Hooker Patrol

Hal 'Fats' Manciano was always a hack. Unlike Russ Meyer, who made Cheescake movies that fueled his own obsessions and turned a profit, Hal was only interested in the bottom line. Always closer in spirit to the old carnival barkers and boardwalk hustlers than the glittering sparkle of Hollywood, he was out for the money and he made pictures that serviced the baser needs of any given time.

His 1976 opus Hooker Patrol is a case to point. A million miles away from the drag strip posturing and relatively innocous Switchblade fights of his 50s and early 60s teen movies, Hooker Patrol is a spiteful slice of Grindhouse unpleasantness which seems custom made to play in seedy inner city fleapits populated by Junkies, Hustlers and their Johns.

Opening at night we watch through the eyes of a lone driver as he cruises the streets of pre-clean up Manhattan, looking for fresh meat. This maniac needs a fix but he's not looking for drugs, he's hunting prostitutes and when he finds his victims, their going to pay the price for their amoral lifestyles.

Thus runs the first 30 minutes of the film, a heady mix of POV camera, random explicit sex acts and street life montage all broken up by sadistic, gory murders at the hands of Freddy (Tack Foster - Prison 69: Dyke Wing / Lonely Wife With a Sharp Knife / Flames of Ardour), a brain dead sociopath with a rusty blade and a bad attitude.

But soon, things pick up as East Side Sally (Diane Kitten - Girls of the Downtown Jungle / Booty Convent / Horror of the Sex Dragons) and Backdoor Betty (Shanice L'Tor - Crimes of the Lust Cartel / Dangerous Pantyhose / Christmas in Whore Town) call a Street Walkers convention and form a HOOKER PATROL




Cue 20 minutes of training montage intercut with more lewd acts, reportage footage of a Time Square Soapbox preacher, Documentary inserts of Pimps rolling down the street and another couple of brutal slayings as more girls wind up slain in grubby back alleys, dilapidated rest rooms and, in one of the more memorable scenes in the movie, dumped on the steps of city hall.

The police, powerless to stop the deranged killer, give deputy status to the hooker army, who take to the streets that night, ready to dispense ultimate justice...

Hooker Patrol is a classic of the Grindhouse form, custom built to offend and sicken, it's hard to defend and harder to watch.



Diane Kitten - Selected Filmography


1969 Lux-O-Baby-Soft Washing Powder commercial

1970 Girls of the Downtown Jungle

1970 Bowery Brothel Panic

1971 Horror of the Sex Dragons

1971 Pimps Abroad

1972 Little China Mae Goes West

1972 Little China Mae Goes South

1972 Little China Mae Goes Down

1973 Booty Convent

1974 Pregnant Revenge

1974 Mondo Thighs

1974 Blast Off to Beaver Town

1975 Girls of the Gutter

1976 Hooker Patrol

1976 Ms. Grenade

1977 Dockyard Jezebels

1978 Hitchhike to Happiness

1979 Truckstop Turn Around

1980 Space Prison: Journey to Ultra-Venus*


*A body double had to used after Ms. Kitten was suddenly converted to Mormanism during the shoot, causing her to walk off the set into the arms of a bible salesman from Salt Lake City and his two lovely wives.