Bearing in mind this is an early Ferrara, coming after Driller Killer and Ms.45 I should perhaps not have been so surprised at its failings. It is far better than the former but some way less good than Ms.45 and there is the problem of censorship. There are cut and uncut versions of this available but all versions lack chunks of material originally cut and now presumably lost. This accounts for some glaring jump cuts and a freeze frame on a sex scene that had me thinking my disc had stuck. Splendid camera-work as usual and worth seeing just for the glorious night shots of 42nd Street and Times Square, now nicely tidied up, I understand. Here the neon sizzles almost as much as the strippers in the clubs. Melanie Griffith seems to do all her own sex dance near nude scenes and probably gives the best acting performance. Most of the cast overact like crazy and much of the dialogue seems very stilted making it difficult to take much very seriously. Not least the karate crazed series killer who although he doesn't speak (nor even have a name) manages to look ridiculous all the same. The kills are grim, even in their trimmed form, especially intercut with the 'dancers' and the nightclub scenes are suitable sleazy. Its just all a bit predictable and with the edge maybe taken off with those cuts not quite as terrifying as I'm sure the director intended.

I watched this film on a channel called Epix Drive In. This is a channel that usually has some really bad B movies. This film is almost worthy of an Oscar after one has sat through a film called Dinosaur Island which came on before this one did. Still, it is not a very good movie...it almost had something as it has a pretty good cast, a workable story and other nice factors, but it squanders it by having one too many plot holes and what the heck is going on here moments.The story has a killer on the loose killing strippers. At first he seems to only be targeting a guy and his buddy's ladies. These two buds manage the ladies and the mob is involved and a cop who cannot seem to track this killer down shows up and occasionally cusses before disappearing again. Why is the killer doing what he is doing? I am not sure, seems he is a vigilante who is into martial arts who wants to clean up the city and write a book or something about his exploits. Suffice to say he really is not developed as most of the movie focuses on a former boxer with a past who has a thing for a stripper who becomes completely forgotten for a long stretch of this film until the ending.Tom Berenger stars as the former boxer, Billy Dee Williams as a cop who can call an Italian everything in the book, but can't find a killer who strikes at the same places and Melanie Griffith plays a stripper who seems integral to the plot then forgotten for a spell. The film had some interesting points, but there are just a few too many flaws in this one to call it good. How to best summarize this film? It can probably be summed up as Rocky versus a martial artist.

Another mid eighties flick concerning strippers and the quacks who want to disfigure them. This was on IFC last night real late, and right from the word GO, boobs come bouncing, and they just don't stop! This is one i either altogether missed when it was re-run on cable, or had actually never seen. All sizes and shapes and big time stars letting their joy juggs flaunt the air. This movie could have been called "DIRTY PILLOWS" or "the Booby affair" and the plot would have still made sense. Billy Dee Williams, fresh off his role in "The empire strikes back" hits hard in this one, trying to forever rub out his squeakier role as the fun loving space invader. I thought this was a great movie for fans of female objectification and heaping doses of the F word. Enjoy!

(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.