Production notes

Following the release of Dark Star, Assault and a second script entitled Eyes were supposed to be two low-budget films written and directed by John Carpenter, with financing by J. Stein Kaplan. After reviewing the first draft of Assault and following the sale of the script Eyes to Barbra Streisand and Jon Peters, later renamed Eyes of Laura Mars, Kaplan and Kaufman concentrated on just Assault. "J. Stein Kaplan was a friend of mine from USC," said Carpenter. "He knew Joseph Kaufman from his days in Philadelphia ... Basically their fathers were funding Assault on Precinct 13". The two families of the producers formed the CKK Corporation to finance the film.

Carpenter had hoped to make a Howard Hawks-style Western like El Dorado or Rio Lobo, but when the $100,000 budget prohibited it, Carpenter refashioned the basic scenario of Rio Bravo into a modern setting. Carpenter employed the pseudonym "John T. Chance", after John Wayne's character in Rio Bravo, for his original version of the script, entitled The Anderson Alamo, but he used his own name for the writing credit on the completed film, using 'Chance' for his film editing credit. The script was written in eight days. Carpenter joked, "The script came together fast, some would say too fast." Carpenter's script makes many allusions to film history and inspirations for this film. It has many references to the films of Howard Hawks. For example, the character of Leigh, played by Laurie Zimmer, was a reference to Rio Bravo writer Leigh Brackett. (Carpenter later featured a character named 'Sheriff Leigh Brackett' in Halloween). The running gag of having Napoleon Wilson constantly ask, "Got a smoke?", was inspired by the cigarette gags used in many of Hawks's Westerns. Also, subtle references are made to directors Sergio Leone and Alfred Hitchcock. The day and time titles were used to make the film feel more like a documentary.

Assault underwent several months of preproduction. Carpenter assembled a main cast that consisted mostly of experienced but relatively obscure actors. The two leads were Austin Stoker, who had appeared previously in Battle for the Planet of the Apes and Sheba, Baby, and Darwin Joston, who had worked primarily in theatre and television and was also Carpenter's next-door neighbor. Carpenter cast veteran Western actor Henry Brandon, notably of The Searchers, as police officer Cheney. Boxer-turned-actor Tony Burton, soon to be known as Tony "Duke" Evers in the Rocky films, was cast as the convict Wells, in part due to his own prior stint in prison for armed robbery. After an open casting call, Carpenter added Charles Cyphers and Nancy Loomis to the cast. Behind the scenes, Carpenter worked with cinematographer Doug Knapp (a fellow USC student), art director Tommy Lee Wallace, sound mixer Bill Varney and property master Craig Stearns. "I hardly knew what the job required," said Wallace, "but he believed in me, and, of course my price was right. It was typical of John during those lean days. He made the very best of whatever talent and facilities he had around him." Carpenter drew storyboards for key sequences, including the "ice cream truck" sequence, the death of the white warlord, Napoleon Wilson struggling to get the keys off the guard after the siege starts, and the failed escape by prisoner Wells.

Assault started in November 1975 and was shot in only 20 days, including Thanksgiving, on a budget of $100,000. The film was shot on 35-mm Panavision in a 2.39:1 anamorphic aspect ratio on Metrocolor film stock, and was Carpenter's first experience with Panavision cameras and lenses. Carpenter has referred to this film as the most fun he has ever had directing. Two weeks of shooting indoors were followed by two weeks on-location. The interiors of the police station were shot on the now-defunct Producers Studios set, while the exterior shots and jail cells were from the old Venice police station. The bus traveling to Sonora was shot on a closed section of the Los Angeles freeway system, with cast and crew having lunch on the freeway. Carpenter's philosophy to making Assault, which he believes can be applied to making any low-budget film, was to shoot as little footage as possible and extend the scenes for as long as he could. The first scene, in which several gang members of Street Thunder are gunned down by cops, was shot at USC. The gang members were played by USC students, who Carpenter remembered had a lot of fun finding ways of dying while spilling blood over themselves. "The first night I saw dailies," replied art director Wallace, "projected on a bedsheet in the producer's ratty apartment... My jaw dropped and I sat up so straight I cast a shadow with my head. This looked like a zillion dollars. This looked like a real movie."

One of the film's distinctive features is its score, written in three days by John Carpenter and performed by Carpenter and Tommy Lee Wallace. Carpenter, assisted by Dan Wyman, had several banks of synthesizers that would each have to be reset when another sound had to be created, taking a great deal of time. "When I did my original themes for [Assault] ... it was done with very old technology," replied Carpenter. "It was very difficult to get the sounds, and it took very long to get something simple." Carpenter made roughly three to five separate pieces of music and edited them to the film as appropriate. The main title theme, partially inspired by both Lalo Schifrin's score to Dirty Harry and Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song", is composed of a pop synthesizer riff with a drum machine underneath that "builds only in texture, but not thematically," according to David Burnand and Miguel Mera. A held, high synthesizer note, with no other changes except inner frequency modulations, becomes the musical motif of the gang members, and reoccurs during certain violent acts in the film. In the film, synthesizers and drum machines represent the city and the gang. Carpenter also uses a plaintive electric piano theme when Lt. Bishop first enters the abandoned precinct. It reoccurs in the film during the quiet moments of the siege, becoming in effect a musical articulation of rhythm of the siege itself. Bishop is heard whistling the tune of this particular theme at the beginning and end of the film, making the electric piano theme "a non-diegetic realization of a diegetic source." Burnand and Mera have noted that "there is some attempt to show the common denominators of human behavior regardless of 'tribal' affiliations, and there is a clear attempt to represent this through simple musical devices." Many film critics who praised the film also praised the musical score by Carpenter. As John Kenneth Muir noted, "Carpenter wrote the riveting musical score for Assault... The final result was a unique, synthetic sound that is still quite catchy, even after 20 years ... Delightfully, it even serves as a counterpoint in one important scene." Dave Goldner of SFX wrote that Assault had "one of the most catchy theme tunes in film history." In early 2004, Piers Martin of NME wrote that Carpenter's minimalist synthesizer score accounted for much of the film's tense and menacing atmosphere and its "impact, 27 years on, is still being felt." A vocal version of the theme, titled You Can't Fight It, with lyrics and production by Kenny Lynch, was recorded by Trinidad singer Jimmy Chambers and released in the UK as a 45 on the Pye label in April 1978, but it failed to chart and is now a rare item. Beyond its use in the film, the score is often cited as an influence on various electronic and hip hop artists with its main title theme being sampled by artists including Afrika Bambaataa, Tricky, Dead Prez, and Bomb the Bass. The main theme was reworked in 1986 as an Italo disco 12" and more famously as the 1990 UK-charting rave-song "Hardcore Uproar". Despite this influence, except for a few compilation appearances, the film's score remained available only in bootleg form until 2003, when it was given an official release through the French label, Record Makers.

Carpenter edited the film using the pseudonym John T. Chance; his frequent collaborator Debra Hill served as assistant editor. According to Carpenter, the editing process was a bare-bones process. One mistake Carpenter was not proud of was one shot "cut out of frame", which means the cut is made within the frame so a viewer can see it. Assault was shot on Panavision, which takes up the entire negative, and edited on Moviola, which cannot show the whole image, so if a cut was made improperly (i.e., frame line not lined up properly), then one would cut a half of a sprocket into the film and "cut out of frame," as happened to Carpenter. In the end, it did not matter because he said, "It was so dark, no one could see it, thank God!" Tommy Lee Wallace, the film's art director, spoke admiringly about Carpenter during post. "[Carpenter] asked if I could cut sound effects. The answer, of course, was 'Sure!' Once again, here I was, a perfectly green recruit, yet John made a leap of faith ... he further insisted we get the best processing money could buy, which at that time was the legendary MGM color labs. Finally, he insisted we get the best post-production sound money could buy, which was Samuel Goldwyn Sound, another legend. The expense for this unorthodox approach ate up a huge amount of the budget. The production manager fumed that we were exploiting people to pay for processing— and it was true."

Assault was first released in Los Angeles at the State Theater on November 3, 1976, to mixed reviews and unimpressive box-office earnings. Whitney Williams of Variety wrote, "Some exciting action in the second half packs enough interest to keep this entry alive for the violence market ... John Carpenter's direction of his screenplay, after a pokey opening half, is responsible for the realistic movement." Dan O'Bannon, Carpenter's co-writer on Dark Star, attended the Los Angeles premiere. At this point in their professional relationship, O'Bannon was envious of Carpenter's success and reluctantly attended the premiere. O'Bannon was disgusted by the film and told Carpenter so. According to author Jason Zinoman, O'Bannon saw a reflection of the coolness that Carpenter displayed toward him in the film's casual disregard for the humanity of its characters. It reminded him of how easily their friendship had been discarded. "His disdain for human beings would be serviced if he could make a film without people in it", replied O'Bannon. The film opened at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1977, where it received favorable notices from some of the British critics. "Carpenter at Cannes wiped us off the face of the earth with Precinct 13" replied director George A. Romero, who was at the festival with his film Martin. "Right from the scene when the little girl gets blown away, I was blown away." As a result, festival director Linda Myles booked the film for the Edinburgh Film Festival in August 1977. However, the film did not get critical acclaim until it was screened at the 21st London Film Festival on December 1, 1977. Ken Wlaschin, festival director, described the film in the brochure:

John Carpenter, whose small-budget science-fiction epic Dark Star was widely acclaimed, has turned his inventive imagination to the thriller for his first solo directional effort. The result, even without taking into consideration his tiny budget and cast of unknowns, is astonishing. Assault on Precinct 13 is one of the most powerful and exciting crime thrillers from a new director in a long time. It grabs hold of the audience and simply doesn't let go as it builds to a crescendo of irrational violence that reflects only too well our fears of unmotivated attack... It is a frightening look at the crumbling of rational ideas of law and order under an irresistible attack by the forces of irrationality and death. Wlaschin found Assault to be the best film of the London Film Festival and included it in his "Action Cinema" section of that festival. It became one of the festival's best-received films, garnering tremendous critical and popular acclaim. According to Derek Malcolm of the Guardian, the applause was "deafening". Carpenter was delighted by the new praise. The overwhelmingly positive British response to the film led to its critical and commercial success throughout Europe. Derek Malcolm of Cosmopolitan wrote, "[The film] is fast becoming one of the cult movies of the year ... The great virtue of the film is the way it grabs hold of its audience and simply refuses to let go. It exploits all our fears of irrational violence and unmotivated attack, and at the same time manages to laugh at itself without spoiling the tension - a very considerable feat. Carpenter, who is clearly a director with places to go, has succeeded in making a comedy that scares the pants off us. And don't think you're laughing at it. As a matter of fact, it's laughing at you." Malcolm later wrote that he held some reservations about the film: "I don't feel like going on and on about the movie, partly because I think it is in grave danger of being oversold anyway, and partly because it isn't much more to me than tremendous fun". The film broke one house record in the UK and was named one of the best films of the year by critics and moviegoers.

Over the years, the film has received acclaim from critics, emphasizing Carpenter's resourceful abilities as director, writer, editor, and music composer, and Douglas Knapp's stylish cinematography, as well as exceptional acting from Austin Stoker, Darwin Joston, Laurie Zimmer, and Tony Burton. Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote, "[Assault] is a much more complex film than Mr. Carpenter's 'Halloween,' though it's not really about anything more complicated than a scare down the spine. A lot of 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 of this sort ... If the movie is really about anything at all, it's about methods of urban warfare and defense. Mr. Carpenter is an extremely resourceful director whose ability to construct films entirely out of action and movement suggests that he may one day be a director to rank with Don Siegel." Jeffrey Wells of Films In Review wrote, "Skillfully paced and edited, Assault was rich with Hawksian dialogue and humor, especially in the clever caricature of the classic 'Hawks woman' by Laurie Zimmer." Tom Allen and Andrew Sarris of the Village Voice described the film as "one of the most stylishly kinetic independent films of the 1970s." Alan Jones of Starburst wrote, "Bravura remake of Rio Bravo." Dave Golder of SFX magazine hailed the film as, "A superb, bloody thriller about a siege in an abandoned L.A. cop station." In his book The Horror Films of the 1970s, John Kenneth Muir gave the film three and a half stars, calling it "a lean, mean exciting horror motion picture... a movie of ingenuity, cunning and thrills." Mick Martin & Marsha Porter of the Video Movie Guide gave the film four and a half stars out of five, writing, "...John Carpenter's riveting movie about a nearly deserted L.A. police station that finds itself under siege by a youth gang. It's a modern-day version of Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo, with exceptional performances by the entire cast." In 2003, Dalton Ross of Entertainment Weekly described Assault as "a tight, tense thriller ... Carpenter's eerie score and Douglas Knapp's stylish cinematography give this low-budget shoot-out all the weight of an urban Rio Bravo." Leonard Maltin also gave the film three and a half stars out of four: "A nearly deserted L.A. police station finds itself under a state of siege by a youth gang in this riveting thriller, a modern-day paraphrase of Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo. Writer/director Carpenter also did the eerie music score for this knockout." Tim Pulleine of The Guardian described the film as superficial despite successfully meeting the requirements of the genre. Brian Lindsey of Eccentric Cinema gave the film 6 out of a scale of 10, saying the film "isn't believable for a second—yet this doesn't stop it from being a fun little B picture in the best drive-in tradition". The film has a 94% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 54 reviews. The site's consensus reads: "Lean, taut and compellingly gritty, John Carpenter's loose update of Rio Bravo ranks as a cult action classic and one of the filmmaker's best." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 89 out of 100, based on 7 critics, indicating "Universal acclaim".

John Carpenter won the 1978 annual British Film Institute award for the "originality and achievement of his first two films", Dark Star and Assault, at the 1977 London Film Festival. The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

2001: AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills – Nominated