Bad Lieutenant (1992)

PLOT OUTLINE: Bad Lieutenant (1992) is the title of a film crime drama directed by Abel Ferrara and starring Harvey Keitel as the titular "bad lieutenant". The screenplay was written by actress-model Zoë Tamerlis under the name "Zoë Lund." Tamerlis also played a small role in the film. Tamerlis had been discovered by Ferrara and had starred in his earlier film, Ms. 45.

We first see Keitel's nameless character advising his two sons on how to answer back to their aunt Wendy, which serves as a foreshadowing of his behavior through the rest of the film, in which he takes a twisted delight in humiliating women, most notoriously in the scene where he stops a couple of underage girls without a driving license and demands sexual favors in exchange for letting them off.

The "Bad Lieutenant" also is a drug-using gambler who finds himself plunged into debt when the New York Mets lose the 1988 National League Championship Series. The turning point in the film arrives when he investigates the rape of a nun and uses this as a chance to confront his inner demons and perhaps achieve redemption.

Blockbuster Video, the largest video rental company in the United States, had a policy prohibiting the purchase and rental of NC-17 movies. An R rated cut was created specifically so that Blockbuster would rent out the film. The R rated version is a full 5 minutes shorter than the original.

Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page got upset when he found out that the song Kashmir was sampled in the Schooly D song Signifying Rapper that played just after Keitel drops off his kids, powders his nose, and drives off at the beginning of the movie, giving a strong musical underline to the appearing duality of the anti-hero's personality. Unfortunately, the sample had not been cleared by Schooly D's record company. A lawsuit forced the removal of the song from the soundtrack on some VHS and all DVD versions of the film.