I guess I saved myself the trouble of dredging the sewers to find you
(There are Spoilers) Very graphic film about a crazed killer Pazzo, John Foster, out to rid the city of strippers and go-go dancers who in his disturbed mind are the cause for all the ills in the world. Going out on what seems like a crusade against sin and indecency Pazzo, who's name is never mentioned in the film, ends up slicing up some dozen strippers and go-go dancers as well as hanging, off camera, sleazy drug pusher Jorge, Juan Fernandaz, before his reign of terror is finally over.Pazzo's brutal assaults has those who run the strip joints in a panic with the girls refusing to go out to work not wanting to become Pazzo's next victim. All this has strip joint owner Mike, Michael Z. Gazzo,go so far as getting overweight and middle aged hookers to entertain his by now quickly declining customers! Ex-boxer Matt Rossi, Tom Berenger, and his boyhood friend Nicky Parzeno, Jack Scalia, who run a talent agency providing girls for the city's strip joints are also getting a bit teed off with all their girls never showing up for work at the strip joints and go-go bars that their assigned to.
With nobody really knowing who's committing these brutal crimes homicide police detective Al Wheeler, Billy Dee Williams, deuces that it's a gang war between the two top talent strip joint agencies run by Rossi & Parzeno and their biggest rival the agency owned by Brooklyn's Goldstein, Jan Murray. It's when one of Goldstein's girls ends up a victim of the crazed killer that it becomes apparent after Det. Wheeler almost ran the Rossi & Parzeno agency out of business that it's the work of a lone nut psycho.
The movie has Matt's girlfriend Loretta, Melanie Griffith, who strip-joint owner Mike's biggest attraction end up getting back on coke, the stuff that you sniff not drink, when her lesbian lover and fellow stripper Rea Dawn Chong becomes one of Pazzo's victims. Savagely attacked Rea hangs on to life at the hospital for about a week and when she finally, and mercifully, passes away Loretta really becomes addicted on drugs where her sexy figure shrivels up to the point where she ends up looking like a holocaust survivor!
Matt who's already on Det. Wheeler's sh*t-list for brutally working over a tourist, out of town architect Boeke, thinking that he's the psycho killer ends up going back to the old neighborhood, Little Italy, asking the local Godfather Carmine, Rossano Brazzi, for help in getting the killer. Carmine was about as helpful as the cops are in not having a clue who this psycho is. It's only later when Loretta goes back to her drug pusher Jorge who, unknowingly to Loretta, turned out to be Pazzo's latest victim that Matt followed her and met up with the deranged martial arts expert for the films exciting and bone crushing conclusion.
Much like the movie "Taxi Driver" which it obviously copied from "Fear City" shows New York at it's most raw and grittiest. The night scenes that make up well over 75% of the film give you the feeling that the city is no place to bring up a family or take your girl out for a date. Tom Barenger as fit and in shape as he's even been, in any film that he was in, is excellent as the ex-boxer Matt Rossi. Matt had quit boxing after he killed a man in the ring. This after begging the referee, James Brewer, to please stop the fight before the final and fatal, to Matt's opponent, round.
It was good to see that Matt still had it, a lighting left jab and devastated right cross, when he confronted Pazzo at the end of the movie. It was that combination, together with a few head buts,that finished the crazed killer off for good. It's was just too bad that Matt's friend Nicky Parzeno didn't fear as well ending up in the hospital with a couple of broken ribs from karate kicks he took from Pazzo earlier in the film.
score 6/10
sol-kay 20 December 2007
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1788476/35271
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