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John Carpenter began mixing and matching genre influences early in his career. For instance, Assault on Precinct 13, Carpenter's second film, is Rio Bravo and Night of the Living Dead rolled into one. In it, a skeleton crew at a decommisioned precinct, along with their remaining death-row inmates, must endure a seige by an unseen street-gang who have stranded them all in the heart of the city. There is a certain irony in Carpenter's substituting of a black police officer and a death-row inmate for Howard Hawks's fascistic central characters, I guess, but the movie never slows down enough for the audience to think about it.

Assault on Precinct 13 is a masterfully crafted film, made for peanuts and wringing every last iota of excellence from the materials at hand. It has crackling dialogue and an unerring pace, peppered with suspense sequences that turn the screws tight and tighter. At points, it is an excruciatingly tense movie, almost painful to watch. And when he found that his resources were lacking, he distracts the viewer with cinematic legerdemain. He does this by convincing the audience that everything goes and that nothing is forbidden. This, it takes from Night of the Living Dead. The most forceful instance is the imfamous "ice cream" scene. The most recognizable actor in the movie at the time of its release was Kim Richards, fresh from Disney's "Witch Mountain" movies. Carpenter places her in the movie as a fresh faced, Disney-esque kid, then shoots her as she is handed an ice cream cone. This happens not ten minutes into the movie. Like Janet Leigh's early exit from Psycho, this scene tells the audience that all bets are off. Anyone can die at any moment, and, as Joe Bob Briggs will tell you, that's the hallmark of a perfect drive-in movie. Of course, this is a shell game, because it's obvious from the get-go who will live and who will die, but Carpenter deftly hides this.

In any event, this is a reminder of how good John Carpenter was early in his career and throws his more recent films into stark contrast. It may be Carpenter's best film, one whose intent and execution are of a piece. It is certainly one of the best action movies of the seventies. There's no shame in Carpenter's inability to match his early work late in his career, but there's no joy in that thought, either. Alas...