Street Asylum (1990)

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

"This Cop Isn't Losing His Mind...It's Being Taken From Him!" The always cool Wings Hauser portrays Detective Arliss Ryder, a cop on the beat working the seedier side of Hollywood. With crime rampant in the streets, Ryder is tapped by Captain Bill Quinton (Cord) to be a part of a new task force called Strike S.Q.U.A.D. (Scum Quelling Urban Assault Division). Every cop in the SQUAD has a secret microchip in their spine that makes them more aggressive. This causes conflict between Ryder and his wife. Arliss is teamed with the maniacal Joker (Richardson) and his non-stop cackling and downright insanity cause tension between them.Ryder wants to find the man who shot him and the conspiracy goes all the way to the top. How does it connect to the mayoral candidate Jim Miller (Liddy) and how does Reverend Mony (James) fit into all this? One of the flaws of the movie is that it needed more Liddy. There is a severe lack of the infamous jailbird and Watergate lawbreaker. He is entertaining as Miller in his first feature film. It is such bizarre casting, we wanted to see more of G. Sy Richardson almost steals the show as Joker. Wings is more of the straight man to these shenanigans. However Wings' character arc is more interesting.Interestingly, Street Asylum bears a resemblance to Repo Men (2010). Hauser and Richardson parallel Jude Law and Forest Whitaker in that film. Both take place in a futuristic city where technology is implanted in the body. Coincidence? We think not.Street Asylum shares the aspects of other Gregory Dark work, in the fact that it is grimy and bleak. Let's not forget Dark's recent triumph, the Kane vehicle See No Evil (2006).To learn about Wings Hauser and his long career, please visit our friend The Direct To Video Connoisseur for an informative and entertaining time! For more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com

In the bleak near future Los Angeles has become a dangerous war zone with cops pitted against assorted law-breaking lowlifes. Sergeant Arliss Ryder (well played with customary wired intensity by the always great Wings Hauser) has an electronic device put into his back that turns him into an out-of-control psychotic killer and put on the Strike S.Q.U.A.D. (an acronym for Scum Quelling Assault Urban Devision), which is a unit of crazed cops assigned by Captain Bill Quinton (a typically gruff Alex Cord) to rid the City of Angels of criminals by using any means necessary. The only problem is that Arliss discovers what's going down and decides to put a stop to all this madness. Director Gregory Dark's second futuristic sci-fi/action outing is a considerable improvement over the flawed, but still pretty decent "Dead Man Walking": the action is more plentiful and nicely staged, the plot's much tighter and more thrilling, the pace moves at a snappier rate, and the budget appears to be a little bigger. This picture further benefits from amusing supporting performances by notorious Watergate crook G. Gordon Liddy as mayor candidate Jim Miller, an absolute deranged lunatic who gets his sick kicks by having prostitutes whip him while wearing leather dominatrix outfits (!); Sy Richardson as unhinged homosexual policeman Joker, and an especially hilarious Brion James as demented fire'n'brimstone street preacher J. J. Mony, who in the film's definite sidesplitting wacko highlight douses a slimy pimp with gasoline and sets the man ablaze. A cool and unjustly overlooked end-of-the-world science fiction sleeper.

I remember seeing the cover for Street Asylum many years ago and thinking that it looked like another crappy straight to video movie. Then I looked at the cover again and noticed G. Gordan Liddy's face being turned into a robot and thinking that this could be interesting. Well, after sitting down and watching this movie with a few friends, G. Gordan never turns into a robot, but, we did discover how much fun this silly film truly was.Wings Hauser plays a cop who has been shot in the line of duty. When he wakes up he is already been taken care of and discovers he has been transfered to a very tough division called SQUAD (created by G. Gordan Liddy). The first thing he notices with SQUAD is that all of the men are a bunch of crazed animals who just want to destroy street scum. After a few weeks of being on SQUAD, Wings discovers himself acting more and more like the rest of them and his life begins to spiral out of control.First of all, if you are into the 80's you will probably get a kick out of this movie as it looks like it was made in 1985 but was released in 1990. The music is nothing but saxophone and actually gets annoying from time to time. But I can overlook that since the subject matter is hilarious.The acting in the movie is actually quite good and Wings Hauser as the lead man is very convincing. Now, G. Gordan Liddy's role in the movie is one of the most hilarious of all time. Not because of the subject matter, but because this is G. Gordan Liddy. He plays the creator of SQUAD and a sadomasochist which leads to one particularly hilarious scene in which he is being whipped by a dominatrix! Look also for Brion James as a crazed street preacher. It is a small role, but, still great.Overall, I am not quite sure why this movie has such a low rating on IMDb. This was a fun, enjoyable movie in which you don't have to put a lot of thought into. Fans of the 80's should like this one. 7/10

She is long in the tooth these days, but in Street Asylum, she is dressed like a hot dominatrix under a trench coat when she visits E. Gordon Liddy's office and proceeds to punish this bad boy of Watergate breakin fame. I am at odds why Liddy even accepted this role to be dominated by a mere woman when his life is punctuated with prison daliances and scary stuff that would make any normal man cring with fear. But there he is, ordered to drop trou, by the very beautiful, Hispanic Vasquez of Playboy and Victoria's Secret fame and gets a bona fide ass whipping which sends him into convulsions of ecstacy and sensual pleasure. I guess because it IS G. Gordon Liddy this all makes sense. Sort of. s/a