Directed by John Carpenter • 1976 • United States
Starring Austin Stoker, Darwin Joston, Laurie Zimmer
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.
Up Next in Synth Soundtracks
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Manhunter
Directed by Michael Mann • 1986 • United States
Starring William Petersen, Kim Greist, Joan AllenMichael Mann’s hypnotic, hyperstylized adaptation of Thomas Harris’s novel “Red Dragon” was the first film to introduce audiences to the infamous Hannibal Lecter. Will Graham (William Petersen) is a...
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Solaris
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky • 1972 • Soviet Union
Starring Natalya Bondarchuk, Donatas Banionis, Yuri YarvetGround control has been receiving mysterious transmissions from the three remaining residents of the Solaris space station. When cosmonaut and psychologist Kris Kelvin is dispatched to i...
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Space Is the Place
Directed by John Coney • 1974 • United States
Starring Sun Ra, Barbara Deloney, Raymond JohnsonAvant-jazz mystic Sun Ra brought his pioneering Afrofuturist vision to the screen with this film version of his concept album. It’s a wild, kaleidoscopic whirl of science fiction, sharp social comment...
