Street Asylum (1990) User Reviews

G. Gordon Liddy meets Wings... Finally!

[tarbosh22000 · 6/10 · 13 July 2010]

"This Cop Isn't Losing His Mind...It's Being Taken From Him!" The always cool Wings Hauser portrays Detective Arliss Ryder, a cop on the beat working the seedier side of Hollywood. With crime rampant in the streets, Ryder is tapped by Captain Bill Quinton (Cord) to be a part of a new task force called Strike S.Q.U.A.D. (Scum Quelling Urban Assault Division). Every cop in the SQUAD has a secret microchip in their spine that makes them more aggressive. This causes conflict between Ryder and his wife. Arliss is teamed with the maniacal Joker (Richardson) and his non-stop cackling and downright insanity cause tension between them.

Ryder wants to find the man who shot him and the conspiracy goes all the way to the top. How does it connect to the mayoral candidate Jim Miller (Liddy) and how does Reverend Mony (James) fit into all this? One of the flaws of the movie is that it needed more Liddy. There is a severe lack of the infamous jailbird and Watergate lawbreaker. He is entertaining as Miller in his first feature film. It is such bizarre casting, we wanted to see more of G. Sy Richardson almost steals the show as Joker. Wings is more of the straight man to these shenanigans. However Wings' character arc is more interesting.

Interestingly, Street Asylum bears a resemblance to Repo Men (2010). Hauser and Richardson parallel Jude Law and Forest Whitaker in that film. Both take place in a futuristic city where technology is implanted in the body. Coincidence? We think not.

Street Asylum shares the aspects of other Gregory Dark work, in the fact that it is grimy and bleak. Let's not forget Dark's recent triumph, the Kane vehicle See No Evil (2006).

To learn about Wings Hauser and his long career, please visit our friend The Direct To Video Connoisseur for an informative and entertaining time! For more insanity, please visit: comeuppancereviews.com

It's great!

[BandSAboutMovies · 6/10 · 22 January 2022]

Good Lord, this movie.

Wings Hauser is a typically out of his mind Wings Hauser, playing Sergeant Arliss Ryder, who is transformed into a cyborg killed machine and joins Captain Bill Quinton's (Alex Cord, Airwolf, Chosen Survivors) Strike S. Q. U. A. D. (Scum Quelling Assault Urban Division), a special team of cops who have all been implanted with similar technology that makes them immoral criminal killing machines that also want to have sex with anything and everything - all created by candidate for mayor and secret BDSM fan Jim Miller (played by one-time Watergate burglar and jail rat eater G. Gordon Liddy).

I mean, I'm already in. Can it get better?

You better believe it.

Sy Richardson (Repo Man) plays Sgt. Joker, a constantly laughing cop who must molest every criminal, while Brion James is Reverend Mony, a street preacher who screams about the evils of sex and roasts a pimp alive as part of a sermon. Cops jerk off their guns when they're not murdering perps and all is well in this insane slice of Gregory Dark-directed madness.

I can't believe this movie exists and I am beyond happy that I have watched it.

Roberta Vasquez fans

[patouno · 23 August 2001]

She is long in the tooth these days, but in Street Asylum, she is dressed like a hot dominatrix under a trench coat when she visits E. Gordon Liddy's office and proceeds to punish this bad boy of Watergate breakin fame. I am at odds why Liddy even accepted this role to be dominated by a mere woman when his life is punctuated with prison daliances and scary stuff that would make any normal man cring with fear. But there he is, ordered to drop trou, by the very beautiful, Hispanic Vasquez of Playboy and Victoria's Secret fame and gets a bona fide ass whipping which sends him into convulsions of ecstacy and sensual pleasure. I guess because it IS G. Gordon Liddy this all makes sense. Sort of. s/a

Intriguing cast .... bad movie .................................

[merklekranz · 3/10 · 8 February 2011]

"Street Asylum" has G. Gordon Liddy dropping pants for a whipping delivered by a dominatrix, Brion James is a maniacal street preacher, and Wings Hauser is in full intense mode, yet the film fails miserably. The story of a special police "Strike Squad", made up of violent cops, controlled by an electronic implant, could have worked, but there are too many problems with "Street Asylum". Character development is nil, Liddy and James pop up once in awhile in scenes that seem totally improvised, and almost every night scene is so dark, you will wonder what is going on. Instead of watching, you could create a game, counting the number of times the word scum is used. Sure it's bizarre, but unfortunately it's also bad. - MERK

Hilarious and Underrated

[CMRKeyboadist · 7/10 · 10 November 2006]

I remember seeing the cover for Street Asylum many years ago and thinking that it looked like another crappy straight to video movie. Then I looked at the cover again and noticed G. Gordan Liddy's face being turned into a robot and thinking that this could be interesting. Well, after sitting down and watching this movie with a few friends, G. Gordan never turns into a robot, but, we did discover how much fun this silly film truly was.

Wings Hauser plays a cop who has been shot in the line of duty. When he wakes up he is already been taken care of and discovers he has been transfered to a very tough division called SQUAD (created by G. Gordan Liddy). The first thing he notices with SQUAD is that all of the men are a bunch of crazed animals who just want to destroy street scum. After a few weeks of being on SQUAD, Wings discovers himself acting more and more like the rest of them and his life begins to spiral out of control.

First of all, if you are into the 80's you will probably get a kick out of this movie as it looks like it was made in 1985 but was released in 1990. The music is nothing but saxophone and actually gets annoying from time to time. But I can overlook that since the subject matter is hilarious.

The acting in the movie is actually quite good and Wings Hauser as the lead man is very convincing. Now, G. Gordan Liddy's role in the movie is one of the most hilarious of all time. Not because of the subject matter, but because this is G. Gordan Liddy. He plays the creator of SQUAD and a sadomasochist which leads to one particularly hilarious scene in which he is being whipped by a dominatrix! Look also for Brion James as a crazed street preacher. It is a small role, but, still great.

Overall, I am not quite sure why this movie has such a low rating on IMDb. This was a fun, enjoyable movie in which you don't have to put a lot of thought into. Fans of the 80's should like this one. 7/10

Wings Hauser is at his best in this stark and perverse action-thriller!

[kclipper · 7/10 · 20 June 2011]

A strong sense of tension and perversity loom over this paranoid cop-thriller starring B-movie veteran, Wings Hauser as a compassionate policeman turned maniacal madman, Arliss Ryder. The setting is the grimy streets of Los Angeles, California (in the near future perhaps?), and a violent crime is committed every four seconds. After Ryder is wounded in the line of duty, he is approached with the proposition to join a special division of the precinct called 'Strike Squad'. Little does he know that S.Q.U.A.D. (Scum Quelling Urban Assault Division) is comprised of wounded cops that are part of an experiment headed by a sadomasochistic police chief (G. Gordon Liddy). Members of 'Squad' are implanted with a device at the base of the spine that can release man's primordial animal instincts turning them into unstoppable killing machines. Unfortunately, the botched plan results in madness followed by self-mutilation and eventual suicide. Time is running out for Ryder as he must save his sanity and his relationship, and expose the madmen behind the scheme.

This is dominated by terrific performances and an urban nightmare based atmosphere full of psycho-sexual realism. Hauser is at his most intense, and G. Gordon Liddy plays an unusually wacky character. Other memorable performances include; Alex Cord as a piercing-eyed police captain, Sy Richardson as Ryder's laughing-mad partner, Marie Chambers as an evil doctor, Lisa Robins as an aggressive prostitute, and Brion James as a demented reverend who sets fire to a pimp while preaching to his freakish followers. Ultimately, every character in this movie exhibits their own brand of darkness and insanity. This is truly a crazy film with swift direction by Gregory Dark (who's good at this sociopath satirical stuff) that never lets up on the sizzle and sleaze! Its a rare B-movie treat worth watching if you can find it in its unrated director's cut.

A really fun and enjoyable low-budget futuristic sci-fi hoot

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 31 August 2008]

In the bleak near future Los Angeles has become a dangerous war zone with cops pitted against assorted law-breaking lowlifes. Sergeant Arliss Ryder (well played with customary wired intensity by the always great Wings Hauser) has an electronic device put into his back that turns him into an out-of-control psychotic killer and put on the Strike S.Q.U.A.D. (an acronym for Scum Quelling Assault Urban Devision), which is a unit of crazed cops assigned by Captain Bill Quinton (a typically gruff Alex Cord) to rid the City of Angels of criminals by using any means necessary. The only problem is that Arliss discovers what's going down and decides to put a stop to all this madness. Director Gregory Dark's second futuristic sci-fi/action outing is a considerable improvement over the flawed, but still pretty decent "Dead Man Walking": the action is more plentiful and nicely staged, the plot's much tighter and more thrilling, the pace moves at a snappier rate, and the budget appears to be a little bigger. This picture further benefits from amusing supporting performances by notorious Watergate crook G. Gordon Liddy as mayor candidate Jim Miller, an absolute deranged lunatic who gets his sick kicks by having prostitutes whip him while wearing leather dominatrix outfits (!); Sy Richardson as unhinged homosexual policeman Joker, and an especially hilarious Brion James as demented fire'n'brimstone street preacher J. J. Mony, who in the film's definite sidesplitting wacko highlight douses a slimy pimp with gasoline and sets the man ablaze. A cool and unjustly overlooked end-of-the-world science fiction sleeper.

Fun action from porn veterans

[lor_ · 13 May 2023]

My review was written in May 1990 after watching the film on Magnum video cassette.

The Dark Bros.' second mainstream effort after "Dead Man Walking" is a well-made but poor-taste sci-fi thriller starring Wings Hauser.

Producer Gernert and director Brown retain an element of sleaze from their "New Wave Hookers" days in this slightly futuristic tale of a police force gone mad.

Watergate alumnus G. Gordon Liddy plays a former police chief who's running for mayor on an extreme law and order platform.

Alex Cord is the new police chief who inveigles detective Wings Hauser to join up. When Hauer displays out-of-control behavior, pic delivers the sci-fi revelation that a control device in his back has unfettered violent impulses. It takes Playboy model Roberta Vasquez to get Hauser out of this mess.

In the unrated version (as a shorter R-rated cut also exists), sex scenes not involving the principals add little to the pic. Acting is overwrought, notably Cord's hammy bad guy and Sy Richardson's stereotyped soul brother. Vasquz surprisingly has no nude scenes but proves to be a convincing action performer.