Rebel and renaissance man Richard Grieco’s career is as confounding as it is preposterous. Starting out as a Calvin Klein model and a soap opera hunk (he played playboy Rick Gardner on One Life To Live in the late 80s), he moved to Los Angeles when in 1987 he landed a recurring role on 21 Jump Street, which spawned the mercifully short-lived spin-off Booker. He was named Male Star of Tomorrow at ShoWest (the annual convention where Hollywood studios and filmmakers woo theater owners) and in 1994 signed on as a recording star for Edel Records in Germany. At the height of his popularity he bragged, “I see myself hot for the next seven years at least. I’ve analyzed everyone around, and I just don’t see anyone who has what I do.”
But he was forced to eat his words after a succession of cinematic bombs. With his dark, brooding good looks, he’s like James Dean but without all that pesky “acting” business getting in the way. His “technique” is to just look cool, mousse his hair and crack that seductive, elfin smile. But that smug arrogance has begun to look pretty desperate as the years grind on, in an endless string of direct-to-video movies so lousy that they didn’t even register in Leonard Maltin’s Movie & Video guide.
Until I can get my hands on his legendary collection of poetry, Fragments From A Dirty Ashtray, I’ll have to settle for his celluloid accomplishments. Richard Grieco will always remain a beacon in the history of bad cinema. Here’s a sample of my personal favorites:
If Looks Could Kill (1991) In this action-packed James Bond send-up, Richard Grieco plays a high school student mistaken for a secret agent while traveling with his French class in Europe. The scene-stealing villains are Linda Hunt and Roger Rees, and pretty Gabrielle Anwar plays the avenging daughter of a murdered secret agent, played by Roger Daltry. The only scene anyone remembers is the extended sequence in which Grieco battles a female spy in a fancy hotel suite wearing nothing but well-stuffed underwear.
Born To Run (1993) Decked out in a red Rebel Without A Cause jacket with the collar up (a la Dorothy Malone) and driving a souped-up Mustang, Grieco plays Nicky, the reigning king of street racing: “When I get my hands on the wheel, I don’t even have to think. Right from the start I know I’m going to win.” Nicky falls for a gangster’s girl (Shelli Lether), helps his loser brother out of a jam by stealing a car and accidentally gets ahold of incriminating mob evidence. In an ending that rivals On The Waterfront, Grieco, beat up and bleeding (but never losing his cool) wins a drag race and the respect of his peers- and gets the girl.
Heaven Or Vegas (1997) Former Baywatch beauty Yasmine Bleeth plays a coke-snorting, wig-wearing Las Vegas call girl who dreams of knights in shining armor while screwing strangers in parked cars. She meets Grieco, a jaded male gigolo named Navy, and together they take off for Montana. She reads children’s books to him during the ride, and he throws her drugs out the window. They get side-tracked when they stop over at her Mormon dad’s home in Utah, and Grieco, with dangerously high hair, has to rescue Bleth from a band of scary Manson-like hippies. Amazing!
The Demolitionist (1995) A campy futuristic sci-fi thriller with a scruffy, bearded, leather-clad Grieco as Mad Dog Burn, who shoots his way out of the electric chair to terrorize Metro City with his biker gang. Nicole Eggert plays an undercover cop who is killed by Grieco, only to be biologically engineered back to life and transformed into an unstoppable fighting machine- a robochick nicknamed “the Demolitionist.” With Jack Nance (Eraserhead) as a prison priest, Susan Tyrrell (Fat City) as the mayor and gore makeup man Tom Savini as Grieco’s henchman.
Suspicious Agenda (1995) Grieco plays a troubled, pill-popping cop haunted by the death of his former partner. He’s assigned to a special unit and paired with a detective he distrusts (Nick Mancuso) to hunt down a vicious vigilante called “the Lead Killer.” Sweaty, unshaven, unkempt hair- it’s Grieco at his most howlingly “intense.”
Against The Law (1997) Richard Grieco (with Eraserhead high hair) plays a modern day gunslinger, heading to Hollywood in a red convertible Cadillac with a longhorn strapped to the front grill. Along the way, he challenges lawmen with, “Are you fast enough?” and then shoots them down, stealing their shields and weapons. Nancy Allen plays a newswoman he contacts in order to set up a big showdown with a bad ass cop in L.A. (Nick Mancuso). “Movies aren’t going to make the story of my life unless I can prove I’m the best,” he reasons with her. It ends up a ludicrous High Noon moment on the beach between the two men that has to be seen to be believed.
Final Payback (2001) A puffy Richard Grieco plays Joey Randall, an ex-cop sleeping with the Police Chief’s (John Saxon) wife, who wakes up one groggy morning at her place to find her murdered in the shower. As a suspect, he’s hunted by cops- especially a corrupt Captain (Martin Kove) and other lowlifes who believe Joey has in his possession some incriminating evidence. Laura Harring (Mulholland Drive) plays Randall’s ex-girlfriend who hides him out. Grieco rides around town searching for the real killer on a motorcycle, with a voiceover regurgitating everything you’ve just seen. There’s a great sequence in a sleazy flophouse, filled with drunks and druggies and lots of people puking, where he has a fight to the death with a junkie hit woman.
Sexual Predator (2001) This non-erotic thriller directed by Robert Angelo and Rob Spera is about a female parole officer Beth (Angie Everhart), whose best friend Lisa was “accidentally” strangled during a sex game with a wealthy, decadent, famous photographer J. C. Gale (Richard Grieco). Grieco is in his element here- with long hair, silk shirts open to the navel and a deep smoky voice that he barely raises over a whisper. Gale is given a five-year suspended sentence for “depraved indifference” and Beth becomes his case worker warning him, “You killed my best friend and the second that you screw up I’ll put you in prison.” Instead she slowly becomes sexually entangled with him. He shows her his antique straight razors, takes her to a sex club, and introduces her to bondage in the bedroom and before long she goes all 50 Shades Of Stupid.
Die! Die! Die! (2001) (aka Sweet Revenge). Unfortunately, there’s not a “My Darling” in the title of this tale of betrayal and revenge. Grieco is decked out in flashy suits, sunglasses and long hair playing a cheap hood who double-crosses his girlfriend Macy (Brigitte Bako), and robs money from his own crew. He then bashes Macy over the head, leaves her in a burning car to die. But she doesn’t, and after a year in jail comes back to get even and make Frank die, die die! “The only thing that you’re handling is your dick,” his crime partner Dan (Rob Roy) admonishes Frank when things start going south.
Almighty Thor (2011) Trust me, Chris Hemsworth is nowhere to be found in a movie that looks like it filmed at a low rent Renaissance Fair. Thor is played by Cody Deal, a slightly muscle-bound surfer type with an overbite, whose acting method is to shout every line. “This portends to be an evil day,” Thor’s kingly father Odin says. Sure enough, here comes evil Loki (Richard Grieco) with moussed hair, pale powdered face and decked out in a spikey leather outfit more suited for the cover of a heavy metal album. Loki kills Thor’s father and brother searching for the “hammer of invincibility” which Odin wisely hurls into a space worm-hole. Eventually Thor and Loki have a showdown on the streets of modern-day L.A., with some bad CGI dragons thrown in and startled extras standing around. It’s hammer time!
Tomcat: Dangerous Desires (1993) The ultimate Richard Grieco film. Grieco plays a man suffering a rare degenerative condition who agrees to be a guinea pig in a scientific experiment led by sexy doctor Jackie Eddington (Maryam D’Abo). Injected with feline RNA, he is restored to health, but the treatment has sinister side effects. He is transformed into a catlike creature with wild sexual needs who has to kill to stay alive. A buff, long-haired Grieco is at his cocky best, unafraid even to don leotards to do an interpretive Swan Lake dance for a music video. He bares his butt and kisses a man on the lips after screwing his girlfriend. And in one glorious moment, after he has sex with a girl he meets at a sex club and she compliments him on his sexual prowess by saying, “You’re good. Very good,” he replies, “No, I’m not. I’m bad. I’m very, very bad.”
And I thank God for that.