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Fear City (1984)

Dir: Abel Ferrara

Ex-boxer (he killed a guy in the ring) Matt Rossi (Tom Berenger) and his friend Nicky Parzeno (Jack Scalia) run a Mob linked ‘talent agency’ that provides girls for the local New York strip clubs.
One of Matt and Nicky’s girls is the bi-sexual Loretta (a pre-fame, pre-stupid collagen lips, Melanie Griffith) who Matt used to date and who he still has feelings for.

Business takes a big hit though when a psycho (John Foster) starts cutting up the strippers.
Hard as nails Cop Al Wheeler (Billy Dee Williams, "The Empire Strikes Back") is on the case and is also on the backs of Matt and the Mob backed clubs.

Mob boss Carmine (Rossano Brazzi) is not happy at the damage being done to the business though, as more and more girls refuse to turn up for work, and so soon the Mob joins the Cops, as well as Matt and Nicky, on the psycho’s trail….

 

With an increase in budget and backing came the unwelcome side effect of producer interference.
With four producer’s on “Fear City” it comes as no surprise that Ferrara would bash heads with these suits, especially chief producer Bruce Cohn Curtis who he would argue with daily.
It resulted in a very hit and miss, compromised movie and one with an astonishingly complicated censorial history.

Probably to secure more return on the budget Ferrara also shot a TV version of “Fear City” that eliminated all nudity and swearing and almost all the violence. Often scenes were re-shot in TV friendly versions and removed scenes replaced with scenes saved from the editing floor. Given the limited theatrical success and distribution of the movie it was probably the case that this dreadfully dull TV incarnation was sadly the version most people saw..
Receiving no theatrical release in the UK, for example, it was in this TV version that the film made it’s video debut! To add insult to injury the BBFC then cut another minute from it!
But even the American theatrical print suffered. Shorn of various sex, nudity and violence nuggets, to secure an ‘R’ rating , “Fear City” started to feel more than ever like a cable TV movie.
Even today it is only this trimmed ‘R’ version that is available on U.S. DVD.
The best way to go then is to get the fully uncut Dutch DVD on the ‘Extreme’ label. Try Ebay.

Anyway, what of the film itself.
Opening with a song by regular Ferrara collaborator Joe Delia (with David Johansen) called “New York Doll”, which gives out a major Billy idol vibe, the very 80’s inner city styling is there for all to see and hear. Dated it may be, but it sets up the general setting and attitude of the film when combined with the night time visuals of New York’s gaudy 42nd Street.
The less said about the rest of the music the better though as one Dick Halligan provides a cheesy score that never rises above 80’s soap opera drabness.

As hinted at above, Cinematographer James Lemmo captures the neon lit New York streets just fine, the interior sequences (shot in L.A.) are flat and TV movie-like though and he did a more effective job overall in the fine looking Slasher flick “Madman”, the wonderfully gritty “Vigilante” and of course Ferrara’s own “Ms.45”.
The footage of 42nd Street and The Deuce area though is great for Grindhouse/Cult movie fans, even though at the time “Fear City” was made the rot had well and truly started set in and many of the cinemas look to be in a rough way (many sporting only multiple repeated, hastily slapped on, torn posters to advertise the movies) and only the straight forward porn establishments shine out with a neon streaked arrogance.
But there can be no doubting the atmosphere built up in the movie by yet more astute Ferrara location shooting of a city that he basically owns as far as cinematic visuals and style goes.

Most of the cast seem to sadly sleepwalk through the film (compare the flaccid performances here to those full of life and energy in “King of New York”, “Ms.45” and “The Bad Lt.”) and a pre-stardom Berenger may have the physical presence but he hardly fit’s the Italian wise guy look and rarely does any more than the basics to portray his emotionally wounded character. He would do a far better job in “Platoon”.

Billy Dee Williams has fun as the amazingly un-diplomatic Cop, but he only appears in fleeting spurts, has very little to do with breaking the murder case and is stuck with perhaps too much hardboiled dialogue to appear as anything other than a comic strip creation.

Jack Scalia (soon to fall into straight to video/cable TV hell though he recently got a bigger, cinema release, showcase in Wes Craven‘s “Red Eye“) manages to give Nicky some suitable arrogance and feels far more at home in his basically limited role than Berenger in his lead one.

Melanie Griffith looks sexy enough (though perhaps too stringy) as Loretta, but she has almost nothing to do in the film except show some welcome T&A (in a film full of welcome T&A in this uncut version) and lie around her apartment in a semi-drunken stupor.
Her very sexy (and genuinely warm) scenes with her lover, and fellow stripper, Leila (Rae Dawn Chong) are the best in the film and she gives off more passion with Leila than she does with Matt. In fact her line to Leila, “I love this mouth”, is a wonderfully simple and to the point declaration of the passion and romance these two obviously share.
Sadly a sex scene between Leila and Loretta, that Ferrara actually shot, was not allowed to remain in any release version of the film.

More interesting are the smaller support roles and actors (it’s a nice little line-up) and the scenes they inhabit.
Rae Dawn Chong, we have already mentioned and she is more sexual and alluring here than in her far bigger, rather wasted, ‘damsel in distress’ role in “Commando”.

Harassed strip club owner Mike is wonderfully essayed in that growling Italian-American drawl by Michael V. Gazzo, who shot to brief fame in “The Godfather”.
Mike also provides some nice general black humour, as does a specific scene he has that highlights the fact that the strip joints are all in dire straits since the killings started because they can’t get any ‘quality’ girls! Gazzo is in typically great form during this sequence that sees Mike standing on a rain-soaked sidewalk begging pissed off customers, who are leaving his club at the lack of descent titties, to come back in.
This scene also cleverly blows away any façade of gaudy glamour that these places hide behind at night when it is delightfully stripped away in the grey afternoon light and by Mike’s shouted desperation at the loss of his punters.

There’s also great sequence where Nicky and Mob guy Frank (Joe Santos, “The Rockford Files”)
jump a big man they mistake for the killer and promptly get their arses creamed before Matt comes to the rescue.
Santos adds a rare bit of energy to the acting throughout the film and his angry turn in this scene especially, after Frank gets punched in the nose for no reason, is amusingly effective.

John Foster (of which little is known about, and whose role is mistakenly given to a different actor on “Fear City’s” IMDB listing) is a strange quantity indeed.
As the Martial Arts fixated killer he makes for a suitably threatening presence, and his character’s sadistic traits of cutting up his victims with knives and razors (or breaking their bones with Nunchukas!) means he’s given a memorably nasty role.
But his characters unexplained habit of writing his attacks down in novel form (also called “Fear City”) provides some unintentional amusement due to the pretentious voiceover his character is given, and all his ’body beautiful’ posturing looks faintly camp and cheesy in 2007. But Ferrara, and regular screenwriter Nicholas St John (Nicodemo Oliverio), have at least delivered a very different psycho from the norm.

There are also some brief turns by some familiar faces, in fact this movie is a little treasure trove of interesting character actors.
A pre-”Extreme Prejudice“/”Predator 2” Maria Conchita Alonso makes a ballsy impression as another of Matt and Nicky’s girls.
Janet Julian makes a brief (though a few extra scenes of her character can be seen in the TV version) appearance as Nicky’s girlfriend, looking very different than she would as Frank White’s Attorney/lover in “King of New York”.
The first victim of the killer, Honey, is non-other than Michael Jackson’s hard done by girlfriend in the classic “Thriller” video, Ola Ray.
And sharp eyes will recognise the unique (and oh so substantial) hairstyle of Frank Sivero as a Mobster who gets machine gunned to death during a drive-by assassination (a delightfully messy flashback scene to Matt’s youth) and whose hair would later grace Scorsese’s classic “Goodfellas” of course.
Juan Fernandez also provides another example of the brief but memorable impressions this movie is filled with as a sleazy back-alley dealer. Fernandez would go on to give a chillingly cold performance as a Militia Commander in Oliver Stone’s “Salvador” and would work with Ferrara again in “Cat Chaser”.

Ferrara and St John again bring in a heavy Religious (read Catholic) tone to the film via Matt’s character and his relationship with the typically rabid (and of course blindingly hypocritical) Catholic Mobsters in the form of Brazzi’s sinister Carmine.
Brazzi heavily plays on his Priest role in the underrated “Omen 3: The Final Conflict” during his philosophical scenes with Beranger, only this time adding a cleverly subtle hint of under-the-surface menace. But his character‘s relationship with Matt is very sketchy and in fact is a perfect example of what is basically wrong with “Fear City“.
The Mafia sub-plot, the strip club sub-plot, the Nicky and Matt agency sub-plot, the Police investigation sub-plot, Matt’s flashbacks sub-plot, the Matt/Detective Wheeler sub-plot, the Matt/Loretta sub-plot and the actual psycho plot itself means that the movie simply has far too many balls in the air at once and not even the normally astute team of St John and Ferrara can juggle them effectively, and as such many interesting aspects of the plot and characters get fumbled and dropped after just a few frustrating glimpses.

What does the film deliver on a more basic level?
Well (uncut version only here) the sex, in a film basically drenched with sex, is not very explicit but suitably passionate and alluring, there is almost constant nudity on display (T& A only) which is either in your face or in the background of many scenes, and the violence is suitably nasty. The killer’s sadistic kick of cutting his victims makes for some uncomfortable scenes and a sequence on a subway is a very nasty bit of bloody razor violence indeed.

“Fear City” then is average Ferrara. It has some fine visual moments, some nice support roles and acting and some interesting ideas and gritty scenes. But it’s too little given the nearly 4 year wait we had between this and the excellent “Ms.45” and the film is quite simply packed with too many sub-plots, unusually cliché dialogue from St John, and mostly lifeless acting from the leads to wholly succeed.

In fact this was to be the start of a very hit and miss (and often equally compromised) period for Ferrara.
He would follow up “Fear City” with a high profile, but artistically anonymous, stint on “Miami Vice”, then the dreadfully flat, and just as artistically anonymous, TV movie “The Gladiator” would follow.
A return to form would appear in the form of the excellent “Crime Story” TV pilot but the disappointing (though still with some effective aspects) “China Girl” came next and Hollywood compromise would raise it’s unwelcome head big time to scupper “Cat Chaser”, though again that was another movie with some effective moments.
Thankfully 1990 would deliver the magnificent “King of New York” and some excellent work would follow (not least of which was the stunning “Bad Lt.”) before another slump would hit this most personal and unique of Directors.
Though at least this time the slump would be in the profile and distribution Ferrara’s movies would get, rather than an artistic one.