After his comic horrors, Morrissey made three films about the realistic horror of the New York drug scene, but his theme remained the same: the waste of lives in self-indulgence. Echoing the hopeless world of Trash, the German drug dealer in Mixed Blood tells his mistress, “First we go down to the garbage.” Forty-Deuce and Mixed Blood provide bleak insights into the despair and alienation of the drug culture. Spike of Bensonhurst balances this chaos with the blessed order – of the Mafia! The films are also unified by their fascination with language, especially the vituperation of the slum. What most unites the three films, however, is the theme of family. In all three the characters crave a family but are seduced by false “family” figures. For Morrissey the family represents traditional values, moral discipline, and guidance, all of which have been dissipated in destructive freedoms.

Forty-Deuce (1982)

Morrissey's first street-teen film is an inventive adaptation of Alan Bowne's chamber play about adolescents selling dope and sex in (as the title suggests) the 42nd Street hub of New York City. Morrissey preserved the play's unsentimental exposure of the exploitation of innocence and the rolling beauty of its profane dialogue. Though based on someone else's material, Forty-Deuce is pure Morrissey as it careens between shock and hilarity, vulgarity and tenderness, and presents his most characteristic theme. Its characters' liberty enslaves them both to their own arbitrary impulses and to exploitation by others. To Morrissey, it exposes “the great liberal lie of the last thirty to forty years: Do whatever you want.”