“EVERYBODY’S DROWNING IN THE NEON SLIME” - 'VICE SQUAD' (1982)

Season Hubley channelled her real life agony into her character Princess' intense climactic confrontation with the crazed Ramrod (Wings Hauser). Credit: StudioCanal

“The motion picture you are about to see has been produced with the cooperation of law enforcement authorities. Though a work of fiction, it is a composite of events that have actually taken place on the streets of Hollywood.”

Gary Sherman’s gritty, grimy, and sleazy crime thriller, Vice Squad, is so steeped in the gutters of the downtown streets of Los Angeles in the early 1980s, it is as if we can feel its filth on us, its stench, so we need to have an obsessive wash when it is all over. It extensively depicts the city’s low living of the era: pimps and prostitutes, pushers and junkies, and freaks.

It takes place in one night. A down on her luck middle-class single mother (Season Hubley), who is struggling to support her small daughter, works the streets of Hollywood Boulevard as a prostitute. We know her only by her street name, Princess. Hubley is best known for playing Priscilla Presley in John Carpenter’s biographical TV film, Elvis (1979). She starred alongside Kurt Russell in the eponymous role, and they became romantically involved in real life. They married in the same year of the biopic’s ABC premiere, and would have one son. Two years later, they went through a messy divorce and custody battle. This was at the time Season Hubley was filming Vice Squad in April 1981. She channelled her agony into her character’s intense climatic confrontation with the major antagonist of the piece. He is a pimp simply named Ramrod (iconic cult actor Wings Hauser, 1947 - 2025), who is a brutal and ruthless psychotic and misogynist. He is one of the great-unsung villains of cinema.

Ramrod uses a pimp stick (a wire coat hanger bent out straight then folded over several times) to beat one of his girls, and sexually assaults her with it and mutilates her vagina. Her name is Ginger (original MTV VJ, Nina Blackwood), and she is a good friend of Princess. Thankfully, we do not get to see this. We find out after the fact, in the hospital, when the doctor tells vice squad detective Tom Walsh (Gary Swanson). Walsh knows Ginger, and knows her pimp is Ramrod, who he despises. While he is convinced the man is responsible for Ginger’s injuries, he cannot get her to identify him as her attacker before she dies. He knows Ginger and Princess were close, so he gets her to help him arrest Ramrod, by putting a wire on her to get incriminating information. However, when Ramrod is apprehended, he escapes. This puts Princess in extreme danger, because he goes in deadly pursuit of her, hell-bent on revenge for setting him up. At first, all he has is her street name, but it is only a matter of time before he catches up to her. Walsh and his team struggle to keep Princess safe, as they race to get to her before the crazed maniac Ramrod does.

The crazed maniac Ramrod. Credit: StudioCanal

The title sequence is a montage spliced with B-roll footage that shows us the nocturnal activities on the streets of Hollywood, and establishes the theme, mood, and trashiness of the setting. We see: prostitutes, johns in their cars negotiating with these ladies of the night for a short time of pleasure, pimps, drug dealers and the users, weirdos, a vile paedophile handing over money for the sexual services of a young boy, busy pavements where tramps are sleeping, and patrolling police and arrests.

We hear over this the suitably deep down and dirty hard rock theme song, Neon Slime, sung by Wings Hauser. The music is by composer and frequent Gary Sherman collaborator, Joe Renzetti (Dead & Buried, 1981, Wanted: Dead or Alive, 1986, Poltergeist III, 1988, Lisa, 1989). Over the incessant cutting guitar riffs, and the grinding beat from the rhythm section, Hauser’s hoarse vocals bellows out the supplementary trashy lyrics:

“Faded to black, the streets come alive, that big city monster just opened his eyes, the hustle, the muscle, the chrome and the steal, got what I want baby, let’s make that deal.

Bang bang shoot ’em up, talking about crime, somebody just bought it in the neon slime, everybody’s drowning in the neon slime.

You see I’m the survivor, and I know how it feels, to be part of the night-time where everything is real, the music/the violence/the sex/the sweet smell, I’m a stone cold believer in the pleasures of hell.

Bang bang shoot ’em up, feeling just fine, been baptized in the river of the neon slime.”

Because we have been with Ramrod over the course of most of Vice Squad, when Neon Slime returns in an alternative form over the closing credits, we get the feeling the actor is in character singing about himself.

Wings Hauser is sensationally over the top as the wild-eyed, deranged, cowboy pimp, Ramrod. He is a genuinely terrifying, ferocious force of rage, violently tearing through the proceedings, which is something the premise calls for. Ramrod embodies misogyny. When he escapes custody, he has the resources to try to leave the city, but does not think about this at all, because all he cares about is his single-minded retribution on Princess. He repeatedly calls her “Bitch”, instead of her street name. Of course, we would not have a film otherwise, but it says Ramrod cannot accept the fact a woman got the better of him.

The "... wild-eyed, deranged, cowboy pimp, Ramrod" hates women. Credit: StudioCanal

Season Hubley, in a brave turn, portrays Princess as a tragic figure, which draws our sympathy for her harrowing plight, through her strength to fight. Gary Swanson gives an excellent committed performance as the hard-nosed Walsh, who despite having seen it all, refuses to become jaded. He still cares about these girls and looks out for them. We sense he feels duty bound to protect Princess, because he blames himself for putting her in harm’s way. The solid supporting cast making up Walsh’s vice squad ably backs them. In the scene after their operation to capture Ramrod, set at a hot dog restaurant, Princess and Walsh have a conversation about their lives and the night-to-night horrors they both experience. While they are on opposite sides of the law, they can relate to each other. Princess says, “We both live in the same toilet, Walsh.”

The screenplay takes detours into subplots with Princess, while she is unaware Ramrod is free and looking for her, to show us the nightlife of this wretched other world these characters inhabit. For instance, when a horny conventioneer approaches her, she goes with her client to a shabby room. He is unsatisfied with her stiff performance, so while she is in the shower, he goes into her purse and takes his money back. She comes out of the bathroom and catches him at it, and when she confronts him, he pins her down on the bed. When he is about to punch her, she threatens him with her imaginary pimp, as she is actually an ‘outlaw’, meaning she is an independent working girl. He then mocks her by kissing her. As he leaves, she throws one of her shoes at him, and curses him and wishes him dead, but he just laughs and shuts the door behind him. This is a hard-hitting, sad but true, slice of life. Princess also takes part in bizarre kinky sex acts that the freaky johns indulge in, which gives us some of the film’s genuinely funny moments of levity.

Vice Squad was filmed almost entirely on location in Los Angeles. The exceptions are the sets used for Ramrod’s apartment and the police station. Director of Photography, John Alcott (1930 - 1986), knew how to give grubby an aesthetic quality. The big city neon lights at night provide a rich neo-noir sensibility. Alcott was Stanley Kubrick’s favourite cinematographer. His first collaboration with Kubrick was as a mid-shoot replacement for Geoffrey Unsworth on 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). He would go on to win an Academy Award for his work on Barry Lyndon (1975). He also shot A Clockwork Orange (1971) and The Shining (1980).

 Vice Squad Detective Tom Walsh (Gary Swanson) is in hot pursuit of a stone cold psycho. Credit: StudioCanal

Only two other works of American cinema have perfectly captured this seedy subculture unseen by the mainstream in the 1970s and 1980s. The first is Martin Scorsese’s neo-noir psychological drama, Taxi Driver (1976). Robert De Niro’s titular character, Travis Bickle, a disturbed Vietnam War veteran loner, wants to “wash all the scum off the streets” of New York’s moral decay. The other is that film’s writer, as writer/director, Paul Schrader’s neo-noir crime drama, Hardcore (1979). George C. Scott plays a conservative, Calvinist Christian, and a single parent, who is searching for his missing daughter. When a private investigator finds an 8mm stag film featuring her with two men, he goes looking for her in the sordid porno underworld of California. A young prostitute/porn actress/stripper helps him, who is played by none other than Season Hubley. While Vice Squad shares thematic similarities with Taxi Driver and Hardcore, its narrative sets it apart, as it is a realistic documentation of the work of LAPD vice detectives.

Martin Scorsese is actually a big fan of Vice Squad. So much so, that he championed it as a contender for Best Picture at the 1982 Academy Awards. This led to him having a huge disagreement with the then-vice president of production at Paramount Pictures, Dawn Steel (1946 - 1997), at a dinner function. This is because Scorsese accused the Academy of not having the guts to nominate the film, due to its hard subject matter that it explores so deeply. This made it a provocative and controversial release at the time.

Vice Squad is lively paced, action-packed, and highly entertaining. But it is more than just a tough piece of crime exploitation. It has gut punching, real human drama, in a ballsy and intense portrayal of this vicious street life, as we watch everybody drowning in the neon slime.

© 2026 Dave J. Wilson. All rights reserved.

Credit: StudioCanal