Miami’s Babylon Club is a favorite hangout of criminal-element types in Brian De Palma’s grotesque and glorious gangster film, Scarface (1983). The Babylon is where Tony Montana (Al Pacino) first puts the moves on Elvira Hancock (Michelle Pfeiffer). Tony visits the club as a guest of drug lord Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia). Elvira might be with Frank, but she’s clearly disinterested in him (and seemingly everything else too, as evidenced by her eye rolls at Frank’s bluster and her deadpan delivery of one of the film’s most quoted lines.
As always, Tony brazenly ignores etiquette, this time by hitting on Elvira the second they hit the dance floor. What follows is a memorable verbal sparring match between the glamorous, icy blonde Elvira and the vulgar, overconfident Tony.
Forty years on, it’s still thrilling to watch Pfeiffer go toe-to-toe with Pacino. Pacino is all smiling bravado, toying with his object of desire. Pfeiffer remains Cooley detached and unimpressed, until she’s finally had enough. Her scathing rebuke to Tony’s advances, “Don’t call me baby. I’m not your baby,” is one of the most iconic lines of Michelle’s career.
Elvira’s eyes blaze with intensity, while Tony remains undeterred. He’s found the woman he wants by his side for his rise to power. Pfeiffer was the upstart at the time, while Pacino was already the living legend, but she more than holds her ground. My two favorite actors giving powerhouse performances makes this one of the most memorable scenes of the 1980s for me.
Tony’s overconfidence comes back to haunt him, when a disgusted Elvira finally walks out on him—another tour-de-force moment for Pfeiffer that should’ve cemented an Oscar nomination for her— and also, of course, as the empire he built crumbles around him and he goes out in a hail of bullets. But when Tony first dances and flirts (harasses?) with Elvira at the Babylon, his decline and fall seem like impossibilities to him. We know better, of course.
Earlier in this scene, the song “Rush Rush” by Deborah Harry of Blondie fame plays in the Babylon, while Frank shows Tony the roles. Harry’s lush, sensual vocals are deployed in service of a catchy ode to Tony’s number one product — llello, or, cocaine. “Rush, rush, gimme llello,” Harry sings over and over. Written by Harry and composed by Giorgio Moroder for the Scarface soundtrack, “Rush Rush” is an earworm, for sure, plus it predicts Tony’s fate when Harry sings,”Watching, waiting, winking over his shoulder/He’s running out of time.” It’s always made me chuckle that Debbie and Michelle are connected by this film (as well as each playing Velma Von Tussell in separate cinematic versions of Hairspray), because they share such a strong physical resemblance. That’s especially true during this early eighties time period. It’s just one more reason to love De Palma’s epic, grand guignol morality tale.
The Starfire Lounge 
Debbie AND Michelle? You’ve outdone yourself this time.
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“Hancock, is that some kinda bird?”
– Montana while dancing with Elvie
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