Assault on Precinct 13

John Carpenter’s lean, mean second feature puts a gritty exploitation spin on Howard Hawks’s classic western RIO BRAVO, transposing the story to a soon-to-be-closed LA police station where a group of officers and convicts find themselves under siege by a marauding streets gang who have taken a blood oath to kill someone trapped inside. The baddies are portrayed as zombielike killing-machines straight out of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD; the notorious ice-cream truck scene is still a shocker; and Carpenter keeps the tension mounting with his pulse-pounding synth score.