Fear City

1985 "No showgirl is safe on the streets of... Fear City."
5.7| 1h35m| R| en| More Info
Released: 16 February 1985 Released
Producted By: 20th Century Fox
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

Strippers in Manhattan are being stalked and murdered by a psycho. A hard-nosed police detective and a conflicted ex-boxer-turned-private-eye, hired by the strip club owners, set out to find him before he strikes again.

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Director

Abel Ferrara

Production Companies

20th Century Fox

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Fear City Audience Reviews

Mjeteconer Just perfect...
Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated
BoardChiri Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay
Cooktopi The acting in this movie is really good.
Aaron1375 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.
edwagreen Tom Berenger seems to improve as the film goes on. Stiff at the beginning, he seems to find his stride as the boxer who killed in the ring, and is now a promoter in strip clubs. He hires the girls to work. Pretty soon, a maniac begins assaulting and invariably killing the women. As Berenger is unable to come to grips with his early seedy past and what occurred in the ring, he is determined to catch the culprit at any cost.Melanie Griffith is too much as his love-interest and worker in the club. She is supposed to come across as a steamy dame, but how can she with the chalked-up voice that she has?Michael V. Gazzo, of "The Godfather" fame is in top form as an owner of the club. As the cop investigating the case, Billy DeWilliams shows his grit and bigotry as well. There is an interesting cameo appearance by Jan Murray, as a fellow owner, and in a career-ending performance, Rossano Brazzi plays an underworld like character.The seedy side of society is shown here and the N.Y. strip area is well depicted.
CcBlue62 The movie gives you the idea that everything takes place in Manhattan (particularly within the area close to Time Square) then you have an ending scene where the villain and hero fight it out in a long alleyway! (WE DON'T HAVE THOSE IN MANHATTAN – NOT EVEN CLOSE BY). I was born, raised and still live in this town; I recognized scenes of Little Italy and Times Square but found most of the scenes unreal and a great deal of the "acting" stiff and the dialog loaded with clichés.The cheap, fleabag motel scenes remind me of 1940's detective movies or scenes from "Miami Vice" TV episodes. The funny thing is it was shot in New York and they still got it all wrong! The only thing this movie reminds me of is the video game "Grand Theft Auto".
innocuous This may be worthwhile to rent if you're a Melanie Griffith fan, since she's nude in about 40% of her scenes, but the movie leaves a lot to be desired overall.Much of the tension is supposed to be derived from Berenger's guilt over the outcome of a boxing match several years earlier, but we never really connect with him in this regard. In fact, Berenger's acting is really sub-par here...worse than "Sniper". The idea of personal redemption is there, it's just not realized.Jack Scalia does a good job with a thankless part. Billy Dee Williams is handed a role with ridiculous dialog and ultimately looks like an idiot when he reverses himself completely in order to express respect for Berenger's character following the "final conflict".The assorted character actors do a much better job, but they can't make up for the absence of any logical plot progression and realistic dialog.Finally, unlike some other reviewers, I don't really have any problem with the fact that we never really understand what motivated the murderer. These sorts of answers usually don't come tied up in neat little packages labeled, "Sexually Abused by Father", or "Sister Died at the Hands of a Drunken Physiscian". In the ORIGINAL version of "Two Minute Warning", we never found out why the sniper went a-sniping, which was, in my opinion, an order of magnitude superior to the butchered version with the sub-plot of the burglary thrown in to make sense of it all for the middle-class viewers.Not recommended to buy or rent, but it may be worth watching if you see it come on the late show and you can't sleep. By the way, the "uncut" version is not substantially different from the other versions, except for a bit more skin.