A durable western classic directed by Howard Hawks, Rio Bravo is seen by many as a right-wing riposte to pro-liberal, anti-McCarthy parables such as High Noon. John Wayne stars as the sheriff of a frontier town who jails a local killer (Claude Atkins), then fights off attempts to free him with help from his deputy (Walter Brennan) and the town drunk (Dean Martin). Hawks later remade the story twice, as El Dorado and Rio Lobo, while John Carpenter also used the film as the blueprint for his 1976 police thriller Assault on Precinct 13. (141 min)

BULLITT (1968)
Five, 10pm

Directed by the British expat Peter Yates, Bullitt clothed the punchy conventions of hardboiled detective drama in the chilly elegance of European New Wave cinema. Handpicked by its star Steve McQueen, Yates largely rewrote the original script into a sleek crime thriller that remains a design classic of late 1960s chic, from McQueen’s implacable cool and Mustang Fastback to Lalo Schifrin’s sparse, jazzy score. The seminal car chase through San Francisco’s sloping streets may have been surpassed by thousands of subsequent imitators, but it still thrills with its sense of slow-building chaos. (113 min)

THE MEAN SEASON (1985)
BBC One, 12.15am

Kurt Russell stars in this early serial killer thriller as Malcolm Anderson, a crime reporter on a Miami newspaper trying to escape the sick underbelly of his job by moving to small-town Colorado. But a sinister phone call from a multiple murderer (Richard Jordan) arouses Anderson’s interest, overriding the protests of his girlfriend (Mariel Hemingway). Directed by Philip Boros and co-starring a young Andy Garcia, The Mean Season is superior genre fare elevated by its decent cast, notably Jordan in one of his final performances. (103 min)

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