Assault On Precinct 13

1 9 7 6 (USA)

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.