I guess if we're actually going to review Street Asylum, the
1990 movie in
which G. Gordon Liddy appears briefly but always over-the-top-ly
as a
former police commissioner turned law-and-order mayoral
candidate, we will
need to come up with something more substantive than the three
reactions
that are, for me, right now coming to mind: "Wow," "God, that
was just
awful," and "Wow."
But where to begin?
Street Asylum is set in a seedy, crime-ridden Los Angeles. We
know it's
Los Angeles because 1) there are palm trees, and 2) because
about
two-thirds of the way through this baffling movie a character
makes the
cardinal mistake of actually deigning to identify the setting,
which
information an audience can, I've heard, sometimes find helpful
when
trying to figure out what part of the world they're even looking
at. Up
until that point I was operating under the misguided assumption
that all
the prostitutes, the pimps, et al. were plying their trade in
Little Rock,
Arkansas. Remember that guy at the beginning of the movie who
crucified
himself to a television antenna on top of the roof of the
apartment? He
mentions having all these beautiful dreams for how his life
would turn out
but how instead he ended up in, of all places, Little Rock.
Believe me,
right then my hope that this indicated some virulent
anti-Clinton subtext
basically knew no bounds. As it turned out, my hope that Street
Asylum
even had a subtext was, well, hopeful. I suppose that's what I
get for
taking a guy who crucifies himself on a TV antenna at his word.
While I'm
on the subject, how did that guy manage to crucify himself?
So L.A.'s gone to pot, as it does in so many movies. The city is
out-of-control and only getting worse. On the streets there's
every flavor
of violence and not much else. The criminals are all sketchy.
The cops are
all equally sketchy. Everybody looks as if they smell. They need
a long
bath and a good scrubbing. Granted that's not all they need,
but, really,
it would be a good start. Enter into this fray Jim Miller
(Liddy). Miller
was, we're told, police commissioner at some point, and now he's
running
for mayor on the Wipe the Streets Clean of All Vermin platform.
You want to pick up the story there?
Bye,
Paul
#
Dear Paul,
What I like about your review is that you managed to do all the
scene-setting and character sketching while carefully avoiding
almost any
mention of plot. This leaves me, then, to attempt to begin
piecing
together some sort of story line. I have to say, up front, that
I'm not
sure such a story line was presented in the film, but having
taken on this
task, and being one to fulfill my responsibilities, I plan to
proceed as
though there were some discernable plot and that I was able to
follow it.
That said, picking up where you left off with Candidate Miller
and his
wipe-the-streets-of-vermin campaign, I find it important to note
that G.
Gordon Liddy has a particularly complicated relationship with
vermin.
Liddy watchers will remember his childhood fear of rats and
unique way of
overcoming it by killing, barbecuing and eating one rat. For a
complete
analysis of Liddy and vermin I recommend consulting Will, his
autobiography.
So, some guy has crucified himself or been crucified by someone
else on
the roof of some building in LA, even though he identifies his
setting as
Little Rock. Our hero, Arliss Ryder (Wings Hauser, who once
played a
detective on 90210), arrives on the scene, discovers the dirty
crucified
person, who is presumably part of the scum problem, and is shot.
In the next scene, Wings wakes up in some sort of medical clinic
flanked
by his new doctor (Marie Chambers) and his wife/girlfriend
Kristin
(Roberta Vasquez, a former Playboy Playmate, apparently), the
only
character in the film identified only by her first name. This
was the
first moment in which I asked myself whether or not this movie
was
actually porn. It had something to do with the quality of the
acting and
the way the doctor was leaning over Wings with the electro-shock
wand and
maybe the size of Kristin's hair. Anyway, I started thinking
about what
sort of porn scene might come next and whether or not and in
what capacity
G. Gordon would be involved. I got distracted and stopped paying
attention
to the plot twists for a minute, but from what I gathered, the
doctor
removed the bullet and treated Wings with the electro-shock
therapy wand
and he headed home with Kristin.
Maybe I should let you write this part, Paul. I remember it
being a
particularly baffling chapter for you. And my class is ending,
so I'll
have to pick back up in structured finance.
H
#
Dear Hadley,
I had to let you handle the plot. I had no choice. I was over
here,
setting the scene, setting it all up, lavishing it with detail,
etc. etc.,
when, all of a sudden, I realized I was neglecting the vermin of
the
world, not to mention my sworn duty to eradicate it. Hope you
understand.
Today, luckily, vermin is not such a problem.
Street Asylum did seem like a porn movie, though, lord knows, it
wasn't.
Is there a word for movies that are like porn movies minus the
porn? There
should be. The actors-there should also be a word for actors who
seem like
actors minus the acting-carried on with that whole
feisty-delivery-man-knocks-on-the-door-and-feisty-real-estate-agent-opens-it-and-two-seconds-later-they're-having-sex
manner.
So Wings comes home with Kristen. Whether she is his wife or his
girlfriend or fianc or whatever is, of course, never established
by the
creators of Street Asylum. Maybe they had too much vermin to
eradicate to
bother with such niceties. Anyway, Wings is exhausted. He's just
been shot
in the back, after all. He's had a grand total of
maybe-maybe-five hours
of medical treatment at a place that looks as if it housed less
medical
equipment than the average elementary school nurse's office. But
in the
world of Street Asylum, major back surgery is apparently an
outpatient
procedure, so Wings is good and ready to hit the road running.
Kristen
has, ever since she saw her dear wounded Wings in the clinic,
been
promising him TLC, but their plans are derailed when they're met
at the
door of a khaki-colored bungalow by the never not intense
Captain Bill
Quinton (Alex Cord). Cord looks like he could ably play Tom
Skerritt in
The Tom Skerritt Story, provided the producers of The Tom
Skerritt Story
pooled all their money together and found they had no more than
\$3.86 to
spend and shared no greater ambition than to make something to
be
broadcast once as an after-school special.
The Captain has an offer to make to Wings. Wings, you're a good
cop, the
very best, do you therefore want to become a part of my special,
elite,
and top-secret vermin-eradicating task force? Wings hems and
haws with the
Captain. Wings mentions, for example, that he has his special
beautiful
lady (i.e. Kristin) waiting for him inside the khaki-colored
bungalow.
Wings also mentions the seemingly difficult to ignore fact that
HE HAS
JUST BEEN SHOT IN THE BACK. Probably Wings should at least have
a little
bit of comp time coming, don't you think? A little sick leave?
Would a
single sick day be too much to ask? Don't police officers have a
union,
and doesn't that union take care of this sort of thing? Anyway,
Wings says
he doesn't want to be a part of any vermin-eradicating task
force. What he
wants above all else in the world is to get rid of the
individual vermin
who plugged him in the back. Well, the Captain, he is quick on
his feet
and nimble of mind, going a long way toward explaining why he is
the
captain, say, and Wings is just Wings, turns the tables on Wings
and says,
right, I hear you, that's why you have to be part of my
super-cool task
force. You want to get that guy, Wings? Wings does. Wings is
getting all
fired up, you can tell. Well, the captain says, he wants Wings
to get that
guy, too. Wings says okay, okay, okay, he's in. I say, Whatever.
What's next, Hadley? Should we have taken notes? Please tell me
we don't
need to watch Street Asylum again. Please tell me you remember
what
happens next. Was it G. Gordon's big press conference? I know
you have a
thing or two to say about that scene.
Bye,
Paul
#
Dear Paul,
There is a word for porn movies without the porn.
Disappointments. It's
the same word for G. Gordon Liddy movies without the G. Gordon
Liddy.
In considering where the review might go from here, I realize
this is the
point at which the movie became completely unmanageable. I'm
torn between
loyalty toward the chronology we've set up so far and a sense of
responsibility to provide some framework by which our readers
might come
to understand what Street Asylum is all about.
I would like to say here that I read a number of other people's
reviews of
the film, and none recount vaguely similar plot lines nor any
plot line
akin to the one I took in while viewing the movie, to the extent
that any
plot was even slightly discernable. At least I know I'm not
alone in
failing to grasp the vision.
From what I can tell, G. Gordon Liddy was the police
commissioner, but now
he isn't. Instead he is running for mayor of vermin-ridden Los
Angeles.
Many people have read his candidacy as embodying an extreme
dedication to
justice and fighting the forces of L.A. vermin. On the cover of
the video
half of G. Gordon's face is removed to reveal a cyborg face
underneath. In
the three or so times G. Gordon actually appears in the film, he
seems to
be either a) campaigning for mayor or b) involved in some sort
of
disappointingly clothed yet sexually explicit scene involving
women in
leather whipping him.
Just as an aside, I'll admit here that a naked G. Gordon would
have
redeemed the movie for me. It's not that I had ever thought to
myself
before watching the movie, I'd really like to see G. Gordon
Liddy naked,
it's just that watching Street Asylum forces the viewer to fill
in so many
gaps that one inevitably leads the movie to places where it just
doesn't
go. The mind just seems to search desperately for connections
between a
random series of images. For me, the film would have all made
sense had G.
Gordon only been naked. I guess this just gets back to the
seems-like-porn-but-isn't thing.
Anyway, in none of his appearances does G. Gordon do anything to
suggest
that he is actually a cyborg or, as another reviewer concluded,
the leader
of a drug cartel. He does however seem to watch a lot of the
scenes that
unfold on a video screen labeled VBMX or something like that.
The videos
look a little like the videos they take in convenience stores to
deter
shoplifting -- grainy and black and white. Of course it is 1990.
It is
always unclear exactly where the cameras are and why G. Gordon
wants to
look at the videos and whether he is looking at them while the
recorded
events are actually taking place or some time later on. It was
also
unclear, at least to me, why he was watching them, what he did
all day
other than auditioning dominatrixes, his relationship to the
good Reverend
Mony, whom he also watches on video, and exactly what qualifies
him to be
mayor of the city of vermin. And if he's so anti-vermin, and
what the
vermin seem to be doing that's illegal involves a lot of
hookers, and
since G. Gordon seems to like hookers an awful lot, exactly
where does he
get off?
So I find myself avoiding the plot at every turn yet again. Back
at the
police station, G. Gordon is declaring his candidacy. Someone
crushes a
tomato upon hearing the news. This raises one of my biggest
questions with
the film: what does that tomato crushing mean? What does the
tomato
symbolize? Is the act of squeezing it until it oozes out between
his
fingers supposed to indicate how enthused he is about the Miller
candidacy? or something about his mental state? Why a tomato?
Just because
it's a soft, hand-held perishable item? Don't a lot of things
fit that
description? Are we supposed to think that perhaps he had
intended to
throw the tomato at the candidate but was so overcome by the
force of his
vermin-stomping rhetoric that he decided to keep the tomato to
himself and
crush it? Or maybe he hears the rhetoric, knows G. Gordon loves
hookers,
especially hookers with whips, wants to throw the tomato but
gets scared
that he'll end up in electro-shock therapy with a crazy doctor,
and wusses
out at the last second, crushing the tomato as a manifestation
of his
frustration with his own helplessness.
Hadley
#
Dear Hadley,
I have on my mind right now a single burning question: Why did
G. Gordon
Liddy ever agree to make Street Asylum? Here are several
possible answers
followed by my evaluation of their probability.
1. Liddy heard he'd be working with director Gregory Dark and
said, Dark?
THE Gregory Dark? Say no more, I'll be there. Likelihood?
Impossible.
Incidentally, it turns out that Dark is a director of porn
movies, gracing
the world with titles including White Bunbusters, New Wave
Hookers I, II,
III, and IV, The Creasemaster, The Creasemaster's Wife, and
Between the
Cheeks I, II, and III. (An odd thing about Dark is that he's
sometimes
credited as Gregory H. Brown, Gregory Brown, Greg Dark, A.
Gregory
Hippolyte, Alexander Gregory Hippolyte, Gregory Alexander
Hippolyte, or
Gregory Hippolyte, which profusion of names makes it, I guess,
not exactly
easy for one to ask for his work by name.)
So Street Asylum was Dark's attempt to make a regular-one
hesitates to say
"mainstream" here-movie. We were onto something, Hadley. Too bad
his
understanding of what regular movies require can be summed up
with the
mathematical equation: Porn movie - porn = movie. Memo to Dark:
What you
forgot to include in Street Asylum was a story. That's sort of a
technical
term that, roughly translated, means "something that makes sense
and last
about one-and-a-half hours."
2. Liddy heard he'd be working with former Playmate Roberta
Vasquez and
said, Vasquez? THE Roberta Vasquez? Say no more, I'll be there.
Likelihood? More likely than explanation no. 1, but still not
very likely.
According to another review of this movie, which, among other
things,
devoted an entire paragraph to the reviewer's genuine admiration
for the
work of Wings Hauser, culminating in the bold, some might say
bizarre
statement that Wings Hauser doesn't get nearly as much respect
as he
should for his great work, Roberta Vasquez is also a former
L.A.P.D.
officer. Let me repeat that detail so that we can savor it for a
moment:
Roberta Vasquez is also a former L.A.P.D. officer. Pretty
delicious
detail, no? I want to give credit where credit is due here, so
I'm going
to say that casting a former L.A.P.D. officer-turned-Playmate in
a movie
about L.A. gone to pot and the L.A.P.D. run amok is evidence of,
if not
wit, than at least something bordering on a primitive form of
jokiness.
Second memo to Dark: Keep up the creative casting, my friend.
3. Liddy heard he'd be whipped by a series of leather-clad women
until he
squealed ecstatically and then receive, for his consideration,
some amount
of cash money. Likelihood? Pretty likely, I suspect. Note: Liddy
squealing
ecstatically sounds not unlike an ornery sow in a 4-H show that
wins the
blue ribbon but still doesn't want to come out of her little pen
for any
amount of corn and cajoling.
4. Liddy, who harbors untold political ambitions that will
probably never
be realized, and let's just thank goodness for that, thought,
Well, at
least I can seek office in a movie, right? That's almost as good
as
seeking office in real life, which I've done. Hell, maybe
they'll even let
me win the election in the movie. That would be really great, to
win,
finally. I'd love to be a winner for once. Likelihood? If Liddy
read the
entire script he would have realized that the mayoral election
in the City
of Angels and Vermin was not in any sense crucial to the movie.
He might
have noticed that there is, in the movie, no candidate opposing
his
staunch anti-vermin platform. How great would that have been, to
have a
pro-vermin candidate running? Can you imagine the debates about
the
vermin? The mind reels at the possibilities. Liddy might have
also noticed
that the movie does not feature any actual election. It might
have dawned
on him that his character dies before any actual election can
occur,
electrocuted on a satellite dish at the hands of good old Wings.
Which
brings me to.... the third memo to Dark: I am pretty sure, Mr.
Dark, that
it is not possible to be electrocuted on a satellite dish. What
satellite
dishes do is they receive electromagnetic signals. There is no
live
electricity flowing through the dish.
5. Liddy read the script for Street Asylum and thought, This
movie
reflects my deranged worldview so totally that I simply must be
a part of
this picture. Likelihood? Well, now this is a tricky one. Street
Asylum
is, despite appearances, not an ideal vehicle for Liddy's
paleoconservatism. Yes, it posits a police department and
government that
is wickedly tough on vermin, and yes, being tough on vermin is,
historically speaking, a conservative position, but the police
department
and government in Street Asylum are utter maniacs, not upholding
either
law or order, and it's often a dicey proposition to distinguish
the vermin
from the men and women in blue.
Take the case of that one main pimp, who, incidentally, doesn't
even rate
a credit on Internet Movie Database (ditto for Reverend Muny's
midget,
who, I'm sorry, deserves better from Internet Movie Database).
Wings and
his second partner Sergeant Tatum, a.k.a. "Joker" (Sy
Richardson) are
after this pimp for most of the movie. Wings and Tatum are both
elite
vermin eradicators. They also both have electro-shock gizmos
implanted in
their spines that put them under the control of the crazy doctor
and, in
turn, under the control of crazy Liddy. The electro-shock gizmos
can, at
times, cause them to turn into elite and beserk vermin
eradicators. (Wings
beserk and Wings not-beserk is, I believe, what may be known as
a
distinction without a difference though.)
Anyway, Wings wants the pimp to say who plugged Wings in the
back. How the
cops are so sure that the pimp can help them is unclear. They
beat the
pimp up and then they ask him questions and then, for good
measure, they
slap him around some more. The pimp doesn't help them much. Why
they don't
just try to see if some other vermin can tell them what they
need to know
is also unclear. There doesn't seem to be a shortage of vermin.
At some
break in the questioning, Joker ties the pimp to a rope and
attaches one
end of said rope to the bumper of his convertible and then
speeds off,
dragging the pimp down the street around corners, stopping only
several
miles later. The pimp lives by the way. Being dragged over
pavement at 40+
miles per hour is apparently nothing a few patches of gauze and
several
yards of Ace bandages can't fix. Being treated for pavement
burns over,
I'm guessing, at least fifty percent of his body is another
Street Asylum
outpatient procedure, because, before you know it, the pimp's
back on the
streets. The next day he's caught raping one of the women who
works for
him. Wings and Tatum beat his ass yet again.
My point is this: if Liddy wanted to make a movie about good
guys and bad
guys, Street Asylum was not really right for him. There's no
good and bad
here. In this L.A. they're all bad, and, politically, that's
neither
conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat. If anything
it's just yet
another dystopic fallen world.
Some inkling of What Liddy thought of Street Asylum can be
gleaned from a
twelve-year-old gossip item in The Washington Post, which reads
as
follows:
Former Watergate felon G. Gordon Liddy is starring in his first
feature
film, a movie called "Street Asylum," costarring former Playboy
centerfold
Roberta Vasquez. Liddy plays a psychotic police chief who is now
a fascist
mayoral candidate in Los Angeles. But the stubborn Liddy has
refused to do
any publicity for the picture, which is to be released next
month. The
producers of the movie have decided to get even with Liddy for
his lack of
cooperation by donating part of the proceeds from the openings
to the
American Civil Liberties Union, an organization that is not high
on
Liddy's favorite-group list. As the film's director, Gregory
Brown
explains, "We really feel that Liddy is out of line in not
promoting this
film. He had to know from reading the script that it in no way
supports
the conservative view of law and order that he holds so dear"
...
But I like best of all the explanation that you gave, Hadley,
that Liddy
wanted to make movies, but had no other opportunities available
to him.
There is something sad about that, pathetic even. The idea that
Liddy let
Hollywood know he was looking to act, and Hollywood let Liddy
know that it
didn't really care.... well, it almost makes me feel a twinge of
sympathy
for the man. Or maybe that's just the electro-shock gizmo
implanted in my
spine telling me that it's time I sign off and go rage against
the vermin.
Bye,
Paul
#
Dear Paul,
Did you know there is an entire website devoted to reviewing
movies
featuring men being whipped? It's very thorough. Street Asylum
is
included, and it mentions G. Gordon Liddy bleeding. I don't
remember the
blood part. I guess the trick for him is not minding.
A lingering question I'm left with concerns the doctor. What
exactly was
her motivation? Did she just hate vermin? Have a thing going
with the
police chief? I don't remember whether or not she whipped G.
Gordon, but I
bet she would have. But more than all that, what was she doing
on the
floor of what was presumably the men's room at the police
station with her
electro shock tool? Although she applied it to her own inner
thighs, she
did not immediately turn into a crazy vermin-chasing animal. I
feel
certain, given the quality of a film like Street Asylum, that
this scene
cannot merely be chalked up to an excuse to see a hot woman with
a
pulsating appliance between her legs.
Another interesting case is Kristin. Was posing as a dominatrix
to whip G.
Gordon Liddy really the only way to save her man from the brink
of
insanity? Was it her idea? Did she just have that outfit on
hand?
My take on the issue of why G. Gordon decided to actually make
this movie
is that it has to all come back to the vermin. In order to
adequately
understand what motivates such a complicated individual as G.
Gordon, we
must go back to his childhood, and especially his childhood fear
of rats.
Now, I do hate to keep harping on this, but I think we can't
underestimate
the power of vermin in the life of G. Gordon Liddy. Paul, in
order to
answer the kinds of questions you've raised about Liddy's work,
I think we
would need to do a more thorough analysis, incorporating insight
gained
from the screening of a more representative sample of Liddy's
flims. Do
you think you're up for it?
