Joan Freeman directs Melissa Leo, Randall Batinkoff and Dale Midkiff in the VHS exploitation flick where a teen runaway lands in New York and begins turning tricks for an unstable pimp.

Roger Corman gave more female directors a break than mainstream Hollywood ever did in the Eighties. Been a competent crew member on one of his productions before? Well as long as the poster was grabby, there was nudity and violence contained within, then he knew he could sell it, he gave you a shot. Streetwalkin’ can be absorbed as straight arrow sleaze. Yet it walks a line between being non judgmental about sex work without glamourising it. You can put a roof over your head in the big bad city if you can deal with the pimp battles and creepy johns. The survive-the-night thriller elements often happen at a remove from our heroine until the finale. So we just hangout in the milieu. Future Oscar winner Leo, in her film debut, is unsurprisingly vivid in her acting, adding an emotional consistency to her farm girl turned lady of the night… she also looks smoking in the buff. There were a few of these prostitute thrillers churned out in Eighties. This is, in my book, the best of the bunch.

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Perfect Double Bill: Angel (1984)