Assault On Precinct 13 (1976)
 Quite probably the best low-budget mainstream movie ever made, Assault
On Precinct 13 is simplicity itself.
A cop, a couple of villains, a couple of dolly-bird secretaries
and a wounded Joe Public whose daughter has just been blown away
outside an ice-cream van, hole up in a disused police station
while a gang of Latino bad guys bombard them with one missile
after another.
John Carpenter has always called this movie his tribute to
Howard Hawk's 1959 old-west classic Rio Bravo but it makes
more sense when viewed as a horror movie.
Those hordes of hoodlums look more like refugees from one of
George A Romero's zombie movies than the teen hoods of your
conventional gang movie.
 Moreover, the cop isn't the only good
guy; the villains turn out to be men of honour too.
Despite its subtle moralising, what sticks with you are
Carpenter's images - not even Hitchcock has made a telephone booth
at the side of a frame bulge with more threat.
And his soundtrack - a sequence of synth riffs that know just
when to fade in and out - is a real pulse-racer.
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