Legacy and remake
Assault on Precinct 13 is now considered by many to be one of the greatest and most underrated action films of the 1970s, as well as one of the best films in John Carpenter's career. In the July 1999 issue, Premiere put the film on its list of 50 "Lost and Profound" unsung film classics, writing:
A trim, grim, vicious, and incredibly effective action movie with no cut comic-relief bit players, no winks at the audience, and no stars. Just a powder keg of a premise (lifted in part from Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo), in which a quasiterrorist group's killing spree culminates in the action described in the title. Carpenter's mastery of wide-screen and almost uncanny talent at crafting suspense and action sequences make Assault such a nerve-racking experience that you may have to reupholster your easy chair after watching it at home.
In 1988, Alan Jones of Starburst said Assault is "arguably still the best film [Carpenter] ever made." In 2000 John Kenneth Muir placed the film at No. 3 on his rated list of John Carpenter's filmography, behind The Thing and Halloween. In October 2007, Noel Murray and Scott Tobias of The A.V. Club also ranked Assault at No. 3 of John Carpenter's best films ("The Essentials"), saying, "The first John Carpenter film that really feels like a John Carpenter film, this homage to Howard Hawks Westerns suggests a path that Carpenter's career might've taken if Halloween hadn't become such a hit. Carpenter's made many different kinds of movies over the course of his long career, but he hasn't gotten to return often enough to terse tales of gun-toting heroes and villains." In Jeff Chang's 2005 book, Can't Stop Won't Stop, he cites Assault on Precinct 13 as the start of "the urban horror" genre. Chang describes the film
Instead of Indian braves, Zulu warriors, or graveyard zombies, Assault on Precinct 13's heroes defended themselves in a desolate police station against marauding waves of dark, heavily armed gang members seeking revenge for their cop-killed brothers.
In his fifth edition of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film in 2010, film historian David Thomson described Assault as "a Hawksian set of a police station besieged by hoodlums - economical, tense, beautiful, and highly arousing. It fulfills all Carpenter's ambitions for gripping the audience emotionally and never letting go." Writers Michelle Le Blanc and Colin Odell have written of the film: "[Assault] looks as fresh as the day it was first screened; its violence still shocking, its soundtrack still effective, and both the dialogue and its delivery are top notch, all in a film whose $100,000 budget wouldn't satisfy the catering demands of the average Hollywood picture. This is because there is an overriding vision, a consistency to Carpenter's work that rewards repeat viewing and presents a single unifying world view."
Film director Edgar Wright and actor Simon Pegg are big fans of Assault. "You wouldn't really call it an action film," claims Pegg, "because it was pre- the evolution of that kind of film. And yet it is kind of an action film in a way." "It's very much his [Carpenter's] kind of urban Western", adds Wright, "in the way it is staging Rio Bravo set up in downtown '70s LA... And the other thing is, for a low-budget film particularly, it looks great." In October 2011, artist Tyler Stout premiered his mondo-style poster of Assault. Stout's poster would later serve as the cover on the Region B Blu-ray of Assault.
Assault has influenced a number of action films that came after, setting the rules for the genre that would continue with films such as Die Hard and The Matrix. The second section of From Dusk till Dawn was described by Variety as a "Night of the Living Dead-tinged offshoot of ... Assault on Precinct 13". The character of Scott wears a t-shirt with the words 'Precinct 13' on it as a homage to the film. In 2002, the film inspired Florent Emilio Siri's quasi-remake The Nest. The core plot of the film has reportedly inspired a 2019 Indian Tamil film Kaithi.
As a result of the film, John Carpenter went on to work with producer Irwin Yablans on Halloween, the most successful film of Carpenter's career. Due to the success of Assault in London, Carpenter named the Shape in Halloween after Michael Myers of Miracle Films, the British distributor for Assault. Myers's son Martin considered the tribute as a "tremendous honor" and "a lasting memorial to his late father". Donald Pleasence would go on to star in Carpenter's Halloween because his daughters were big fans of Assault. Debra Hill, the film's script supervisor, went on to produce Carpenter's future features and become his girlfriend.
In 2005, the film was remade by French director Jean-François Richet and starring Ethan Hawke and Laurence Fishburne. The Richet remake has been praised by some as an expertly made B-movie, and dismissed by others as formulaic, with many critics preferring the original Assault to the remake.
