Film

Vice Squad

Vice Squad is a 1982 crime thriller that trades gloss for grit. A streetwise sex worker helps a cop hunt a brutal pimp terrorizing Hollywood's underbelly. It's rawly made, unexpectedly tense, and treats its female lead with surprising agency. For anyone drawn to '80s exploitation cinema that actually has something on its mind.

TMDb rating3.1

If you liked this

American Gigolo1980

Schrader's portrait of male sex work in LA, equally fascinated by surfaces and desperation. Gorgeously lit neo-noir that influenced everything after it. Gere's best performance.

But Slow, oblique pacing. The plot is almost beside the point, which frustrates people wanting a thriller.

American Gigolo poster

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie1976

Cassavetes captures LA's criminal underbelly with raw intimacy. Gazzara's performance is quietly devastating. Feels lived-in rather than observed, which is rare.

But Deliberately paced, fractured chronology, and a story that resists neat resolution. Watching it demands patience.

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie poster

Hardcore1979

Paul Schrader's descent into LA's porn underworld. Scott's mid-career intensity is magnetic. Raw, unflinching, morally complex without preaching.

But Genuinely difficult subject matter that the film doesn't soften. Some scenes are meant to disturb, and they do.

Hardcore poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Vice Squad

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Pretty Baby1978

Both films centre women in sex work without moralising them, and refuse easy judgement. Both are interested in the mechanics and mundanity beneath the sensationalism.

Malle's New Orleans-set story of a child prostitute in the 1910s, treated with philosophical seriousness rather than sensationalism. Shields in her film debut. Formally elegant and morally unafraid.

But Child nudity was controversial then and remains so. The film's restraint about the subject can read as evasive to modern viewers. Some will find it exploitative regardless of intent.

Pretty Baby poster
More like this (7)

Cruising1980

Friedkin's thriller about an undercover cop in NYC's gay leather scene. Atmospheric, perverse, genuinely unsettling. Pacino against type in a rare risky role.

But The film itself is homophobic, which is part of its ugliness. Controversial for reasons beyond its quality. Narratively murky by design.

Cruising poster

Ms .451981

Abel Ferrara's rape-revenge film. Thana is a mute New York dressmaker who becomes an avenging angel. Visceral, formally inventive, and genuinely angry in ways most thrillers aren't.

But Extreme subject matter, explicit violence, and a vision that doesn't offer comfortable catharsis. Difficult to sit with.

Ms .45 poster

Unfaithfully Yours1984

Howard Zieff's dark comedy about a conductor's sexual jealousy spiralling into murder fantasy. Idle plays psychotic while remaining weirdly charming. Sharp writing and a weird, unexpected rhythm.

But Tonal whiplash—comedy about violence that isn't always easy to laugh at. Some will find it uncomfortably messy.

Unfaithfully Yours poster

Streets of Fire1984

Hill's exhilarating punk-rock action film. A soldier of fortune rescues a rock singer from her abuser. Kinetic, stylish, and genuinely exciting in its set pieces.

But Plot is thin and unironic. Pure style over substance, which works if you're in the mood but feels hollow if you're not.

Streets of Fire poster

Blow Out1981

De Palma at his most Hitchcockian. A sound man records what might be a murder. Travolta's paranoia drives it. Technically brilliant with genuinely mounting dread.

But De Palma's obsession with style sometimes overwhelms substance. Ending is deliberately deflating rather than satisfying.

Blow Out poster

Working Girls1987

Lizzie Borden's documentary-realist account of Manhattan sex workers. Unglamorous, matter-of-fact, funny, and genuinely humanising. Treats its subjects as people, not types.

But Formally austere and deliberately demystifying. If you want drama or exploitation, you'll find neither. Low-key to the point of seeming uneventful.

Working Girls poster

Taxi Driver1976

Both films use an outsider protagonist moving through urban criminal landscape as moral exploration. Both are specifically invested in 1980s/70s metropolitan corruption and what it does to consciousness.

Scorsese's descent into Manhattan's nocturnal underworld through Travis Bickle's fractured mind. De Niro's performance rewrites what acting can be. Formally perfect genre filmmaking that becomes something stranger.

But Famously grim, repetitive in mood, and structurally circular. The violence feels abrupt. Thematically, it courts the ideology it critiques, which remains troubling.

Taxi Driver poster

People

Cast

Directing

Production

Recommended by