Fear City (1985)

People are voting emotionally.

Great Film overall

Blistering performances.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

Some great shots of the old New York, before the Disney-fication of it all. If you like sleazy strip clubs, mobsters, drug alleys, and brutal killings, then this is a solid thriller. And seeing Billy Dee is always welcome. He does a fine job as the intense cop, even though his role is small.

Abel Ferrara's follow up to his excellent rape/revenge drama Ms.45 is another slice of scuzzy, '80s New York exploitation, taking place in the sleazy world of the Big Apple's strip clubs. Tom Berenger stars as ex-boxer Matt Rossi, who now co-manages the Starlite Talent Agency with his best pal Nicky (Jack Scalia), the pair supplying dancers to the city's many strip joints. When several of their girls are viciously attacked by a knife-wielding martial arts maniac (Neil Clifford), Matt and Nick set out to find the psycho before he strikes again.Fear City is exactly what you might reasonably expect from a director previously known for hardcore porn and a video nasty (the infamous Driller Killer): a gloriously sleazy slice of life in the gutter, chock full of female nudity and mean spirited violence. However, with backing from 20th Century Fox, the film is also a lot slicker than his earlier work, benefiting from excellent cinematography that effectively captures the neon drenched atmosphere of Times Square/42nd street, and a decent cast that includes Melanie Griffith as Matt's stripper love interest Loretta, Billy Dee Williams as bigoted homicide cop Al Wheeler, and Rae Dawn Chong and Maria Conchita Alonso as helpless victims of the karate killer.For the record, Griffith goes topless and bares her ass in a teeny thong, and Chong jiggles her baps.

For sickies, Fear City is much like a lot of other glitzy and not so glamorous sleaze type movies. You could compare it quite strongly to Angel or many other if it's type, only it's directed by Abel Ferrara, which has you wondering, "Why is he wasting his time doing this?" Now realizing this flick was made earlier, has made me having to change my verdict with that question, where he was still only trying to get started. But even before I pondered that question, Fear City still comes off better than a lot of other sleaze films. Yes there's boobs, other nudity, and some sick violence, something you don't underestimate with this New York based director, but it's quite a tight neck, and effective psychological thriller, but still cliché'd and very predictable. It has some great drawn characters, and the sort of actors you wouldn't suspect of acting in this, well most of them. Berenger gives a take note performance. He plays an ex boxer, harvesting much guilt who spent some time in the pen, on the account of manslaughter while in the ring. He's now an owner and co agent of a nightclub, hiring out strippers who are being nastily disposed of by a boxing psycho, so you know inevitably a show down is to ensue. Billy Dee Williams is great to watch as a hard nosed cop, who really has it in for Berenger, even at this end. Hate is a great attribute on screen. You will have to turn your eyes for about a minute, as one really overweight stripper does an act with a toy horse. If you're an AF fan, is for you, where if to looking along the line of an Angel/Streetwalkin' slasher of bit better quality, you'll be right at home with this one.

This early flick from Abel Ferrara piles on the sleaze as it deals with a group of strippers being hounded by an unknown night-time assailant; from a surprisingly good cast for such cheap exploitation fare, Melanie Griffith scores best as the most popular stripper around, who also happens to be her moody boss (Tom Berenger)'s ex, indulges in a lesbian relationship on the side (with fellow stripper Rae Dawn Chong) and turns into a full-blown junkie when the latter dies at the hands of our good friend, the serial killer. Nice clean family fare, then, right? While the film remains watchable throughout and even has a handful of amusing sequences (most notably when, having been mistaken for the killer, the wrong guy gets beaten up in the kitchen of one of these clubs) and performances (in particular, Michael V. Gazzo as an irascible strip-joint owner), it is seriously damaged by a frankly dull hero (or rather anti-hero, since we're basically talking about an ex-boxer-turned-pimp here) and a very silly villain (a karate expert/fitness freak/budding writer). Billy Dee Williams also stars as an irate cop disgusted by all the squalor around him and Rossano Brazzi turns up for a free plate of pasta as the pre-requisite "respectable" mobster overseeing NYC's underworld. For the record, the film was originally bankrolled by Twentieth-Century Fox but they eventually sold the property to an independent company in view of its objectionable content and a cleaned-up, padded-out version eventually made the rounds on US TV and European videos; also, the actor playing the serial killer remains uncredited to the end, just as the killer's name is never known throughout the film.