Fatal Beauty

Plot

LAPD detective Rita Rizzoli sets up an undercover cocaine buy from dealer Tito Delgadillo for a new strain called Fatal Beauty, but the operation falls apart when she leaves to rescue her informant Charlene from her pimp. Delgadillo takes her cash and heads to a Chinatown warehouse where the drug is made. Two low-level criminals, Leo Nova and Earl Skinner, raid the place, murder the entire crew, and unknowingly grab a defective batch. Rita later IDs Delgadillo’s body and finds another corpse in a van marked “Kroll Enterprises.”

She wants to investigate the company’s owner, Conrad Kroll, but her boss, Lt. Kellerman, shuts her down because of Kroll’s political ties in California and her failed bust. After Charlene mentions the warehouse owner drove a Rolls Royce, Rita sneaks into Kroll’s Beverly Hills mansion and accuses him of dealing drugs. Kellerman orders her out, but she hears a police call about a standoff at Charlene’s house. She arrives to see a man high on Fatal Beauty emerge, shoot at officers, and stay on his feet after being hit, thanks to the drug’s strength.

Inside, Rita finds Charlene dead from an overdose. Charlene’s young son says she bought the drugs from her new pimp, Jimmy Silver. The LAPD learns Fatal Beauty is 50% pure and cut with phencyclidine, driving users insane and killing them fast. Rita and her partner, Detective Jiminez, find and arrest Jimmy and his supplier, Rafael.

She then gets into a gunfight with Nova and Skinner, but Kroll’s bodyguard, Mike Marshak, saves her. After recovering from a bullet wound, Rita lets Marshak drive her home while Jiminez trades shots with Nova.

On the way, they discover that preteen kids in Rita’s neighborhood are dying from Fatal Beauty, including ten of her neighbor Zach Yeager’s friends, after his mother Cecille gave them the drug. Rita confesses to Marshak that she became addicted to drugs after having a child as a teenager, but got clean only after her infant son found her stash and died. Later, she realizes Marshak was reporting to Kroll the whole time.

Production

The role in this film was first attached to Cher, who was announced as the star in May 1986. John Milius began work on the script that July, with plans to direct, but Cher left the project to appear in Moonstruck. By November, Tom Holland had signed on as director, with Whoopi Goldberg taking the lead. MGM/UA had wanted Tina Turner for the part, but Holland insisted on Goldberg.

Billy Dee Williams was in the running for the role of Mike Marshak before Sam Elliott was cast. Production started on February 23, 1987, in Los Angeles. During the shoot, U.S. Secret Service agents mistook the filming of a scene for an actual robbery, prompting a real LAPD raid on the set. Goldberg and Elliott shot a sex scene that was removed after test audiences reacted poorly.

Both actors claimed the cut was due to discomfort with interracial sex, a charge the studio denied. The MPAA initially gave the film an X rating, later reduced to R on appeal. Brad Dourif’s performance as the villain led Holland to cast him as Chucky in Child’s Play.