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Fear City (1984) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski) |
| This is one seriously bad movie about a
crazed martial arts dude who is stalking strippers in the
Broadway area. Abet Ferrara directed, and he's done some much better movies, almost always concentrating on the underbelly of urban life. He did New Rose Hotel, and Bad Lieutenant, for example. Fear City must be the low point of his career. That's misleading, I suppose, because Fear City would be the low point of anybody's career, except maybe John Derek. |
| This movie has every cliche in the book. The ex-boxer (Tom Berenger) who left the ring because he killed an opponent. The mobsters. The psycho bad guy. The fringe players who own strip clubs (Michael Gazzo and Joe Santos, who else?). The cop who calls everybody in New York a "dago wop ginny scumbag". I guess one ethnic insult isn't enough. And that's what he calls the Swedish guys. He really has his "a" material saved up for the Italians. |
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| And of
course, eventually the lethal ex-boxer must face down the
martial arts dude mano-a-mano, boxing-vs-kungfu. The
killer is one tough dude. Remember Berenger killed a guy
in the ring with his gloves on. But he gives this kungfu
bastard about 100 direct bare-knuckle shots to the head
without hurting either the guy or his knuckles. And the
cop (ol' Lando Kalrissian) who hates him gives him a
grudging compliment, and says affectionately, "now
get oudda here, ya big dago ginny wop galoot". Lando showed up with about 20 cop cars the minute after Berenger barely defeated the guy, and this was about the tenth time in the movie that Lando and his flotilla of sirens and flashing lights showed up ten seconds too late. |
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Most of the characters
are so sketchy that you barely can remember their
function in the plot. Rosanno Brazzi plays some kind of
major mobster whose role is never explained except to
post bail once, and whose English is mumbled and
unintelligible. Some of the strippers seem like they
should be important, but aren't. Maybe some other scenes
were cut, because the film is only 95 minutes long. Of course, it has about 30 minutes of strippers stripping, so you might enjoy it for that reason. The strippers include Rae Dawn Chong and Melanie Griffith. |
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