Movie Details
| Title: | Black Heat | |
| Director: | Al Adamson | |
| Year: | 1976 | |
| Genre: | Soul Cinema | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 04.12.06 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (1)
- Carnival Magic
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 04.12.06 | Weird Wednesday | Thank goodness for Lars' introductions. If i sat down and watched this movie cold I'd have absolutely no idea what was going on. Since Lars laid a little bit of the circumstance behind this movie's existence out though, it made for a much less confusing, albeit no more entertaining, time. Reading up a bit on Vanishing Point after seeing it last night, the film came about as an excuse to market the new Dodge Challenger (at least according to IMDb trivia, but who knows how legit that stuff is)... so in essence it was like the great-grandfather of those BMW short films that came out on the Internet a few years ago. Similarly, knowing that this film had three completely different titles (Black Heat, Girl's Hotel, The Murder Gang) aimed at three completely different demographics (blaxploitation, sexploitation, Euro-action...ploitation), it becomes clear why there's a a group of constantly near-nude women all hanging out at one particular hotel that's a front for... some nefarious plot (I never quite understood quite how they all fit together, but to be honest I wasn't trying too hard), as well as a couple car chases thrown in for good measure and lots and lots of gunshots. So it's really only one third blaxploitation (filling out nicely with an Independent Black Woman reporter lugging around a news camera on her shoulder complete with a sternum-support rod and a honky assistant sound man, A salt & pepper cop duo and an elongated love scene with extended close-ups of Timothy Brown's nylon-undie'd ass), one third sexploitation (featuring a gambling-addicted girl putting herself in the pot during a poker game to be beat by 4 sevens, followed immediately by the same girl getting raped again, this time by the evil headmistress of the hotel who's bought up all her debt in order to... well, for some reason or other. it's like 5 minutes of severe female-in-trouble action stuck in the middle of this movie), and one third action (I don't feel like filling out another elongated parentheses... this sentence has gone on long enough). So, fitting of that idea, the movie also ends three times... the first time was the best. Even the most random Weird Wednesday experience usually has at least one little tidbit that I can walk away with and note on here for possible future use. I'd say this movie has two: a really great funky score and Russ Tamblyn. Tamblyn plays Ziggy... I guess he works at either a club or the Girl's Hotel... or somewhere else. ANyway, he harasses random women, kills for pleasure and takes particular pleasure in intimidating the afore-mentioned gambling addict/gang rape-ee by utterly destroying some poor schmuck's car. Then socking him in the balls with a metal hammer. Then running over his legs. Twice. When Tamblyn finally dies via impalement on some random spike, he manages to flip the bird to the cop with his last bit of life force. Sweaty and mustachiod right to the end. It was really awesome to watch this movie and think of The Haunting and West Side Story and Twin Peaks... ahh how the 70s had open arms for oceans of washed-up actors. so you know... even though they can't all be gold, WW never feels like time misspent. P.S. I forgot to mention one other thing about this movie. There's so much footage of people shooting at each other on rooftops in here... it's exactly like the stuff in Boogie Nights with and Brock Landers and Chest Rockwell in Angels Live in My Town. Like, EXACTLY. |
