Director Renny Harlin’s second summer 1990 releaseafter Die Hard 2features notorious hate comedian Andrew Dice Clay as a detective looking into the death of a heavy-metal singer (Motley Crue’s Vince Neil). Stylish trash given Harlin’s usual efficient (if soulless) polish, this makes Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer seem like a feminist; as Gary Giddins has suggested, it’s Jerry Lewis’s Buddy Love from The Nutty Professor without a shred of irony or shading, aimed pretty squarely at sexually insecure male adolescents and no one else. It’s especially doomed by a strained script (by Daniel Waters, James Cappe, and David Arnott) that recalls certain bottom-of-the-barrel Bob Hope vehicles of the 50s in its attempts to be brittle and self-mocking in its humor. (As far as I can tell, there isn’t one laugh in sight.) With Wayne Newton, Priscilla Presley, Morris Day, and Robert Englund, and a music score by Yello. (JR)