Shitty Movie Sundays All-Star Wings Hauser has one of the best 1980s action flick character introductions in Deadly Force, from 1983. Viewers first see him on the gritty streets of New York City, playing a game best described as ‘rat roulette.’ Next, he’s drunkenly tickling piano keys in a bar, not without some competence. Then he’s a passenger in a speeding cab driven by none other than Estelle Getty. Finally, with complete disregard for his personal safety, he talks a distraught suicide bomber out of blowing up himself and everyone around him. And he does all of this before he hops on a plane to Los Angeles, called west by an old friend, Sam (Al Ruscio), whose granddaughter has fallen victim to a serial killer.
Houser plays Stoney Cooper, a former LAPD detective tossed off of the force some time back. He didn’t just leave his job behind when he fled to New York. He also left behind a hostile police force, a wife, Eddie (Joyce Ingalls), and an unhappy gangster in Ashley Maynard (Arlen Dean Snyder), who would like nothing more than to see Stoney’s head on a spike. Stoney didn’t want to return to Los Angeles, at least at that moment, but the local detectives weren’t making headway on the killings.
Stoney, with Sam in tow, works the town. He rousts old informants, visits dive bars and slum businesses. He pulls whatever favors are still owed him. Meanwhile, the killer, played by Hollywood stunt man Bud Ekins, continues to pile up bodies. The killings seem random, but within all the noise Stoney finds a tenuous connection to Soledad State Prison, and the case begins to come together.
Meanwhile Eddie, a TV news reporter, is working on a story involving a self-help guru named Joshua Adams (Paul Shaner). Adams is one of those slimy characters that an audience knows is trouble from their first frame on screen, but who charms and cajoles every character 
they meet. Just his presence in this movie telegraphs involvement with the killer. There is a conspiracy of some sort afoot, and Stoney has to figure it out before he, and his wife, are killed.
This movie is pretty straightforward neo-noir fare. The plot could have been used in crime flicks from the 1930s up until today. The formula was figured out long ago. This is a film of its time, though. As much as fans of noir can pick out this flick’s influences, fans of ’80s thriller and action flicks will also notice much shared DNA with more polished and refined contemporary films.
The title is very 1980s. Deadly Force. It’s short and to the point, and is the kind of film in which one would expect to see Chuck Norris or Steven Seagal. Other than the serial killer, though, there is not much deadly force to be had in this flick until the final act. Most of the trouble Stoney gets himself into is the fisted variety. When he’s not beating up on punks and thugs, he’s getting beaten. That subplot with gangster Ashley Maynard is responsible for most of the action fodder until denouement, but once it becomes time to resolve the main plot, the subplot is tossed away with a car chase. See, the killer is sneaky and unknown to Stoney, and that just isn’t good for an action flick, so Maynard and his henchmen had to carry the load until the main plot was ready for true shenanigans.
Since there is so much that is familiar within the plot, this film becomes a character study of Stoney, care of Wings Hauser. If one is fine with dysfunctional detective clichés and Hauser’s native snark, that’s just fine. But this film does live and die on Hauser’s personality, and he is not for everyone. He plays Stoney as an oaf, an orangutan, a more handsome Jeremy Clarkson, who takes in the world around him and crushes it into his own worldview, regardless of reality. And it works for Stoney because no matter the trouble he gets himself into, he always comes out ahead.
Fans of Wings Hauser, rejoice. This is a fine example of his work. Fans of shitty ’80s action flicks, rejoice, although with less fanfare. It’s all very rote, but still fun. Deadly Force slots into the Watchability Index at #164, taking over from Grizzly.