Assault on Precinct 13

Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) is a lean action thriller you can watch online on iFILM. John Carpenter shot this early feature on a shoestring, and it has since hardened into a cult cornerstone of the siege genre.

A scorched corner of Los Angeles. On his first shift, Lieutenant Bishop draws a near-empty police station, Precinct 13, hours from being shut down for good. The phones are dead, the wires cut, most of the furniture already hauled out. That same night a prison bus detours in, dropping off a quiet, dangerous convict named Napoleon Wilson. Outside, a gang has sworn a blood oath of revenge. The handful of people inside those flimsy walls must stop caring who's a cop and who's a criminal if any of them wants to see morning.

Carpenter openly rewired Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo into urban horror and composed the hypnotic, pulsing synth score himself, two years before Halloween. Long stretches of dread snap into sudden violence, and the leads say little but carry real weight. This is where one of the genre's defining directors began. Stream Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) online on iFILM.