User Reviews

The wonderfully-named Mike Justus (Singer) is "The Best". The best cop in Pittsburgh, that is. Because of his rogue ways and defiance of authority, his higher-ups decide to let him "retire early". Justus sees this as a good time to fix up and re-sell a house his aunt left him in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Upon arriving in a section of L.A. called Norwood, he finds it overrun by criminals, hoodlums, punks, ne'er-do-wells, scofflaws, loiterers, scapegraces, Sir-Lucius-O'Triggers, delinquents, ruffians, thugs, hooligans, and the like. Not getting any help from local cop Freeborn (Railsback), Justus, along with a rainbow coalition of people in the community such as restaurateur Lee (Oh), stereotypical Irish Priest Father Brophy (Cranston), stereotypical Bible-quoting tough guy Angel (Lister), and video store proprietress/love interest to Mike Justus Jenny (Lankford), form a Guardian Angels-like group called TNB, or "Take Norwood Back". This doesn't sit well with the local gangs, so a showdown ensues. Will Justus actually get STREET CORNER JUSTICE? As far as "take back the community" movies go, Street Corner Justice isn't as good as The Annihilators (1985) or Private Wars, 1993 (which also featured Steve Railsback, oddly enough). It's one of our favorite themes for DTV movies, so we could never get sick of this formula, but this one in particular is just relentlessly dumb. It's also too long, and oddly paced at that. Even though director Chuck Bail is a veteran of the movie industry, it's like he was a newbie in the production department. That aside, at least he had the raw nerve to name the main character Mike Justus. As if to drill the point home to viewers who may be even dumber than this movie, at one point Justus says, "There's no justice. There's just us." Yes, we get it. But Mike Justus smokes - because he's cool - and that's something you'd never see today. No hero would ever smoke in our ridiculously P.C. society of the 2000's. Also Singer looks a lot like David Spade in this movie. If you've ever wanted to see David Spade beat up bad guys and chase rapists that are Clint Howard, this might be your only chance.

'Justice is riddled with clichés and stereotypes (there's even a fast montage of nothing but clichés early on in the movie, watch out for it) and these are fun to watch, but is it enough to support a whole (overlong) movie? There are some moments which aren't in the box of clichés, such as the fact that the main baddie and supposedly the toughest gang member in town wears a sweatervest, and the fact that this whole "citizens vs. punks" war was initiated when a fat guy couldn't play a game of Street Fighter II. All the way up until the time-honored final abandoned warehouse fight, there's plenty of unmitigated stupidity on show. But that may be your thing.

There's also an "evil playground" that we haven't seen since Balance Of Power (1996) - it might even be the same one as Balance Of Power, which would be weird. That's one seriously evil playground. We can see why two movies have highlighted it. And the video store that Kim Lankford's character, Jenny, works at is called Cine-Video, and looks like a real place. Lankford gets to sing not one, but two songs on the soundtrack. But no rockin' tunes, just ballads. It's a shame, a faster song might have bumped up the energy level a bit more.

Considering Mike Justus fought his whole life against red tape, it's pretty ironic that this movie comes housed in a red tape. But no amount of gimmickry or colored inks can blot out the fact that Street Corner Justice is video store shelf-filler and a waste of a nice B-movie cast.

For more action insanity, please visit: www.comeuppancereviews.com

This is another ex-cop vigilante film, not as good as most out there. Mike Justus (Marc Singer) goes to North Hollywood to sell a home, local gangs, community needs help, red hair girl (Kim Lankford), crooked cop (oops plot spoiler), The only difference is that Justus enlists help. Cliche and formula all the way.

Stubby legged Clint Howard was a roof jumper. Seriously?

Guide: F-bomb, rape, nudity.

Note to self: Add dumpster sex to bucket list.

Mike Justus - yes, that's his real name - is played by Marc Singer and he's a Pittsburgh undercover cop hanging out at the old Metro Pizza up on Shiloh Street when he beats a rapist (Clint Howard, no name for his character, just rapist) nearly to death after catching him in a dumpster. As he loses his badge, he drowns his sorrows in a Yinzer bar - I mean, not only is everyone drinking Iron City and IC Lite, someone literally says, "Jeet jet?" to him - and tells his friends that he's leaving for Los Angeles. An incredulous bartender speaks to Mike - and not because his last name is Justus, let me bring that up again - when she learns that he's going to take over his dead aunt's house on the West Coast and says, "You mean you're moving to California? Hollywood? Where they make movies?" She seems so incredulous that this could happen, but this is very realistic, because she's from Pittsburgh and how dare you move out to where those lunatics live when you could just move to somewhere nice like Ben Avon or Fox Chapel.

At this point, as the movie goes to Eagle Rock, California - where I've been told the doughnut shop still remains - and I thought I would check out, but things get practically insane. Like, Paul Kersey insane without the custom handguns.

Speaking of that doughnut shop, its owner Kwong Chuck Lee (Soon-Tek Oh, Steele Justice) is just trying to make the doughnuts when a Latino street gang - if you think this movie isn't going to be super racist, you weren't renting low tier action movies in 1996 - attacks him. He beats up one of them, then they break his window and literally take a whizz all over his pastries.

On his very first day in the neighborhood, Mike Justus remembers he's a cop busted for brutality and wipes the concrete with them, a fact that doesn't win him many fans with the real cops, led by Sergeant Ryan Freeborn (Steve Railsback). You know, I don't trust many cops, but I never trust a movie cop who once played Charles Manson.

To make matters worse, the city itself sues Kwong Chuck Lee - the names in this movie never stop - because he hasn't bought security or surveillance equipment. Mike's already getting close to another business owner named Jenny Connor and he's smart, not only because it's Kim Lankford (Malibu Beach, Ginger Ward on Knots Landing) but because she runs a video store. He gathers all the business owners and a priest played by Bryan Cranston with the worst Irish accent ever and the name - the names here, again, the names - of Father Brophy. There's also a Jewish jeweler named Lou Wisceman (Harvey Jason) and an Asian grocer named Li Chen (Raymond Ma) to round out the stereotypes in this beset mini mall. Anyways, Mike Justus literally says, "There's no justice, there's just us." Or maybe he says "Justus," as he's the only one who can really fight after an entire movie where he refuses to help their group, Take Norwood Back, and remembers who he really is: an ex-cop busted for brutality.

Do you know what you have to do to get busted for police brutality in Pittsburgh? And the guy he was fighting wasn't just a rapist, it was Clint Howard playing not just a rapist but a Satanic rapist.

It takes Jenny getting knocked out with a big weapon to get him to fight, so he looks up an old friend he once arrested named Angel (Tiny Lister!) and a local sex worker named Willie Gee (Beverly Leech, who looks kind of like a hot sitcom best friend yet dressed in spandex and hose and often kicks dudes right in the dick, so guess who my favorite character in this movie was) to dress up as their own gang and rob and attack the guys messing with the mini mall.

We meet Willie when she's repeatedly kicking a muscular man in the balls - over and over - in a no tell motel that has a black man wearing lingerie in the lobby. And oh yeah - Angel has found God, so Mike tells him the gang hates Jesus.

Also: Mike Justus gets kicked in the scrote in this as well.

What I don't understand is that this is a movie where the hero leads a man who has found God into killing someone and going against his code, going back to jail and realizing that he has forsaken the Lord, while the sex worker is the only one who realizes this and gets drunk just in time to hear an answering machine message that puts it all together. Plus, Kim Lankford sings two songs, "Every Now and Then" and "Points," which I assume she did not get on this movie.

The video store Vidiots, which closed in Santa Monica in 2017, opened the Eagle Theatre in 2022 as a combination 250-seat movie theater and video store in Eagle Rock, finally finding a home for Vidiots' collection of more than 50,000 titles on DVD, blu ray and VHS. They're literally on the same street as the video store in this movie. Here's hoping they don't need to join Take Norwood Back or at the very least, Mike Justus is still hanging around.

Street Corner Justice was directed by Pittsburgh's Chuck Bail, who also made Black Samson, Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold, The Gumball Rally and four episodes of Baywatch Nights. He also did stunts in Hells Angels On Wheels, The Devil's 8, Werewolves on Wheels, The Last Movie and was the double for Max Baer Jr. On The Beverly Hillbillies.

Speaking of stunts, this was written by Gary Kent, who had an entire documentary about his life, Danger God, and who was one of the inspirations for Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time In...Hollywood. He did stunts in everything from Satan's Sadists to Freebie and the Bean and Bubba Ho-Tep. He also shows up in tons of Al Adamson movies. He worked on the script with Bail and Stan Berkowitz, who sure, wrote tons of episodes of the outstanding Batman the Animated Series, Superman the Animated Series and T. J. Hooker, but is also the husband of Teagan Clive, who is the much beloved BimboCop from Vice Academy 2 and The Alienator in The Alienator. Oh man! She's also in the Cannon Sinbad and one of my favorite giallo, Obsession: A Taste for Fear. Way to go Stan!

I found this movie on a Roku channel called Popstar and let me tell you, there's a wealth of movies soon to be on the site from this channel. I feel like I discovered a bodega that's fallen into disrepair that still rents out VHS in 2023.

Unlike most B movies that deal with urban vigilante justice themes, "Street Corner Justice" illustrates it in a more realistic manner, showing that vigilante practices can create a whole bunch of problems. That was interesting, certainly more interesting than the rest of the movie. The movie does indeed have a once in a lifetime B movie cast (Marc Singer, Bryan Cranston, Steve Railsback, Soon Teck Oh, "Tiny" Lister Jr., and Clint Howard), but none of these actors come across very well. They either underact or overact, and it doesn't help that some of their dialogue is so poorly recorded that it's hard to make out at times. Singer comes off the worst, in part because his role is so bland and reluctant to get involved, not deciding to help the residents of his neighborhood until more than half the movie has passed. In fact, the story itself is also slow-moving, and severely lacks scenes that could be safely labelled "action sequences". It doesn't help that the movie's low budget is often very evident (check the pathetic sets passing for hospitals or police stations interiors), as well as the fact that there are a significant number of ineptly edited sequences that suggest the production couldn't afford to film every bit of the script. Why someone thought this was worthy to re-release on DVD, I cannot say.