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The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

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Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)

Rating: 4 Stars (out of 4)

Police on My Back

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Assault on Precinct 13 on DVD.

John Carpenter has held onto his fans by remaining true to his specific vision, using the Cinemascope aspect ratio, working within "genre" pictures and living by an old-fashioned Hollywood work ethic. Assault on Precinct 13 is one of Carpenter's best, an ultra-gritty cop story as angry gang members try to storm a nearly empty police station. A cop (Austin Stoker) reluctantly teams up with a killer (Darwin Joston) and a secretary (Laurie Zimmer) to stop the siege. It's Carpenter's unofficial remake of Howard Hawks' great Western, Rio Bravo, and Carpenter revisited the same story in a slightly different form with 2001's Ghosts of Mars. Co-star Nancy Loomis went on to appear in Carpenter's Halloween a year later, while the gorgeous Zimmer disappeared from movies altogether.

Starring: Austin Stoker, Darwin Joston, Laurie Zimmer, Martin West, Tony Burton, Charles Cyphers, Nancy Loomis
Written by: John Carpenter
Directed by: John Carpenter
MPAA Rating: R
Running Time: 91 minutes
Date: July 3, 2003