Director Ron Peck's long-awaited second feature to follow Nighthawks all too often runs like another kind of second-feature - dozens of characters, strobe lighting and a pop soundtrack, all in search of a plot. Something seems to be going on at the Empire State, a gleaming black nightclub with dolly hostesses upstairs and a gay bar downstairs, though we never really find out what. Most of the characters, in fact, are gay and Empire State, like Nighthawks before it, does them no favours. They're all unpleasant or unsympathetic, save perhaps the wimpish reporter on an unlikely magazine sent there to get the story which endangers his life. Still, the film has style and energy in its fruitless search for content, and charismatic performances from Ray McAnally as the State's shady proprietor, and Lee Drysdale as a crisp young rent boy on the make. You may want to close your eyes at the climactic bareknuckle fight.

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