November 3 1976 

Contemporising themes from Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo, John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 premieres at the State Theater in Los Angeles. The film is set over the course of one violent night in an out-of-the-way, decommissioned Los Angeles police station where a skeleton staff and a couple of prisoners-in-transit join forces in a desperate tooth and nail battle to repel the deadly, unrelenting onslaught of a shadowy, heavily-armed  street gang looking to avenge the murder of its leader. Boasting  impressive production values that belie its meager $100,000 budget, and featuring a solid cast of unknowns led by Austin Stoker, Darwin Joston and Laurie Zimmer, the film joins Carpenter’s Halloween as a certified cult classic of 70s cinema. 

 

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