoker has that leading man charisma and likeability to him in this role that serves it well and which allows him to carry the picture. He's quick on the draw but also uses his smarts to do what he can to lead the survivors in what quickly escalates into a pretty dire situation. Darwin Johnson is also strong here. His character is a little more blunt than Stoker's, he is convict after all, but once his character is established through a little bit of humor early on, we want him to make it out of this alive. He develops a somewhat begrudgingly cooperative relationship with Stoker that is the backbone of the last half of the film but so too does he warm up to Laurie Zimmer, who is both attractive and likeable in her role. Nancy Loomis isn't given quite as much material to work with as the other leads but she plays her part well, relaying some effective work here and convincing us that her character really and truly is terrified about what's happening to them. The cast all shine here, they deliver very fine work.

Ultimately, while Carpenter would move on to bigger and in some ways better pictures shortly after this was made (Halloween would be up next) this one remains a high point in his filmography. He would stretch his wings a bit in terms of scope but Assault On Precinct 13 remains an expertly made and beautifully tense picture well worth revisiting.

Video:

Scream Factory brings Assault On Precinct 13 to Blu-ray in AVC encoded 1080p high definition framed at 2.35.1 widescreen. For the most part, this is a pretty solid transfer, though you can't help but notice a brief scene about an hour into the movie when Leigh goes into the holding cell area where the brightness looks way off. It's odd, because it really sticks out against the rest of the movie, which shows pretty strong color reproduction and good contract. Outside of that issue, there are some spots where the blacks look a little lighter than you might want but these are few and far between and overall the black levels are just fine. Detail is quite good throughout the presentation and there weren't any obvious issues with edge enhancement to note. The film's grainy aesthetic doesn't appear to have been smoothed over, thankfully, while texture looks good. This is a very nice transfer overall, with good color reproduction and pretty strong texture as well.