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| Images courtesy of Fun City Editions |
Israeli born New York based writer-director Amos Poe is
regarded alongside Penelope Spheeris and Alex Cox as being among the first true
punk filmmakers with his 1976 punk rocker epic The Blank Generation
before pioneering what became known as the No Wave Cinema movement focused on shooting
films in the lower East Side of New York City.
Going on to make No Wave classics such as The Foreigner from 1978
with Debbie Harry and Subway Riders with Robbie Coltrane in 1981, the
quasi documentary-punk filmmaker would invariably make his way towards fictional
features in 1984 with his neon-drenched New York based crime thriller Alphabet
City picked up and restored in 2K by Vinegar Syndrome sublabel Fun City
Editions.
A film that seems to forecast such neon-noir fare as Drive
through the docudrama lens flared nightscape somewhere between Liquid
Sky and Deadbeat at Dawn, Alphabet City stars then-unknown Over
the Edge actor Vincent Spano as Johnny, a thug enforcing New York based titular
rough hooded Alphabet City’s drug trade.
However, a new task assigned to the leather jacketed gang member
involving torching his family’s childhood apartment building puts him at an
impasse between himself and his ruthless bosses. In a race against time beset by gorgeously lensed
neon-lit visuals by Oliver Wood of Miami Vice and Face/Off and
aided by Chic founder/dance music guru Nile Rodgers’ synthetic keyboard score, our
hero must do everything to protect his loved ones from falling under the deadly
bullets of his employers.
Something of a time capsule capturing the air and flavor of
the seedier portions of New York ala Mondo New York or Martin Scorsese’s
gritty Mean Streets with the eyes and ears of Dario Argento or Nicolas
Winding Refn, Alphabet City reportedly shot over twenty nights in poor
neighborhoods is a slick piece of pure 80s neon drenched dripping style. From Johnny’s 1983 black and white Pontiac
Firebird driven throughout the film against lip glossed cursive credits onscreen
as Rodgers’ electric sonics sizzle on the soundtrack, the film is a literal
realization on film of Kavinsky’s Outrun album replete with Drive opening
track Nightcall blasting through a car’s loudspeakers. While a couple of spots involving the
protagonist’s family interactions featuring a then-unknown Jami Gertz echo the
family squabbles of Saturday Night Fever by way of Scarface, Alphabet
City nevertheless comes across as a distinct (possibly tail end) example of
the No Wave Cinema.
Performance wise, the ensemble cast is mostly fine with Vincent
Spano giving a kind of Jason Patric performance in his thug with a heart of
gold. Michael Winslow from the Police
Academy movies shows up in it as Johnny’s adrift partner in crime while girlfriend
Angie (Kate Vernon) turns over a mostly fine performance as a bystander trapped
in the middle of an unfolding turf war. Fans
who are really looking will spot Let’s Scare Jessica to Death actress
Zohra Lampert as Johnny’s mother more or less riffing on Tony Montana’s mom
from Scarface. All things said,
the film’s truest main character, however, is the titular Alphabet City itself
bathed in purple, green and red nighttime lights that illuminate buildings and
sometimes people. One hundred percent a
nightlife film, the city glimpsed in a form it has long since jettisoned while
threatening and dangerous is also oddly picturesque in its dismal glory.
A modestly successful underground hit that flew under the
radar of many cinephiles only to be rediscovered and reappraised years later
thanks to the efforts of Fun City Editions, Alphabet City stands and
radiates glowingly today as a time capsule of a bygone but still faintly
familiar era. A movie that all but
forecasted the eventual marriage of Walter Hill oriented modestly sized
actioners with the phantasmagoria of say a Mario Bava film, Alphabet City is
an underrated night time pressure cooking thriller with a breakneck energy
reminiscent of The Warriors with a distinctly urban New York based
patina that’s almost like an expensive dessert at a hole in the wall family
restaurant, cheap, rough and tough but also highly flavorful. A film with a tangible, almost physical vibe,
it represents a snapshot of New York rarely seen on film before or since.
--Andrew Kotwicki
