Genre directors rarely get the respect they so richly deserve, particularly ones who are skilled at delivering crowd-pleasing action flicks that expertly walk the line between hokey and awesome. Walter Hill is one such director who has seemingly never gotten the recognition he deserves for churning out excellent genre films, and though his work since the turn of the millennium has been pretty dodgy, his work from the late 70s to the mid 90s is unimpeachably great. Like the very first director we covered in this series, Paul Verhoeven, Hill is a master at pushing extremes in sex and violence while never makinghis films slip into the realm of exploitation.
Hill began his journey in Hollywood working as an assistant director to such luminaries as Woody Allen (Take the Money and Run), Norman Jewison (The Thomas Crown Affair), and Peter Yates (Bullitt), before becoming a screenwriter with such flicks as Hickey Boggs, The Getaway, and two Paul Newman starring vehicles,The Mackintosh Manand The Drowning Pool. Hungry to become a director, however, Hill soon took the leap and became a journeyman director working on down and dirty genre flicks like his directorial debut Hard Times starring Charles Bronson and James Coburn.
After making The Driver with Ryan O'Neal and Bruce Dern in 1978, a script titled Alien came across his desk and though he did an uncredited polish on the script, he turned down the chance to direct the film, which of course became an absolute phenomenon. However, the film he chose to make in 1979 instead isn't quite as iconic as Alien, but in certain circles, it's among the greatest cult films ever made, which is where we'll begin our discussion...
The Warriors (1979)
Films about troubled youths were all the rage in the late 70s, so Paramount quickly greenlit Hill's adaptation of the 1965 novel The Warriors by Sol Yurick. Set in a New York City overrun and controlled by various warring gangs, the film opens with all of the gangs being summoned—unarmed, I might add—to a midnight summit at Van Cortland Park in The Bronx. Gang leader Cyrus informs the gangs that he is calling a citywide truce between them in hopes that they can unite against the police, whom they significantly outnumber—cult movie fans will recognize this as the "Can You Dig It" speech.
The police arrive to break things up and unfortunately, in the chaos, Cyrus is murdered by the leader of a rival gangs, The Rogues, who frames the leader of The Warriors for the murder. This sends the remaining members of The Warriors gang—including a young James Remar (Dexter)—running for their lives, with every member of every gang in the city attempting to hunt them down. While there's no nudity in the flick, noted Rosario Dawson lookalikeDeborah Van Valkenburghplays Mercy, an orphan who joins up with The Warriors and shows off by wearing a flimsy tank top she can't help but poke through...
48 Hrs. (1982)
While it may not have kicked off the mismatched buddy comedy craze that swept the nation in the mid-80s, Eddie Murphy's first starring vehicle—made when he was still a regular cast member on Saturday Night Live—finds him paired with loose cannon cop Nick Nolte in this expertly crafted action comedy. Hill teams up once again with James Remar, playing one of a pair of cop killers Nolte is tasked with tracking down, and he enlists Murphy's help as he used to work with Remar. Nolte manages to getMurphy a 48 hour release—hence the title—in order to find and nab the bad guys.
Action comedies were a lot grittier in the 80s than they are today and this flick is no exception, featuring three nude scenes, including one from a young Denise Crosby of Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well asThe Concrete Jungle's Greta Blackburn...
Additionally, thepan-and-scan version of the film featured a rare bush-only nude scene from Annette O'Toole which is missing from any properly formatted widescreen version of the film...
The film was a smash hit at the box office, earning nearly $80 million against a budget of $12 million—roughly $280 million in 2020 dollars—meaning that a sequel seemed inevitable. However, Murphy's career took off like a rocket following this flick, delaying the sequel until 1990. Despite having the entire original cast and creative team on board, Another 48 Hrs. is something of a disappointment in the way most belated sequels are. The story had clearly been written to immediately follow the first film and very few changes were made to accommodate the 8 year gap, though that's honestly the least of that film's problems.
Extreme Prejudice (1987)
Following some experiments by Hill like 1984's hugely underrated punk musical Streets of Fire, the Richard Pryor remake Brewster's Millions, and the Ralph Macchio guitar flick Crossroads, the director re-teamed with Nick Nolte for this intense neo-western homage to the films of Sam Peckinpah. Nolte plays a hardened Texas Ranger who is encouraged by his bossnot to interfere with the work of a team ofmercenaries—led by the always great Michael Ironside—known as the Zombie Unit, comprised of soldiers reported KIA who are actually still alive. When one of their men kills a local sheriff (Rip Torn), Nolte surmises it was his old pal Powers Boothe who set them up, and he swears his revenge, and will terminate with the titular veracity.
Nolte's wife in the film is played by Maria Conchita Alonso (The Running Man), who has the film's only nude scene as she shows TA while showering...
Red Heat (1988)
The very next year, Hill was back with another mismatched buddy cop action comedy, this time starring Jim Belushi as a slovenly Chicago cop who is paired with aMoscow Militia Captain(Arnold Schwarzenegger) to track down a rogue Georgian drug kingpin Viktor Rostavili (Ed O'Ross) hiding out in the Windy City! It's East meets West, snobs versus slobs, and any other mismatched partner combinations one can think of, as Belushi attempts to keep a leash on Schwarzenegger, which is about as futile a gesture on his part as it sounds.
The film opens in Russia, where we get to know Schwarzenegger's Danko and his doomed partner—Walter Hill loves a good dead partner to avenge—as they infiltrate a bathhouse where Viktor is rumored to be hiding out. There's quite a bit of uncredited nudity in this scene, but watch out for hogs a'flying courtesy of Schwarzenegger and Arnie's old weightlifting pal and frequent co-star Sven-Ole Thorsen as one of the men protecting Viktor. The other nudity in the flick comes in Chicago where a raid gone wrong causes the room of Gretchen Palmer to be invaded, whom we see nude as she flees from danger...
Also, keep your eyes peeled for a young Gina Gershon playing Viktor's American wife, though sadly she doesn't take off any of her clothes. Still, it's pretty nice seeing a skin legend before she was famous!
Supernova (2000)
They say that success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan, and never has that been truer than with 2000's Supernova, a wildly expensive science fiction film for which absolutely no one wanted to take credit. The film was a revolving door of on camera and behind-the-scenes talent, with James Spader being brought in to play the lead when Vincent D'Onofrio left the project along with original director Geoffrey Wright (Romper Stomper). Spader was the one who suggested Hill be hired to direct, and Hill jumped at the chance not only to work with Spader, but to rewrite what he felt were some of the film's major flaws.
However, this didn't sit well with United Artists headLindsay Doran, who was quite partial to the original script. Therefore, when Hill turned in his cut of the film, it differed from the script so wildly that Doran fired Hill and brought in director Jack Sholder (Nightmare on Elm Street 2) to shoot some additional material and deliver a new cut of the film. While this version of the film tested better than Hill's, a new regime swept into United Artists who preferred Hill's version. Hill requested an additional five million dollars to finish the film his way, but they rejected his offer. Instead they hired—of all people—Francis Ford Coppola to take all of the footage that had been shot and craft an entirely new version of the film.
Coppola wasn't allotted any additional funds to finish the film or reshoot anything, tying his hands a bit, but the most controversial decision that Coppola made by far involved the film's nude scenes. One of United Artists' big sticking points with the film is that they were hoping to make a "sexy" space adventure, rather than your average monster in space flick, but without the benefit of being able to shoot new footage, Coppola had to get creative. A sex scene had been filmed by Hill with Robin Tunney and Lou Diamond Phillips, but in order for Coppola to get more nudity in the film, he took unused footage of their sex scene and digitally altered it to look like Angela Bassett and James Spader having sex too. Yes, you read that right. The director of The Godfather essentially put Robin Tunney in digital blackface to get more nudity from more characters into the film...
Hill eventually requested that his name be removed from the project, meaning it was shipped to theaters having been directed by the fictional "Thomas Lee"—as Alan Smithee was now a recognizable sign to audiences that a director had left the project. In the end, none of the studio meddling or work done by Sholder or Coppola could salvage the film and it was lambasted by critics and ignored by audiences, grossing less that $15 million against a budget that was somewhere between $60 to $90 million.
Bullet to the Head (2013)
Followingthe competently made but mostly overwhelming 2002 film Undisputed, Hill moved to television, directing the pilot episode of Deadwood which won him an Emmy and a DGA award, though he clashed with creator David Milch and never returned to direct another episode. In 2006, he won those same two awards again for directing the AMC miniseries Broken Trail starring Robert Duvall, before entering what he deemed "semi-retirement" as none of the projects he developed over the next few years—including a remake of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?—went into production.
In 2011, Sylvester Stallone reached out to Hill, sending him the script for Bullet to the Head and asking him to direct. The elements all seemed to be there for a major return to form not just for the aging action star, but also for Hill, nowknocking on the door ofhis 70s. Stallone stars alongside Fast Furious' Sung Kang as a hitman and detective, respectively, who team up to take down the man who killed both of their partners, played by then-up-and-comer Jason Momoa. While it's certainly not up to snuff with Stallone or Hill's films in their heyday, it's certainly a whole lot of dumb macho fun.
Stallone and his partner open the film pulling a hit on a corrupt cop who is having some fun with an escort named Lola (Weronika Rosati), who bares TA while heading into the shower...
There's also some brief TA from Sarah Shahi, playing Stallone's estranged daughter, who gets kidnapped by Momoa just prior to the one-hour mark...
The Assignment (2016)
While he's kept busy with various other projects—including earning producer credits on any and all films in the Alien franchise as well as being one of the stewards of the Tales from the Crypt franchise—Hill's most recent directorial effort was this tale of a hitman turned hitwoman, played by another Fast Furious alum, Michelle Rodriguez. The script had been kicking around since the early 70s, originally known as either(Re) AssignmentandTomboy: A Revenger's Tale, but took nearly forty years to come to the screen, premiering at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival before being released in select theaters and On Demand in early 2017.
Sigourney Weaver, shockingly make her first appearance in a Walter Hill film, plays a rogue plastic surgeon who specializes in gender reassignment surgery but loses her medical license for performing unauthorized surgeries on homeless people. Several years before the story starts, her brother was murdered by an assassin named Frank Kitchen (Rodriguez), eventually tracking him down and performing surgery on him to turn him into a woman. When Frank, now known only as TomBoy, wakes up and discovers what has happened to him, he swears revenge on Weaver and the people who helped transition her against her will.
The film was hyped for featuring Michelle Rodriguez's full-fledged nude debut, but in order to make her look more convincingly like a trans-woman, Hill outfitted her with fake nipples and a hilariously humungous merkin for her nude scenes—though that ass is all Michelle, minus the prosthetic peen of course!
Thankfully we've also got Caitlin Gerard and Lia Lam on hand for some knockout nude scenes as well...
While I'm certainly not alone in hoping that Hill gets back behind the camera again soon, he has at least left behind a veritable cornucopia of skinsational genre flicks. He may be interested in moving into new mediums as well, as last year saw the release of his albumThe Cowboy Iliad: A Legend Told In The Spoken Word, telling the true story of the legendary Hyde Park Shootout in Newton, Kansas in 1871. It's absolutely essential if you enjoy western tales, particularly ones told by an expert storyteller like Walter Hill.
Walter Hill Movies with Nudity Not Covered in This Column
Check out the Other Directors in Our Ongoing "SKIN-depth Look”Series
—Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Part One
—Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Part Two
—Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Part Three
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Non-nude images courtesy of IMDb
