Assault on Precinct 13 (1976 John Carpenter & scr)

The girl / ice cream scene is a real classic - like chess moves, with van, girl, father, phone box, car of baddies, shockingly executed. Carpenter's own very simple synthesizer / drum machine / electric piano score is oddly memorable.

Cop Austin Stoker takes over closing LA police station, inherits Darwin Joston and Tony Burton. Laurie Zimmer is resilient heroine in Hawksian tale, good one-liners. Terrific direction overcomes no budget and B list actors.

Carpenter's co-producer to be Debra Hill is assistant editor. Carpenter via Douglas Knapp uses the Panavision frame pretty well, though Film 4 managed to find a particularly fuzzy print from somewhere...