Vice Squad (1982)
Picture: C+
Sound: C+
Extras: B Film: B-
Ah, the early 1980s. Those last carefree years before
political correctness took over and ruined the culture. Vice
Squad is an example of the kind of film made back when cops could still
be heroes, pimps could still be vicious villains and women could still be
realistically portrayed as victims before they became acrobatic lethal
weapons tougher than any man. Those were the days.
The second of three guilty pleasures directed by Gary A. Sherman
in the '80s, in between his Dead & Buried
(1981) and Wanted: Dead or Alive (1987), Vice
Squad (1982) is a gritty expose of hookers, pimps
and cops on the Hollywood Sunset Strip that was considered quite
brutal in its day.
Ramrod (Wings Hauser) is a psychopathic pimp dressed in cowboy
duds who beats one of his hookers to death early in the film. Nina
Blackwood plays the murdered hooker, named Ginger, just prior to her becoming
one of the original VJs on MTV.
Princess (Season Hubley, then married to Kurt Russell) is a street
hooker with a little girl who operates independently. After
Ginger's murder, a vice-squad cop named Walsh (Gary Swanson) recruits a
reluctant Princess to set up the dangerous Ramrod. The bust goes as
planned, but when Ramrod quickly escapes custody, Walsh and the vice squad are
forced to launch a night-long search through the seedy side of L.A. trying
to find Princess or Ramrod before Ramrod finds and kills Princess.
Vice Squad is a lurid, but never less than
watchable thriller dominated by Hauser's intense performance as the
wide-eyed, misogynistic Ramrod, a truly heinous villain. But it's also
somewhat of a crazy movie. In what other film can you see Nina
Blackwood and What Happening's Fred "Rerun" Berry
(cast as a pimp) get brutalized, an elderly Asian kung-fu expert beat
up two cops and hear Wings Hauser sing a title song called Neon
Slime?
Released theatrically by the now-defunct-but-great Avco Embassy, Vice
Squad is the latest good B title picked up for DVD by
Anchor Bay, which continues to be the most interesting of home-entertainment
companies. And as usual with Anchor Bay, the low-budget Vice
Squad gets the kind of thoughtful treatment plenty of
bigger-budget, A-list movies deserve, but seldom get due to the laziness and
complacency of major companies.
The 1.85:1 widescreen transfer (enhanced for 16x9 TVs) is a decent
one with some grain visible from time to time, and a few lines of
dialogue (recorded Dolby Digital Mono) are hard to decipher, but may have
been difficult to hear in the first place due to too much background noise on
the original soundtrack. But it's in the extras department where
Anchor Bay once again delivers. There's an informative feature-length
audio commentary with director Sherman, who continually praises John Alcott's
cinematography, but overstates the film's historical importance. Alcott shot some of Stanley Kubrick’s films,
so that could be part of it. But
Sherman’s claim the movie’s unflinching realism of the streets was the first of
its kind is a ridiculous statement since the gritty police drama Fort
Apache, the Bronx (also photographed by Alcott) came out just a
year before. The original theatrical trailer, radio spots and a gallery
of posters and stills are also included.
- Chuck O'Leary
