Review of Fear City

Fear City (1984)
2/10
Sucks city.
11 April 2004
This certainly is one of the worst "thriller" movies I've seen, thanks to a loaded plot and an unexplained finale. A couple of guys run a "talent" agency for the local strip clubs. So, there will be plenty of nude girls parading in front of the camera. But, they start losing business and "talent" when a psychoitc killer in the style of 'Red Dragon' is lose on the streets and killing their girls.

That might be an alright story in itself, but the story just drags on as they add in a few misfitting plot points and fail to explain what this killer is all about. Not to mention the ridiculous ending. Tom Berenger is Matt Rossi, one of the agency promoters. His ex-girlfriend is one of the dancers, Loretta (Melanie Griffith), and she could be the next to get killed after her girlfriend (literally), Leila (Rae Dawn Chong) is nearly slashed to death in a brutal stabbing. So, the killings are getting personal for Matt, and he sets it upon himself to stop the guy before he gets to Loretta. Well, that's fine and dandy, except then they drag on the story with flashbacks of Matt's previous career as a prize fighter and having killed one of the guys he's fought against, thus making it his moment of retirement. Why this was necessary to the whole story, and why we are forced to revisit it numerous times in the movies, I can't understand. And accordingly, that distracts any attention to an already thin story.

Then, the character is some sort of wierd martial arts guy, that has it in for Matt. But what the motive is for these killings, I am unsure of, and they never seem to explain, not even at the end when the killers are supposed to spill the beans about their plans and everything. Nope. They barely explain the killer at all here, he is just some sick wierdo going around slashing strippers.

And, there is the dumb fight scene between the wierdo killer and Matt (who could've just killed the jerk with a gun in a minute instead of dragging out the movie any longer). And why didn't Wheeler (Billy Dee Williams), the cop who was concurrently investigating the whole mess, figure this out, too, or even sooner than Matt? It was totally ridiculous, just adding to how stupid and least entertaining the movie is. Though normally, I like Tom Berenger's movies, for this one, I say skip it.
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