Scream Factory gets mired in the "neon slime" with their Blu-ray of VICE SQUAD.

Sending her young daughter off on a bus with a babysitter to see the girl's father, Princess (Season Hubley, CATCH MY SOUL) resumes her double life as a Hollywood hooker, needing to make money despite the looming threat of a prison sentence for a drug bust. When Vice Squad lieutenant Walsh (Gary Swanson, MAKING LOVE) tries to blackmail her into running a sting on sadistic pimp Ramrod (Wings Hauser, THE WIND), she balks until he shows her what he did to his last girl: her best friend Ginger (Nina Blackwood, RATBOY) who was brutally beaten and vaginally-mutilated with a "pimp stick," still proclaiming on her death bed her belief in his love for her. Princess wears a wire and Walsh and his team bust in upon hearing his offer for her to become his woman, and he swears that she is a dead woman for setting him up. While Walsh hopes to send Princess off to start anew, she returns to the streets to work the same night, unaware that Ramrod has escaped custody in transport and is now stalking her through Hollywood's nightlife. Walsh and his team – among them SCARFACE's Pepe Serna, THEY CALL ME MISTER TIBBS!'s Beverly Todd, Maurice Emanuel (DELIVER US FROM EVIL) – take to the streets to find one or both of them to ensure Princess' survival but Ramrod is ruthless in his search, carving up fellow pimps and prostitutes alike.

Director Gary Sherman's follow-up to DEAD & BURIED, VICE SQUAD is at once gritty and gruesome but also too comical in some ways to be truly grim. For every beating, shooting, and castration, we also have hapless Kowalski (Joseph Di Giroloma) and Mendez being beaten up by an elderly Chinese man (Ark Wong), Rerun from WHAT'S HAPPENING!! Fred Berry as a "sugar pimp," and some of Princess' oddball clients like LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS' Jonathan Haze negotiating a price for a golden shower from Princess and Hugo Stanger (PSYCHO III) with a necrophilia wedding fantasy. Although Hubley is the star, Hauser's central performance is what keeps the film anchored in urban action territory, setting the tone for his relentlessly evil character with his own vocals for the theme song "Neon Slime" with lyrics by Simon Stokes and electric guitar by Johnny Winter as a "a stone cold believer in the pleasures of Hell." Swanson is a bit underused until the climactic cop action heroics, but the same can be said for the supporting cast of character actors that make up his team. The urban hell is nevertheless elegantly lensed and lit by the great John Alcott coming off his collaborations with Stanley Kubrick (A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, BARRY LYNDON, and THE SHINING) but also previously having worked with executive producer Sandy Howard on the 1981 slasher TERROR TRAIN. The supporting cast also includes a brief appearance by Cheryl "Rainbeaux" Smith (LEMORA) along with Lou Gossett's wife Cyndi James Gossett (THE TERROR WITHIN), Lydia Lei (HAMMETT), and Kelly Piper (MANIAC and RAWHEAD REX) as prostitutes as well as supporting turns from Robert Miano (DEATH WISH), Michael Ensign (GHOSTBUSTERS), Barbara Pilavin (10 TO MIDNIGHT), and the future make-up artist Richard Wetzel (DEADWOOD) as a heavily-tattooed gay pimp.

Released theatrically by Avco Embassy and on VHS by Embassy, VICE SQUAD came to DVD in 2006 by Anchor Bay through their deal with Studio Canal and is now on Blu-ray from a new 4K scan from Scream Factory and their Studio Canal deal. The 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen transfer is simultaneously gritty and garish with luminous night scenes expected of Alcott while the DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track gets off to a rollicking start with Hauser's theme song. As good as the film looks, one wonders if the 4K-mastered transfer could have looked even better had the five hours of extras been relegated to a second disc. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided.

Extras start off with the Sherman commentary moderated by David Gregory from the Anchor Bay DVD in which he recalls wanting to do the film to get away from horror, choosing Hubley after seeing her in Paul Schrader's HARDCORE even though Avco Embassy did not see her as a prostitute, and wanting Hauser who was known at the time as a soap star but Sherman knew him through DEAD & BURIED actress Nancy Locke (who was married to Hauser until 1999) and could arranged for an audition where Hauser terrified the producers. He also recalls that Emanuel was the janitor at their production office who was reading the various script pages they threw away and begged for a chance to audition (also noting that fame seemed to have got to the actor who did nothing subsequently). He also discusses the research he did with the police, including going through the police academy, and his insights into the Vice Squad and illegal prostitution as a gateway to other crimes. Scream has commissioned a new track with Sherman and producer Brian Frankish (FIELD OF DREAMS) which has plenty of overlap with the earlier track but Frankish chimes in on a lot of Sherman's stories, noting that Haze appears in the film because he wanted to get his Screen Actors Guild card, and Emanuel did have a couple roles before VICE SQUAD. Sherman is perhaps a bit more forthcoming in some other respects, both noting that Hubley's divorce from Kurt Russell (ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK) hurt her career but that he also commiserated with Russell as his own marriage came to an end around the same time.

Scream Factory has also commissioned six new video interviews. In "Tracking the Beast" (58:05), actor Swanson discusses his childhood and his passions for writing and acting, training with Lee Strasberg, his early soap roles in New York and his move to Los Angeles with some TV roles before VICE SQUAD on which he was cast with five days of prep before shooting. He recalls riding with the Vice Squad and doing an improvisation on the streets with Hubley who nearly got kidnapped by Asian gangsters, hanging out in pimp bars, and working together with Hubley and Hauser since Sherman was busy with other aspects of the production. He also recalls clashing with producer Howard and being bowled over by the reception of the film at its premiere. "Of Poltergeist and Neon Lights" (72:22) is a feature-length interview with director Sherman that does not cover the whole of his career, or even his POLTERGEIST sequel, but does look at his career up and through VICE SQUAD. He recalls getting into design school, changing his major to still photography and stumbling into filmmaking when he dusted off an old Arriflex camera and ended up filming a tour with Bo Didley and learning to edit by doing, leading to more concert films and then a move into TV commercials. Moving to England where had family in the aftermath of 1968 and his disappointment with the civil rights movement getting overshadowed by the anti-war movement, news of his American work followed him and he ended up doing more commercials in London with pre-Hollywood Michael Mann (THE KEEP) and Jonathan Demme (SILENCE OF THE LAMBS). With many TV commercial director moving into features, developed a number of projects with Demme that were sold but unproduced when Hemdale's John Daly asked for a horror movie; whereupon he decided to merge his political concerns with a marketable genre with DEATH LINE that Demme was supposed to produce before he got an offer from Roger Corman to work at New World, nevertheless, Demme got the script to Paul Maslansky (THE SHE BEAST) and sold him on Sherman directing. Making the move to Los Angeles in light of the increasing danger of "The Troubles" and his marriage ending, Sherman worked in television and met Ronald Shussett (ALIEN) which lead to PHOBIA (which ended up a Canadian production that got rewritten) and DEAD & BURIED, and was living with a female Warner executive when he came across the script for VICE SQUAD (he was also interested in NINE 1/2 WEEKS). The VICE SQUAD discussion encompasses much of what we already heard in the commentary but he also elaborates upon his concerns with working with Sandy Howard and being assured that he would be "protected" by Avco Embassy's Bob Rehme and Hemdale's Daly who apparently had no ill will over DEATH LINE being pulled out from under him by Demme.

"Hollywood Magic" (62:29) is an interview with producer Frankish grew up in Canada and was destined to go into auto parts or orange groves but got into acting instead, and then grew interested with the other side of filmmaking when he arrived in Los Angeles and started working in post-production, being promoted from "can boy" (running reels for processing and synching dailies) to editor but was put off by the slow apprenticeship process of the editor's union. He made the acquaintance of producer Jack Grossberg and started working as an office P.A. on EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX * BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK only to move up to location manager when he was needed to help production designer Dale Hennesy; whereupon he was brought by Sandy Howard onto SAVAGE HARVEST as location manager shooting in Africa where he and Howard ended up splitting production manager and first assistant director duties as the production moved to Brazil and his ingenuity in the face of production troubles motivated Howard to bring him on as producer on VICE SQUAD. He recalls speaking to other better-known directors like Richard Fleischer (AMITYVILLE 3D) but Sherman brought along cinematographer Alcott with whom he had worked on commercials in London.

"The Roots of Reality" (44:06) is an interview with actress Todd who discusses her difficult beginnings in Cleveland, forbidden from getting into show business by her mother but winding up with opportunities by way of the choir, with a few false starts before she moved to New York and replacing Diahann Carroll on the show "No Strings" and her subsequent years in and out of the business as she raised a child, and moving to Los Angeles where she started studying acting. She recalls loving the screenplay for VICE SQUAD and choosing to audition for the undercover cop rather than one of the hookers, doing a ride-along with the police and being impacted by what she saw and taking that into the film. She speaks affectionately of Sherman and finds the final product flawless. "Catching a Killer" (58:19) is an interview with actor Serna that follows the format of the others, but takes an even more roundabout direction to get to discussion of the film at hand, as the actor discusses the familial influences on his lifetime of "performing" in various was as a rambunctious child, a show off at sports, and getting into acting and learning to tone down and cut back on his tendency to overact, beating out Erik Estrada for a Universal contract, and discussing some of the more memorable roles of his career. Of VICE SQUAD, he mainly recalls his friendship with Hauser and his admiration for Sherman and Alcott.