Hookers on Davie (1984) User Reviews

Interesting..

[lmyles · 7/10 · 17 August 2004]

Saw this on the Documentary Channel recently and thought it was pretty good. Davie Street in Vancouver is quite different now and it was interesting to see how things once were. I remember going down there as a kid to oogle the hookers there. So sad to see the kids my age being there. Characters were interesting and I was wishing I knew what had become of them since the film was made. The subjects in the movie gave a pretty good indication what life on the street was like then, and were surprisingly coherent.

7/10!

Tough Life

[blumdeluxe · 8/10 · 21 June 2017]

"Hookers on Davie" is a documentary about the hookers working on the streets in Vancouver. It deals with the inner social structure of the business, the problems and dangers hookers are facing and the personal destinies that led to their profession.

The movie takes a close look and by explaining the topic through the eyes of those involved, it manages to create an atmosphere that makes it easy to emphasize for the men and women working on the streets. I don't know if it is really shocking to find solid social structures there, I guess this is more a thought from another time but it is nonetheless highly interesting to see behind the mask of prostitution, and it is also important to strengthen the rights of prostitutes by creating a better understanding. Probably some of the things depicted in the film have already changed by now and you'll have to see this as a contemporary document, but I do think that you can still today learn from it and broaden your horizon. The only thing that I, as a foreign viewer, missed a bit, is a history of Davie Street in general, to better understand why exactly this quarter has developed into a center for prostitution.

All in all I advise you to give this documentary a watch and learn to see prostitutes from another perspective. It will be for your benefit as well.

Emotional Documentary

[mbrand20022002 · 5 May 2005]

I too got to see the Hookers on Davie St months ago before I moved to my new location and this is one documentary that shows you what Davie St. was like back in the early 1980's. Today it looks cleaner but back then it looked like a seedy street you would see on crime shows. It's very unlikely some of these prostitutes are still living but they may be some that has changed their lives and pretty much are living better lives than they did back then. I hope they may one day an update on these original prostitutes and see where are they now. Still the documentary was watchable to see especially this one transvestite having a fit that even Big Bird can't never duplicate.

Canadian documentary with a gritty vibe

[Leofwine_draca · 5/10 · 19 February 2017]

HOOKERS ON DAVIE STREET is a Canadian documentary feature from 1984 that comes across as one of the grittiest I've ever seen. There's no framing finesse here, no stylistics or the like, just a series of interview snippets with various prostitutes, male, female, and transsexual, working the above-named street in Vancouver in the early 1980s.

Unsurprisingly enough it's a grubby thing indeed and the lives depicted are rather squalid. It brings to mind the inherent vice of a film like TAXI DRIVER, although this time it's all real. The good news is that the interviews are unstaged and heartfelt, so much so that you feel like you really get an insight into the lives of these sex workers and what they have to put up with on a daily basis. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that they don't come across as emotionless sex robots at all but rather real, flawed human beings complete with their own foibles and quirks.