Abel Ferrara directs Tom Berenger, Billy Dee Williams and Melanie Griffith in this crime thriller where the thugs who run a stripper agency based around 42nd Street find business dries up when a slasher starts mutilating the girls.

If only a movie could live up to its first five minutes. As the opening credits roll through the sleazy streets of Manhattan, we hear an actual New York Doll singing about New York Dolls and peak Melanie Griffiths stripping and gyrating and thrusting while a baying crowd lap up every neon-lit revealed curve of her flesh. You feel hot and sticky… there’s an anonymous freak cutting his way up to the star girl… suddenly the strip bars are deserted and girls are pulling out… the mafia wants action… And nothing really happens. It just kinda idles in the electric puddle milieu. I don’t mind hanging out in this era and this location but it is a long wait until the eventual happenstance alleyway fight that wraps things up neatly. The killer remains uncredited.

6

Check out my wife Natalie’s Point Horror blog https://cornsyrup.co.uk

We also do a podcast together called The Worst Movies We Own. It is available on Spotify or here https://letterboxd.com/bobbycarroll/list/the-worst-movies-we-own-podcast-ranking-and/