A gang targets a man (Martin West) in retaliation for killing one of their men and chases him to a police precinct that is being closed. The precinct retains a skeleton crew, including Lieutenant Ethan Bishop (Austin Stoker), and a handful of prisoners on a medical stop during transport. As the siege continues, the line between cops and criminals becomes less important than the one between alive and dead.
I'm glad I saw this after I saw the remake because the 2005 version would never have held up the other way around. The original is super low-budget, gritty, and doesn't have a single polished facet. It is raw, undiluted genius from John Carpenter.
There's obviously a huge influence from Night of the Living Dead and you can see the bones of what would become Halloween in some of the shot compositions, music, and editing, but don't think of this as a practice run. It's solid on its own merits. It's just that Carpenter had so many hits in such a short time, this was bound to get overlooked. Consider this your gentle push to check it out if you haven't.
It's streaming on Criterion Channel, Peacock, Tubi, Freevee, and Crackle so there's no excuse.
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