Masacre en la crujía 13

When a man and his daughter drive down the wrong street they get into the middle of a gang shooting. The little girl is killed and the father left distraught, but armed with another victim's gun. He catches up with the gang and kills the leader before seeking refuge in a local police station. However the station is only manned by a few staff as it is in the process of being shut down. A prison wagon also arrives at the station with sick prisoners for temporary holding – however it is then that the street gang launch their attack with stolen and silenced automatic weapons.

I had half watched this film several years ago and didn't review it then because I knew I had been distracted and not able to give it enough attention to be able to form a fair opinion of it – however I didn't really enjoy it then. Giving it another chance produced a much more enjoyable film, even if it seems very basic on the face of it. The plot seems very simple and, in fairness, it is – gang outside, people inside, people try to keep gang out and stay alive. This is doing it a disservice of course because it creates an enjoyable tension from this simple set-up and delivers some enjoyable (if basic) action and thrills. The direction is good; my personal favourite shot being the shot near the end where the smoke clears! This effective delivery is also aided by Carpenter's own score that is nicely pulsating and still sounds great even if it is dated – the important thing is that it still fits the film and therefore works.

The dialogue is trashy but this fits the slight b-movie feel the film has. The characters are also quite simple (very basic backgrounds and personalities for each) but again this seems to work really well. The strength of having a mostly unknown cast is that you can't be sure who will live or die by the end of the film. Despite being mostly unknowns (to me anyway) the performances are generally very enjoyable even if no Oscars are being given out. Stoker and Joston lead the film really well and give good, natural performances with an overflow of charisma. I don't know the other's outside of these two but the rest were good as well, even if the film belongs to Bishop and Wilson. I was a bit let down by the lack of a central bad guy but in one regard the film also uses this well by making the gang an unseen threat that could be an isolated group or an army.

Overall this is a very basic film in several regards, but it is also a very effective and enjoyable one. If you are looking for film references then there are some to be had but for most of us the film's charismatic leads, action and effective tension will be what we stay for – and luckily it has all those with some to spare.

Watching John Carpenter's latest 'Ghosts Of Mars' recently I couldn't help but wonder what happened to Carpenter's vision. 'Assault On Precinct 13' was made 25 years earlier on probably a tenth of the budget and is basically the same movie only ten times better! Carpenter self-consciously uses Hawks' 'Rio Bravo', adds a touch of Romero's 'Night Of The Living Dead' and comes up with arguably the most exciting siege movie of all time. This gem is a perfect example of superior low budget film making. Relative unknowns Austin Stoker ('Abby') and Darwin Joston ('Eraserhead') are both outstanding as the stars of this taut and unpredictable thriller, and the supporting cast includes Laurie Zimmer (sadly her only movie), Nancy Loomis ('Halloween'), Kim Richards ('The Car' - in the movie's most controversial and memorable scene), and Carpenter semi-regular Charles Cyphers ('Escape From New York'). One of Carpenter's best efforts and overall an extraordinarily underrated movie. 'Assault On Precinct 13' is a classic! Add this to your "must see" list immediately!

Set in gang-riddled Los Angeles in the 1970s, director John Carpenter was inspired to make a film that was basically a combination of Rio Bravo (1959) and Night of the Living Dead (1968) with rookie cop Ethan Bishop in John Wayne's Rio Bravo role/Duane Jones' Ben, a recently vacated police precinct as the small town jail/farmhouse, and with gang members in place of Night of the Living Dead's zombies/Nathan Burdette's men.

For some viewers, that premise alone may be enough for them to not be able to grant this film a 10, but Assault on Precinct 13 is yet another example of why quality isn't correlated to having unprecedented ideas.

One of the first striking things about Assault on Precinct 13 is that it looks beautiful. It was made on a relatively low budget, and it looks like a large percentage of the money must have gone into camera rental, film stock and film processing. Douglas Knapp's color cinematography is crisp, innovative (I just love the shot with the camera mounted in front of the car headlight, with the sunset in the background) and marvelously portrays Los Angeles as a gritty, suburban wasteland as well, if not better, than any other film I can think of. What makes it effective isn't over-the-top, run down buildings and heavily populated streets, but vast, wide-open spaces, with squat, nondescript houses and buildings, all fading into nothingness. Knapp even manages to make the streets look like this, and a couple scenes are set in what is effectively a sand-logged desert, with a lonely, dangerous phone booth sitting in isolation. The police station also reflects the suburban wasteland look in terms of its spaces and their relationship to each other, its sparseness and its colors.

The low budget nature of the film forced a very successful straightforward, brutal and realistic approach to the action, especially the violence. Carpenter, on his commentary track on the DVD, notes that some scenes weren't as he would have liked because they didn't have the coverage they needed, and had to let them play out, longer than normal, from a single angle. Thank the heavens for a lack of time and funding! Despite the over-the-top mayhem in subsequent action films by other directors, the impact of many of the scenes in this film cannot be topped, and it's often because of the unusual, almost documentary-like feel of the film.

Also adding to the effect is Carpenter's score. Although it's technically primitive, it's just as good as any of his other music, and Carpenter is as talented as a film composer as he is as a director. His use of motifs, often in an almost trance-like repetition, is similar too, and just as effective as, both Bernard Herrmann and Ennio Morricone.

The performances are all excellent, and the staging is even better. If you know anything about the premise of the film before you begin watching it for the first time, you may have difficulty figuring out how they're going to pull off the central situation of the film. The logistics seem to be against creating a prolonged tense situation. Carpenter and company create the perfect scenario with just a couple ingenious moves, and the unending threat, combined with the unusual pacing of the zombie-like menace make Assault on Precinct 13 as frightening as any horror film could be.

John Carpenter is the master of the B-Movie genre, making well-liked films such as Halloween (birth of the slasher film), Big Trouble in Little China and Escape to New York. Assault on Precinct 13 is one of Carpenter's best, and one of my favourites of his.

In Los Andres gang-warfare is troubling the streets, and one gang was able to steel some advanced weapons to use for their mayhem. The gang, Street Thunder play revenge on the LAPD and swear a blood oath. On his first day on the job, Lieutenant Ethan Bishop (Austin Stoker), is assigned to run Precinct 9, Division 13 police station, a station about to closed down, and running on a skeleton staff. At the same time Napoleon Wilson (Darwin Joston), a prisoner on his way to death row is transfered, but on the way to a high security prison, a prisoner becomes ill and they have to stop at Bishop's station. In South Central LA, Lawson (Martin West) is searching for the house for his daughter's nanny. When he stops his young daughter buys an ice-cream from a van, and ends up getting shot by a gang member. Lawson quickly seeks revenge, killing one of the gang members. By doing this, he obviously get the gang hunting him, and ends up in the police station. The gang lays siege on the station, and the cops and criminals have to work together to survive.

It's a simple premise and plot, and works as a suspenseful horror like film. The siege of an numerous enemy is very similar to George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. It is a short film, and very action packed. It is violence, as excepted, with a shocking scene involving a young girl dying. My DVD is rated 15, but I'm surprised it's not an 18 (and that is rare). The acting a little wooden, but it doesn't matter so much in this type of film. At least John Carpenter tries to bring some character and backstory, especially Napoleon Wilson who works as an anti-hero and a early prototype to Snake Plissken in Escape from New York. Some of the pacing is a little off, especially in the beginning. But Carpenter knows simple ideas, like cops and criminals working together to stop a greater threat, and action and set pieces.

John Carpenter is one of few directors who can successfully transform their movies into giant roller coaster rides without insulting the audience. James Cameron does this, sometimes, but usually adds more plot to his stories. Carpenter just takes simple premises, throws some characters together, and lets everything evolve and unwind on their own. "Assault on Precinct 13" deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as "Dawn of the Dead," or perhaps the overrated "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," as a very low-budget horror/thriller that takes a cast of unknowns, places them together, doesn't really delve into their backgrounds, but lets everything just work itself out like clockwork. There's an eager new cop, an infamous death row murderer, and a relocating precinct, all stuffed together into a movie about a vicious gang assault. It's brilliant in a very subtle way; a sign of things to come for a director who has implemented some of the most oft-used camera tricks in the horror world.

He pioneered the first-person killer perspective in "Halloween" - an effect sorely missed on full screen TV and VHS versions, to once again be savored on the wide screen DVD presentation. Carpenter received quite a number of critical jabs in 1978 for his use of the POV technique, explained to be too voyeuristic and potentially dangerous to be shown in a mainstream motion picture. Hitchcock used the POV technique very subtly in "Psycho's" famous shower sequence, but in "Halloween" it was far blunter, resulting in an uproar of moral complaints.

No matter. "Halloween" became movie horror legend, casting a spell over its viewers, inspiring major knock-offs such as the "Friday the 13th" series (which has overall made more money than the "Halloween" franchise due to more sequels than "Police Academy").

"Assault on Precinct 13" was one of Carpenter's very first efforts at directing. It shows. The movie is flawed, imperfect, both technically and otherwise (some of the dialogue in particular could have used fixing, and the acting is nothing incredible by any means). But it still has an addictive sense of urgency and frantic pacing that makes the movie feel like one long, non-stop, brutal assault - even though the setup for the film takes over forty minutes. It may not be a flawless film but it is one of my favorites.

It's about a new cop named Bishop (Austin Stoker) who is put in charge of a transferring L.A. police precinct - number thirteen. As equipment is carried out of the building and last-minute closings are made, far away a bus load of convicts, including notorious murderer Wilson (Darwin Joston), decide to stop at precinct 13 due to the fact that one of the criminals seems to be coming down with a harsh cough. And downtown, a young girl is shot by a ruthless gang member. Her father shoots the killer, and then flees to precinct thirteen, hunted by the gang members, who eventually begin to siege the precinct in a suicide raid. Trapped with two killers, a few cops and a jail warden, Bishop and company try to think of a way out of the place without getting shot by the vicious gang outside.

That's basically it - people stuck inside a police station trying to get out without dying in the process. The movie is only ninety minutes long, give or take, which is a good thing, because if it had been any longer it might have lost some of its pacing and become tiring. Instead, there isn't a single scene in "Assault on Precinct 13" that I think should have been cut. I'm sure there are some that could have been tossed onto the editing room floor, but I'm glad that the movie is the way it is - it flows smoothly and we don't ever feel like a scene has gone on too long or too short. In that sense, it's just about perfect.

Carpenter has had one of the most successful careers of all time, followed by a legion of cult fans. His "Halloween" is one of the greatest horror films of all time, and one of the most influential. He occasionally makes his duds, like any director, but in this case, the good far outweighs the bad. "Assault on Precinct 13" is an utterly refreshing film experience that manages to maintain a fast speed but never appears to be cheating its target audience, or treating them stupid. The movie is being remade in 2005, with a considerably higher budget, bigger names, and probably worse directing. I don't really look forward to this remake because I can almost guarantee that, given the age it is being made in, there will be many pointless plot explanations, worse dialogue and bad direction. "Assault on Precinct 13" does not really need to be made again because the first one works so well. History has taught us that most remakes are not at all on the same level as their influences - just look at Hitchcock's "Psycho," then Van Sant's. If it isn't broken, don't fix it. "Assault on Precinct 13" is not broken and it does not need to be fixed.