"Vice Squad"(1982)d/Gary Sherman

"Bang! Bang! Shoot 'em up, talkin' about crime! Somebody just bought it in a neon sliiiiiime!!!" From the instant your ears wrap themselves around lead antagonist Wings Hauser's uneven voice, cracking, as it dramatically belts out the obvious lyrics of the title tune from tonight's review, you should already know you've got a minor eighties exploitation classic on your hands, and one that features one of the great deranged cinematic performances of the era.Nevermind that it was helmed by director Gary Sherman, of Raw Meat(1972) fame, or '70s supporting actress extraordinaire, Season Hubley, in the female lead, or even the appearances within by pioneer MTV vee-jay, Nina Blackwood, Fred "Rerun" Berry of "What's Happening", and a nondescript cameo by a nearly unrecognizable Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith.It's Wings Hauser you're gonna wanna get a load of in this one, trust me.After toiling on television crime dramas like Baretta and Magnum, P.I. for several years, his breakthrough role came in tonight's entry, in the form of a scumbag named Ramrod, who looks like he might be the illegitimate father of record breaking Detroit Lions' franchise quarterback, Matthew Stafford, if he was a coked-out psycho pimp that wore a turquoise cowboy shirt, drove a personalized monster truck, and terrorized his stable of money bitches with an unpredictable steak of debilitating sexual violence, that is.Hauser's Sunset Strip sociopathic slut-slinger effectively takes the cartoon stereotypical movie pimp with his ostentatious polyester evening wear and catty pimp slaps and sends him scurrying for the nearest street lamp to hide behind.Because of him, Squad is sleazy, tension-packed exploitative gold that'll leave you on the edge of your seat.Onwards...

Sorry, Nina, but the pimpstick didn't wanna see "I Ran", by A Flock of Seagulls twice last hour...
After seeing a lengthy title montage of the colorful pond life that made Sunset Boulevard after hours the sideshow it was famous for being at the outset of the eighties(no big deal these days, as any 3 am trip into WalMart will illustrate, really), we're introduced to "Princess"(Season Hubley), a single mother forced to send her tearful, young daughter off to stay with a relative while she overapplies her makeup and wears a lotta purple, pissing on strangers and getting her toes shrimped for cash as a Sunset Strip outlaw(def: sans pimp) streetwalker.She receives a distressing phone call from fellow hooker, Ginger(Nina Blackwood), who's bolted on her sugar daddy, a sociopathic hillbilly named Ramrod(Wings Hauser), who gleefully takes it upon himself to mutilate her money-making mound with a folded up wire hanger for jacking his ends (and not being as adorable as Martha Quinn), resulting in her premature death at the local hospital.Walsh(Gary Swanson), a vice cop, coerces Princess to partake in a sting operation to snare her friend's killer(by repeatedly shoving her face into Ginger's lifeless cadaver on a gurney), but Ramrod is no easy collar, headbutting the arresting officers with the whore's forehead, and generally making a nuisance of himself before being hauled off in an unmarked cruiser, where he cowboy boots one officer in the face and slaps a submission choke on the driver from the back seat with his legs(!), escaping into the night from the accident scene, unbeknownst to Princess, the target of his suicidal vengeance.Meanwhile, it's sex trade business as usual on the streets, and after wolfing down a friendly hot dog with Walsh, Princess is back at it, herself, turning tricks for amputees, attending mock funerals for rich old pervs, getting her piggies tooted on by wallflower foot fetishists, and robbed by finicky overweight convention attendee/johns, oblivious to the fact that Ramrod is on the loose, getting his handcuffs sawed off, and scoring the weapons that he plans to use in paying her back a thousand fold, from tattooed fetishistic perverts.

"Does Wings Hauser have to foot rest a bitch's head in, in front of the King, to get his point across?!! Well, DOES HE?!!!?"
From here on in, it's a race to Princess, with Walsh, laden with guilt over allowing the psycho-pimp to escape, filling the strip with a rainbow platoon vice unit to find her as she makes her nightly rounds, while Ramrod beats the snot out of one of her Asian colleagues, Coco(Lydia Lei), dumping her in the street like a bag full of discarded Burger King wrappers, and even removing her former sugar pimp's(Fred Berry) jewels with a switchblade in zeroing in on her whereabouts(I always wanted to see somebody do that to Rerun, unimpressed by his jiggly poppin' n' lockin' for laughs and silly beret on What's Happening, for the record.).There's a crowded precinct sequence, for those who expect that sort of thing in movies like this, complete with brazen white prostitutes(Cheryl Smith), sassmouthed teen smack-veins(Stacy Everly) handcuffed to benches, and giant negroid cops inquiring about the whereabouts of their missing paper clips.Then Ramrod snatches Princess up into his stolen vehicle and the film races towards it's commodious climax where Ramrod blindly fixates on laying the pimpstick treatment to the cash-for-gash thorn in his side, nonchalant to the vice cops that have him hemmed in on all sides.Will Walsh save his flat-chested new gal-pal before the monster mack can add her to the growing list of uppity bitches he's brutally iced just for kicks?How much abuse can Ramrod's turquoise cowboy shirt endure during his mad dash to final judgment before he decides to put something else on?Most importantly, once it's all been said and done, will we be graced with a reprise of Hauser belting out "Neon Slime" over the end credits?I'll leave the experience to you, the readers, this time around.Give it a look yourselves, would you, ferchrissakes...

Pimpin' Hint #117: Neuter Rerun with a stiletto to show bitches you mean business.
The gritty script was co-written by Robert Vincent O'Neill, the writer-director of the first two "Angel" movies(Angel(1984), and Avenging Angel(1985), respectively), interestingly enough.Most of you will remember Season Hubley as the Chock Full'O Nuts girl who gets pulled through the floor by the cannibalistic 'Crazies' in front of then-husband Kurt Russell's eyes in Escape From New York(1981), though she's also appeared in Hardcore(1979), the Humanoids From the Deep remake(1996), and various cash-in horror franchise sequels like Children of the Corn V:Fields of Terror(1996), and Stepfather III(1992).Wings, who supplies one of my favorite on-screen villains of all-time here, a long-time television staple, also showed up post-neon slime in John Bud Cardos' Mutant(1984), direct-to-video sleaze Bedroom Eyes II(1990) with Linda Blair, and recent horror-comedy, Rubber(2010).Sherman also directed 1981's Dead and Buried, Poltergeist III(1988), and even an episode of the Poltergeist:The Legacy tv series.For me, this one goes back to the cable box days, where I must have watched it twenty times if I saw it once.On the scale, Vice plays the lamp post three Wops worth, a ballsy effort, full of the realistic grit that fans of exploitation flicks crave.Recommended.

Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboy/psycho pimps that swim in the neon slime, like Ramrod(Wings Hauser).

"The Mack"(1973)d/Michael Campus

Long before the advent of blaxploitation films or Wings Hauser, pimpin' remained as difficult as it had ever been, with hookers' general inability to get a hustler's money straight, resulting in many of these fancy trick bitches coming down with an acute case of foot-up-yo'-ass disease and rightfully GODdamned so, if I may be so bold.In 1973, a player's dilemma was finally committed to celluloid in the form of tonight's review, a surprisingly effective film that transcends the sub-genre limitations in sporadic instances, making it highly watchable for both exploitation fanatics and general film buffs alike.'Intense' and 'passionate' aren't usually commonplace words when describing B-movies about small-time crooks in Oakland, but you'll hear those and others tossed around a lot when Mack comes up in cinema convo, due in part to a potent supporting cast made up of comedic great, Richard Pryor, genre vet Carol Speed, Roger E. Mosley of 'Magnum P.I.' fame, B-movie staples, Juanita Moore and Don Gordon, as well as a smattering of real-life pimps and hustlers like Frank Ward, who was gunned down shortly before the film's release.Of course, the spotlight here is on Max Julien, who gives a tour de force performance as Goldie, mixing sleaze with sympathy in creating one of the most compelling characters in cult cinema history while inspiring future directors like Oliver Stone and entire generations of hip hop artists to follow, and even helping design some of the outrageous threads worn in the movie.The final draft of the script was also written by Julien, Pryor, and Campus, though screenwriter Robert Poole allegedly wrote the first treatment on toilet paper while in prison(!).Tonight's review goes out to reader Floyd, who's seen just about every blaxploitation flick ever made, and whose own pimp cape has stayed wrinkle-free as long as I've known him.Dig it, baby...

Pimpin' Hint # 7:Avoid crooked honky cops at all times.
After finding himself suspended upside down in a car wreck looking up at two mocking cops(Don Gordon, William Watson) when a botched drug deal turns into a fire fight, Goldie(Max Julien) is given a five year bed at the state pen, where he damned near goes stir crazy.Having served his sentence, he finds himself on a charter bus back to Oakland where he reconnects in a billiard hall with street guru, Blind Man(Paul Harris), who helps him to get back on his feet by introducing him to the mackin' game, convinced that Goldie could potentially be the coldest pimp there ever was.Goldie meets childhood sweetheart, Lulu(Carol Speed), at a nightclub where she admits to having become a prostitute in the years since, beseeching him to become her pimp.After leaving the bar, he's leaned on again by the same two badged bigots from earlier, there to remind him they plan on remaining a thorn in his side.He then tells Mama(Juanita Brown) that he's gotta face the man the only way he knows how, the nefarious and illegal exploitation of women for money, vowing to move her out of the ghetto once he's amassed the ends to get it done.He meets up with his brother, Olinga(Roger E. Mosley), who's since become a black nationalist that pulls drug addicts off the street and rehabilitates them into soldiers for the cause, but spares him the news of his forthcoming new business venture.Goldie listens to pimp braggadocio at the barber shop to strengthen his own game, which he lays on Lulu, who becomes his bottom bitch, with partner-in-crime, Slim(Richard Pryor) along for the ride.Cue: funky montage of Goldie rolling in long dollars as he gathers his eclectic stable of money hos, that includes Chico(Kai Hernandez) and Diane(Sandra Brown), while moving his mother into a new place and doling out cash to kids on the street for going to school.We then see Goldie congregate his bitches into a local planetarium, where he laughingly indoctrinates their minds in the ways of gash fo' cash with projected views of space and a microphone with echo.A sweet mack, indeed.

Big Pimpin'.It's the toughest job you'll ever love.
Once Goldie's rolling in a pimped out '71 Eldo and rocking a matching brown velour derby and pimp cape to boot, he's instantly set upon by the street's bottom feeders; The Fat Man(George Murdock), a white heroin kingpin Goldie once worked for that's been losing addicts to his brother's racial rhetoric, Hank and Jed, the two corrupt cops with a hard on for Goldie, who murder a black detective that uncovers their shady side deals, rival Pretty Tony, when his apex hooker jumps ship to Goldie's stable in front of all the hustlers(Goldie memorably remarks:"We can handle this like you got some class, or we can get into some gangsta shit."), and even Olinga, who righteously denounces his brother's gaudy lifestyle.What's a hustler to do, except attend the Player's Ball where he rejects another work offer from the Fat Man before being awarded "Pimp of the Year" by his ridiculously garbed peers.It isn't long before the streets of Oakland are littered with overdosed hos, executed mothers, and whacked main men, so naturally, Goldie responds with repeated cane-sword-ass-stabbin', dynamite teethin', cop headshots(while Olinga C.T.F.O.'s the partner), and overdosed syringe retribution on all the cats what's done him wrong, culminating in a touching bus station farewell from his brother, when he's forced to split town due to the incredible amount of heat he's just brought down upon himself.Cue the funk, baby.

Pimpin' Hint # 43:Use a planetarium light show to effectively blow your bitches' minds.
Besides playing L.S.D.-soaked Elwood in Wop fave Psych-Out(1967), Julien can be seen in Ted V. Mikels' The Black Klansman(1966) and The Mod Squad tv series.He also wrote Cleopatra Jones(1975), for then-girlfriend, Vonetta McGee, though Tamara Dobson ended up winning the role.His long-time friend, Richard Pryor, was frowned upon by the film's producers for his legendary behavior on the set of 1968's Wild in the Streets, where he took a piss on Shelley Winters(!!).Director Campus, who helmed the minor sci-fi movie Z.P.G.(Zero Population Growth) in 1972, claims Pryor rarely showed up straight on the set, if at all.Mosley's Olinga character was based on Black Panthers Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, both of which were real-life friends of Julien's.Apart from his long run opposite Tom Selleck, Mosley would appear on television shows like Night Gallery, Starsky and Hutch, Kojak, and The Love Boat.Ms. Speed, would score acting credits in blaxploitation fare like Jack Hill's The Big Bird Cage(1972), Savage!(1973), Dynamite Brothers, Abby, and Disco Godfather(all 1974).On the scale, Mack rates a pimpadocious three Wops, as a top rate genre flick, probably the best of it's kind, were it not for a director named Van Peebles and a film project he'd completed in 1970, but that's another movie, another entry, baby.Highly recommended.

Real hustlers aren't afraid to rock a mink bowtie to the Player's Ball.