From my main man, the late Al Adamson, we
have today's film 'Black Heat'. Or The Murder
Gang'. Or Girl's Hotel. Or Vice Syndicate. I
think anybody familiar with the works of Uncle Al knows that
he wasn't really much of a filmmaker, but by all accounts he
was a really good dude and along with his producing partner
Sam Sherman, they were some shrewd marketers, thus the
different titles to siphon off of different markets and
release this movie under different names spanning like three
decades. Still, the fact remains, Al really wasn't much
of a filmmaker, but of the Adamson's I've seen to this point,
'Black Heat', which is the Blaxploitation version of this that
we saw, is the best of the Adamson's I've seen to this date.
Kicks Carter (Timothy Brown) and his partner Tony (Geoffrey
Land) are a couple of hard core L.A. police detectives who are
tough on the criminals and even tougher on the ladies they
love. These are a couple of pretty big dudes too,
Timothy Brown being a former pro football player and Geoffrey
Land could've easily substituted for Christopher Reeves as
Superman if Reeves didn't exist.
When we first peep in on Kicks and Tony, they are chasing some
thug on a rooftop, when Kicks personal Lois Lane, erstwhile
reporter Stephanie (Tanya Boyd) and her 82 pound reel camera
show up on the scene. It had to be real difficult to
shoot run and gun news stories while dragging that thing
around town. Eventually our heroes put this thug down,
and now they get to relax by the pool at some odd hotel for
girls. Now there are like three major plot elements in
this thing, because this film ended up being three different
movies, so the hotel prostitution front is never really
developed all that much in this version. We just got to
see some fine bikini clad mid 70's flesh. Particularly
the smoking hot Tanya Boyd who is about as fit as a young
woman could get, even though her character of Stephanie is
mercilessly teasing Kicks the SuperStud.
So when does the plot kick in? It's
kind of always there in the background. There's some
mean dude doing a guns for drugs trade. This same mean
dude is working with Ziggy the scurrilous club owner (Russ
Tamblyn) and his moll Fay (Darlene Anders) to execute some
kind of securities heist. To pull off this heist, they
need the assistance of Terry the gambling addict (Jana
Ballan), who works at this securities house and also lives at
the Hotel for Girls. You got all that?
Kicks and Tony want to bring Ziggy down, but Ziggy doesn't
want to be brought down so he kills Tony. Kind of.
Not really. Truth of the matter is he did shoot at Tony
while they were driving, but Tony's lousy driving caused him
to run off the road, so he kind of killed himself if you ask
me. While Tony's death is pretty tragic and all, the way
the characters in this movie handled this death was kind of
funny. Kicks has just lost his best friend, his number
one, his Ace Boom Coom, and he delivers this news to Tony's
girl Terry with all the remorse of someone hearing the corner
store has just run out of Schlitz. Terry, for her part,
seemed even less fazed and just started playing solitaire with
handy deck of cards upon hearing about the death of her one
true love. And Dead Tony really didn't play much of a
factor from that point on. We missed you Tony, don't
worry.
Eventually, all of these disparate elements and plot points
will come together with Kicks having to solve the drugs for
gun issue, the Ziggy problem and the securities problem.
After he finally teaches that teasing Stephanie a lesson in
one of the more explicit and lengthy sex scenes we've ever
seen in a non-porno movie.
The downside of making two movies at the same time is that it
appears, at times, to present a serious lack continuity.
Why are we spending so much time with Terry and her gambling
problem? One which leads to one of the more
uncomfortable gang rape scenes since we saw the original 'I
Spit on Your Grave'. The difference being that gambling
addict Terry actually offered up this option since she was low
on cash, then got upset when these sweaty dudes cashed
in. Terry followed this up by getting raped by a
lesbian. It was a tough day for Terry. As a result
of these dual stories, our star Kicks is off the screen doing
nothing for long stretches of this movie. Or if you were
watching 'Girl's Hotel' our star Terry would also be off
screen for long stretches of this movie. The good thing
about watching two movies rolled into one is that it split off
the nonsense and general incompetence that is an Al Adamson
movie and actually kind of made this one fun to sit
through. Of course I have fun sitting through even the
worst Al Adamson film in some aspects, but this one could
conceivably even be entertaining for people who like normal,
well made movies. Unlikely, but conceivable.
The various storylines don't make an awful lot of sense, but
they do make enough sense to at least carry a narrative.
The majority of the acting from almost everybody in this movie
is generally atrocious, excepting Mr. Tamblyn and Miss Boyd,
but the terrible acting still kind of fit into the schlocky
style in which the movie was presented. And if you like
action, particularly 1970's style, cheesy, poorly shot action…
'Black Heat' has you covered.
I'm sure there has to be a legitimately good Al Adamson film
out there somewhere, and if there is, we will find it, but
until we do have glorious nonsense like 'Black Heat' to fill
the void.
