I was pretty bummed to read earlier this week that Wings Hauser had passed away. While often written off as a C-level action star thanks to a long line of eighties and nineties direct-to-video flicks, the fact is Hauser was beyond talented, and when he put the effort in, he could be unforgettable. Such was the case when Michael Mann cast him against time as a slimy lawyer for big tobacco in The Insider where, in one ninety-second scene, he and Bruce McGill all but walk away with what, for the rest of the 158-minute running time, is ostensibly a star vehicle for Al Pacino and Russell Crowe (and to be sure, they are great).
Such was the power of Wings, who could be great in the right role. I also vividly remember him being terrific as a slimy bounty hunter hired by Luke Perry’s Dylan in an atypically action-packed episode of Beverly Hills 90210, while he was also deliciously over-the-top in Norman Mailer’s Tough Guys Don’t Dance. While that movie is infamous for Ryan O’Neal’s “oh God, oh Man” scene, Hauser somehow found just the right notes to hit in the film, with many saying that, had the film actually been a success, it might have kicked Hauser’s career as a character-actor into high gear.
However, Hauser also struggled with substance abuse issues, with his son Cole Hauser noting this led to some strain in their relationship for a time. For some truly unhinged footage of Wings Hauser drunk, one need only check out this scene in the bargain-basement vanity project Road to Revenge (aka Geteven – and no that’s not a misspelling of the title). I mean, either Hauser is really drunk, or he’s giving an Oscar-level performance in what has to be one of the worst films ever made.
However, Hauser was able to pull it back together, going on to The Insider and several other impressive roles, such as a good one in the cult classic Rubber, with a documentary about his life in the works. Yet, of all of his performances, none is better than his turn as Ramrod the killer pimp in 1982’s Vice Squad – aka Martin Scorsese’s choice for the best movie of 1982 (his quote actually turned up on some VHS editions of the film).
Directed by Gary Sherman, who directed Dead and Buried the year before, Vice Squad is a down-and-dirty thriller shot on location within the boundaries of Los Angeles’s Skid Row, back when it was even more dangerous than it is now. Season Hubley plays Princess, a suburban mother by day, streetwalker by night, who’s one of the only prostitutes running “outlaw”, which, in the movie’s vernacular, means she doesn’t have a pimp. She’s pursued by Hauser’s Ramrod, who, in addition to being a pimp, is also a psychopath, with him beating a former employee to death with his “pimp stick”, which is a twisted up wire hanger he uses in a grotesque way. Wanting revenge, she’s convinced by a nice guy vice cop named Walsh (played by the completely obscure Gary Swanson), who convinces her to lure Ramrod into a trap, only for him to escape. He spends the rest of the movie hunting her, with the movie cutting back and forth between Princess’s often surreal tricks and Ramrod’s trail of terror as Walsh tries to track him down.
While not a box office hit when it came out beyond the grid house circuit (although it made a tidy profit), clearly the right people saw it, with Clint Eastwood actually lifting his “go ahead, make my day” line from the climax of the film, where Walsh uses it is a slightly different way. Everyone who saw it agreed on at least two things. One was that it was very evocatively shot, with Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon DP John Alcott having done the cinematography between stints in A-features (his next movie would be Greystroke: The Legend of Tarzan). Sherman actually had a very keen eye himself, with his later action flick, the Rutger Hauer movie Wanted: Dead or Alive having the cold, hard look of an industrial film – which is highly unusual for the era.
The other thing people agreed on was that Wings Hauser was terrific as Ramrod, with him also singing the theme song, Neon Slime. I vividly remember Leonard Maltin, in an otherwise bad review in his classic movie guide, dismissing the film but admitting that Wings Hauser made for one of the screen’s best villains. It probably should have led to a bigger career for Hauser as a villain, but he didn’t want to play bad guys – he wanted to be the good guy. Thus, he rarely played villains throughout the rest of the decade, which worked well enough for him for a while as he became a staple of DTV action flicks of the era.
Vice Squad still has a lot of fans, including director Ti West, whose MaXXXine owes a certain debt to this film, along with the similarly themed Angel (with the score from that movie repurposed in certain scenes). If you happen not to really know who Wings Hauser was and want to know why it’s been our number one trending story in the trending tab, give Vice Squad a watch. You can find it pretty easily on a lot of streaming services (it’s now streaming on TubiTV in the U.S). It’s a blast.
