After making Dark Star at college, Carpenter made his first real movie in 1976 with Assault on Precinct 13. It’s a homage/tribute/rip-off of his favourite movies, in particular Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo and George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, combining the deliberate pace and group ethic of the former with the nightmare menace and explicit violence of the latter. And some dialogue from Leone’s masterpiece Once Upon A Time in the West for good measure. Assault took 2 years to reach the UK, possibly due to an early unpleasant scene, but became the big success of the 1978...
