Zach Vasquez
“Bang-bang! Shoot ‘em up!
Talkin’ about crime!
Everybody’s swimming in the neon slime!
The streets are flowing with neon slime!”
The above lyrics belong to “Neon Slime”, the song that opens and closes Gary Sherman’s 1981 masterpiece Vice Squad. As sung—or, rather, screamed—by actor Wings Hauser, whose star turn in the film as a remorseless and sadistic cowboy pimp named Ramrod stands as one of the greatest villainous performances in all of cinema, the track could serve as the theme song to any number of urban thrillers made during its decade.
For a certain kind of film connoisseur, the ‘80’s are synonymous with urban nightmare films, be they of the action, horror, crime or mystery variety (a thorough catalog has been compiled by writer Jedidiah Ayres). With their backdrop of metropolitan grime and air of danger and paranoia, they serve as a continuation of post-war films noir, as well as the neo-noirs of the ‘70s, but filtered through the flashy, Day-Glo ambience, coked-up decadence and muscular action of the new era. Many, although not all, of these individual examples are also outright exploitation pictures, albeit ones aimed at larger audiences thanks to the burgeoning home video and multiplex industries.
Viewed through a modern lens, these films, even more than those from earlier times, are likely to be regarded as retrograde in their worldviews (to say nothing of their content), and not entirely without good reason. More than simply a case of changing social mores or sensitivities, the urban anxieties expressed in them went a long way towards bolstering the conservative fear mongering and cultural backlash that swept Ronald Reagan into the White House.
That said, amongst this crop of—let’s call them Sleaze Noirs, why not? —there are few examples that stand out for the surprising pathos and even dignity they afford to the members of their particular underclass, which was often far greater than any found in mainstream, respectable films.
One of the first American films released in 1980 was William Friedkin’s Cruising, a key work in the Sleaze Noir cannon. An ultra-bleak police mystery thriller that frequently veers into horror—the film’s style owes as much to Italian giallos as it does gritty American police procedurals, and it would go on to serve as a major influence on David Fincher’s Se7en fifteen years later—Cruising feels of a piece with the sex trade-set dramas of the preceding years, particularly those scripted and/or directed by Paul Schrader, such as Taxi Driver (1976) and Hardcore (1979). (Schrader’s American Giglio, which one could argue fits into the Sleaze Noir category despite its higher-minded, Bressonian aesthetics, would be released only a month after Cruising). Along with fellow troubled United Artist productions Heaven’s Gate (1980) and Cutter’s Way (1981), it serves an appropriately downbeat, even downright apocalyptic, coda to the New Hollywood revolution,while also being a harbinger of the new cinematic landscape.
As notorious a studio film as has ever been made, Cruising—which stars Al Pacino as an ostensibly straight New York City police officer who reluctantly goes undercover as a gay man in the underground leather bar scene in order to catch a serial killer preying on its denizens—was met with furious condemnation (and even attempted sabotage) from members of the gay community, who charged it with being homophobic and viciously exploitative, as well as cultural conservatives, including members of the MPAA, who forced Friedkin to cut 40 minutes from the film.
While the initial critical reception to Cruising was one of near-unanimous revulsion, over the years, the tide has turned, as it has come to be appreciated for the troubling, challenging work of pitch-black noir that it is. And although many would still take offense to the film’s representation of gay culture (charging that it links homosexual sex, if not necessarily homosexuality itself, to depravity and violence), it’s impossible to ignore how modern its viewpoint is regarding the nature of policing, which it accurately and unambiguously depicts as innately predatory (the title itself referring to both gay pickup culture and police patroling). The film’s aesthetics, meanwhile, have proved highly influential on the work of individual gay artists, such as Robert Mapplethorpe and Travis Matthews.
Less publicized, although not necessarily less influential, was Sherman’s Vice Squad, released two years later. That film, which can best be summarized as a proto-Terminator set within the flesh trade of Los Angeles’ Skid Row district—and it really is hard to believe that James Cameron didn’t watch the movie before helming his breakout hit (nor, for that matter, is it believable that Clint Eastwood, or at least someone in his orbit, hadn’t seen it prior to the making of 1983’s Sudden Impact, since the iconic “Make my day” line appears first in Vice Squad)—is a prime example of the go-for-broke, everything-including-the-kitchen sink style found in the best exploitation pictures, what with its mix of high-octane action, intentionally (and effectively) disturbing sexual violence, random acts of surrealist comedy, and gritty, slice-of-life drama.
It’s that latter element that gives Vice Squad a weightier feel than most other films of its type (well, that and the subtly incredible cinematography from John Alcott—best known as Stanley Kubrick’s regular director of photography). When prepping the film, Sherman threw himself into the world of his story, spending so much time with actual Los Angeles vice cops that he became a volunteer deputy. However, he made sure to dedicate as much attention to the people on the other side of the law, voluntarily spending hours upon hours in county lockups and interviewing prostitutes, pimps, junkies, crooks and tramps. The attention to detail comes through not only in the use of legitimate street lingo (Vice Squad may well be the second mainstream feature film to use the term ‘golden shower’, the first being, of course, Cruising), but also the recognition of sex work as legitimate labor.
While the film doesn’t shy away from the more prurient aspects of the job (although notably, there is almost no nudity in the film and only one sex scene, which is markedly not played for titillation), it also takes pains to show other sides of it, including how ridiculous, boring and even therapeutic it can be. In its dramatic, yet clear-eyed depiction of sex work, Vice Squad has more in common with Alan J. Pakula and Jane Fonda’s Klute from 1971. As such, it’s not at all surprising that none other than Martin Scorsese proclaimed it the best film of its year.
If there’s any movie that makes for a perfect double bill with Vice Squad (and I should know, since I recently attended just such a program at Los Angeles’s New Beverly cinema), it’s 1984’s Angel. A cult classic that spawned two sequels, the movie is probably most famous for its iconic VHS cover. But despite the racy premise as summed up by its tagline—”High school honor student by day. Hollywood hooker by night.”—the film is a surprisingly tender character study of a troubled young girl and her adopted family of sex workers, street performers and drag queens, all of whom are portrayed with grit and poignancy. This isn’t to say the movie is short on lurid thrills (it’s partly a slasher, as well as revenge film),only that it balances the luridness with real heart.
(The same year saw the release of Abel Ferrara’s Fear City, a much scuzzier movie which, like Angel, features a kung-fu practicing serial killer preying on sex workers. Although it is a rousing and essential example of Sleaze Noir, Ferrara is working primarily in flashy, exploitation mode, with his far more challenging and thematically complex work coming three years prior and nine years later, by way of Ms. 45 and King of New York, respectively.)
In 1987, New Hollywood auteur Jerry Schatzberg made his own foray into the urban underworld with Street Smart, about an amoral newspaper reporter (Christopher Reeve) who concocts a profile of a fake pimp, only to bring him to the attention of a very real, and very dangerous pimp named Fast Black (Morgan Freeman, in one of his early breakout performances). By explicitly noting how white, upper-class intellectuals fetishize and exploit the underclass in the name of storytelling, Street Smart serves a wry meta-commentary on this particular subgenre of film, even if Schatzberg ultimately undercuts this theme by having Reeve’s character earn both redemption and revenge by the film’s end.
But regardless of how exploitative any of these films are, they all serve as essential documents of the worlds in which they are set. Shot mostly on real locations, with members of the subcultures they depict (Cruising used real members of the leather bar scene, Vice Squad and Angel feature real sunset strip regulars, and the porno-set thrillers Body Double and 52 Pickup are stacked with cameos of that industry’s Silver Age stars), and featuring legitimate bits of anthropological detail (one of Cruising’s most memorable scenes features Powers Booth as a sex shop cashier detailing the ‘handkercheif code’ to Pacino’s character), they captured the decadent, dirty, and entrancing era of inner city American life in the final years before gentrification, corporate ‘revitalization’ and the broken windows theory of policing swept it away. 
