1984 - FEAR CITY, fantasy on NYC gangsters, strippers & psycho killers

A psycho killer skilled in martial arts is mutilating and killing strippers in order to "purify" New York City in this junk from supposed cult director Abel Ferrara. 

Ferrara indulges himself with lots of scenes of women taking their clothes off particularly Melanie Griffith who never seemed to have had much of a problem with disrobing for movies.  Throw in a lot of violence particularly directed at women and mix in some nonsense about rival gangsters competing for the stripper business and you got one very sleazy piece of junk.

Fear City has nice photography particularly of NYC strip clubs and an interesting supporting cast with actors like Jan Murray, Rossano Brazzi and playwright and acting coach Michael V. Gazzo.  The leads Tom Berenger and Melanie Griffith seem miscast, California actors pretending to be east coasters.

What finally kills this film is the ridiculous amount of cliches that Ferrara piles on to this film.

 95 minutes.

1986 - CRIME STORY, TV pilot, lots of flash same old stuff

Tough Chicago cop takes on a tough gangster.  This was a TV pilot for a show that was to follow these two characters through 20 years of conflict.  The series was supposed to start in the early 1960's and run through the 1980's, it ended up lasting 2 seasons.

Michael Mann was one of the producers and cult director Abel Ferrara was hired to direct.  Money was spent on an authentic 1960's atmosphere.  The result was yet another typical cop show. 

This is the usual tough talking cop who has put together a "team" of colorful tough cop characters not afraid to "bend the rules" to "get the job done."  The criminals are all the leftovers from The Godfather.

Considering the money spent on this pilot the whole thing is kind of pathetic in it's utter banality.

The french director Jean Pierre Melville was a lot better at taking these kind of retread crime stories and making interesting films out of them

97 minutes.