Spike of Bensonhurst is a lot of fun. It's an only slightly idealized look at life in Brooklyn's ethnic enclaves in the 1980s, by former Warhol co-conspirator Paul Morrissey. With amusing and well deployed performances by Mitchell and by Borgnine as the neighborhood Mob boss he runs afoul of, it's one of the few Brooklyn- or New York-set movies from that era that actually looks like it was filmed there, not on a set. (Even Martin Scorcese's films of the period - although not his 1970s movies, of course - look slick by comparison.)
Maybe people don't like the fact that Spike implies strongly that life goes on even amidst crack, ethnic violence, and corruption and doesn't preach about these things - just presents them as facts of the local situation, without letting them get in the way of humor? Somehow, the movie leaves you amused and feeling good in spite or even because of some of the more graphic stuff it shows you.
Maybe people don't like the fact that Spike implies strongly that life goes on even amidst crack, ethnic violence, and corruption and doesn't preach about these things - just presents them as facts of the local situation, without letting them get in the way of humor? Somehow, the movie leaves you amused and feeling good in spite or even because of some of the more graphic stuff it shows you.