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.
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.

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.

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

People
Cast
Season HubleyPrincess
Gary SwansonTom Walsh
Wings HauserRamrod
Pepe SernaPete Mendez
Beverly ToddLouise Williams- Joseph Di GirolomaKowalski (as Joseph DiGiroloma)
- Maurice EmanuelEdwards
- Wayne HackettChristian Sorenson
- Nina BlackwoodGinger
- Sudana BobatoonDixie
Lydia LeiCoco
Kelly PiperBlue Chip
Directing
- Gary ShermanDirector
- Robert BeckerFirst Assistant Director
- Jeanne RosenbergScript Supervisor
- Richard EspinozaSecond Assistant Director
Writing
- Kenneth PetersWriter
- Robert Vincent O'NeilWriter
- Sandy HowardWriter
Production
- Frank HildebrandAssociate Producer
- Judi JonesCasting
- Johanna RayCasting Associate
- Frank Capra, Jr.Executive Producer
- Robert RehmeExecutive Producer
- Sandy HowardExecutive Producer
- Paddy KeanLocation Assistant
- Robert HippardLocation Manager
- Brian E. FrankishProducer
- Ron Von SchimmelmannProduction Accountant
- Dustin BernardProduction Assistant
- Chip FowlerProduction Office Coordinator
- Gayle SandlerProduction Secretary
- Jack LyonsPublicist
- James DyerUnit Production Manager