Bad Lieutenant

I’m about to tell a tale that is going to make me sound incredibly old. A tale of “video cassettes” and entire storefronts dedicated to allowing you to rent them. The tale of Bad Lieutenant.


You see, in my pre-teen years, there was a now-defunct video rental store by the name of Power Video. And, before Blockbuster Video moved into the same shopping center and gave it the boot like the white man did the injun, Power Video was one of my favorite places on earth. Especially its cult video section, which featured such classics as Redneck Zombies, Faces of Death, Black Caesar and Pink Flamingos. One day I wandered into Power Video with my close friend Howard Highland, and, as we sifted through the cult section for something to watch, he suggested Bad Lieutenant. “Yeah, there’s a scene where Harvey Kietel makes a girl pretend to give him a blowjob while he jerks off on her car.” I was sold right there. But then Howard went in for the kill: “You also see Harvey Kietel’s schlong.”

Now I’m not gay (any time you hear that, brace yourself, because it’s about to get gayer than a Turkish bathhouse), but I was obsessed with Pulp Fiction at the time. And a chance to see Winston Wolf’s joint? Hey, I’m only human. I rented Bad Lieutenant and we were on our way.


Years later, I can appreciate the film on a much more meaningful level, as a deeply symbolic tale of a man’s corruption and redemption. But at that age, the movie boiled down to one scene. One scene I must have watched, hit rewind and watched again 50 times, conservatively. (Skip to 0:30.)



I can still quote it word for word. Howard had no idea what he’d unleashed on the world. Any time I would talk to a person and the conversation turned to movies we loved that no one else had heard of, Bad Lieutenant was always my go to. And so here I am, telling you now to give the flick a shot, be it through Netflix or one of its apparently weekly airings on IFC. Because if we ever hang out in a social setting and you and I can perfectly recite the scene I linked to above, all the chicks in the room are going to be ours. And that’s a fact.

Tagged as: Movie Review.