Hellfire Video Club is 15 years old this year. So to celebrate, we’re killing ourselves off.

Before we consign ourselves to the big trash heap in the sky though, we have a few final offerings planned. Here’s the first; a shit-kicking double bill of grime-encrusted NYC flicks, from when the city was a seething hot mess of crime and sleaze - full of crummy condemned buildings and unhinged characters waiting to rip you off, or worse. No doubt this was quite a chore to deal with on a day-to-day basis, but it sure makes for good fictional entertainment. Tonight we’re excited to screen a couple of Fun/Fear City era faves - both with stories unfurling across one day/night - notching up the intensity factor to match the gnarly setting.

Alphabet City (Amos Poe, 1984, USA, 85 mins, Cert: 18)

Italian-American Johnny (Vincent Spano) is riding high as the big man in the neighbourhood, cruising the streets in his Trans Am, running drugs and collecting protection money for the mob. Tonight though, he’s facing a dilemma. They want him to light an insurance scam blaze on a tenement block where his mother and sister just happen to live. In too deep, he understands now is the time to split. But as the night unfolds, he begins to realise this Faustian pact isn’t going to be so easy to wriggle out of.

Director Amos Poe was very much a key player in the downtown ‘No Wave’ scene which spawned so much of the music/art we take for granted today, and in a parallel universe, this might have been his leap on to bigger things. A gear-shift up from his earlier sketchy, improvised films; keeping the loose freewheeling structures, whilst updating the characters to reflect the dirty cash grabs and amoral posturing of the Reaganomics era. Aesthetically, this is everything you might imagine and want a mid-80s film to look and sound like, in extremis - from the (super-catchy) Nile Rogers synth pop soundtrack, through a parade of mind-boggling leatherwear and THAT Trans Am, all illuminated with a  liberal drenching of neon and coloured lights, making even the most insalubrious surroundings look weirdly alluring.

Night of the Juggler (Robert Butler/Sidney J. Furie, 1980, USA, 101mins, Cert:15)

Former NYC cop (James Brolin) has chucked in his badge after a spat with a corrupt colleague. Meanwhile, a textbook psycho lowlife with a racist grudge has kidnapped his teenage daughter from Central Park in error, thinking she’s the offspring of a wealthy property developer and expecting to score a huge payback ransom. Naturally, our hard man 80s action hero is having none of this, and a frantic pursuit across the mean streets of NYC ensues, with our man also hotly trailed by his old nemesis from the force, determined to nail him for having the temerity to not leave it to the ‘experts’.

Oddly enough, a lot of the ‘night’ of this juggler actually takes place during the day, but time confusion issues aside, this one’s a high-impact chase-action banger, and a whole heap of morally dubious fun. Recently restored and rescued from VHS-era limbo, you can now view the filth-encrusted streets in full HD glory! Like Alphabet City, it vividly captures the tail-end of a renegade period of filmmaking on NY streets at this time - a ‘no permit obtained for shooting’ era, and it really shows; there’s a palpable sense of danger that hovers around these street shoot-outs and car chases that just can’t be faked. Add in a hefty dose of faintly ludicrous action hero machismo, some cartoonish criminal stereotypes, and voila! You’ve hit a trashy fun sweet spot.

HFVC DJs will be in the bar before/between, spinning selections from the city that never sleeps.