- Awesome Music: Which Carpenter composed himself, as per usual with his movies. It got Sampled Up by Afrika Bambaataa and Bomb the Bass.
- Complete Monster: The White Street Thunder warlord is the most savage of the gang's quartet of leaders terrorizing Los Angeles. Emotionlessly swearing the Cholo for all-out war in retaliation to a police attack; he spends the chaos driving around looking for civilians to shoot, settling on an ice cream man and a little girl.
- Cult Classic: Was originally panned in America and saw little release, but was praised in Europe and was re-released there to great acclaim and a cult following.
- Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The film was a bigger hit in Britain than it was in America.
- Magnificent Bastard: Napoleon Wilson is a snarky, yet honorable, convict on death row for murder. Forced to work with some officers to defend their station from a siege of gangsters, Wilson happily obliges, putting his skills to good work as he helps take down every gangster he sees. Abiding by a code that sees him refusing to abandon the cops to their fate, Wilson's able to warn everybody about the gangsters' deceptive tactics, while charming the officers into forming a genuine friendship with him as they all survive the night.
- Memetic Mutation:
- "I wanted vanilla twist!" *SHOT*
- Given Kim Richards replaced Dawn Lyn after the Pilot in the role of the young daughter on Nanny and the Professor, there have been jokes online about Dawn, rather than Kim, playing the little lady who is shot dead in the "vanilla twist" scene.
- The shoot-out in the middle of the film, particularly a loop of Wilson firing a shotgun, became a reaction macro.
- Moe: Little Kathy Lawson is adorable as she and her father banter about ways to get her old nanny to accept an offer to move in with them to escape the gang violence and also discuss whether to get ice cream and how her teacher said to ask cops for help when you have a problem. The Gut Punch behind her murder is just as much due to her innocent warmth as it is her young age, something the filmmakers exploit.
- Moral Event Horizon: The Street Thunder members cross it when one of them shoots and kills a little girl point blank just because she was there.
- One-Hit Wonder: Laurie Zimmer earned praise as The Reliable One and Deadpan Snarker Action Girl and downplayed Star-Crossed Lovers with a death row inmate Leigh but retired after just five more acting roles, all minor roles, in foreign films, in TV productions, or some combination of the three.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Ymmv/AssaultOnPrecinct131976
Go To
