228. The Guy From Harlem

228. The Guy From Harlem (1977)
Director: Rene Martinez Jr.
Writer: Gardenia Martinez
From: Cult Cinema; Drive-In
Watch: archive.org, Rifftrax

Al Connors, Miami private eye, is hired to thwart two kidnappings by local crime lord Big Daddy.

Open on a shack, a black woman asleep on a couch while a white man sits in a chair. While it could be the start of a Beckett play, it’s something far more depressing. The man walks over to the couch and starts feeling up the woman. She wakes up, objects, and then he tells her she’s going to have a friend to spend time with her soon.

Cut to the opening credits! Which should really be the end credits because they cover every position in the crew. Also, as you can see from the title card still at the top, you can’t actually read them because they’re not on top of a black background.

Behold Al, the titular Guy From Harlem, driving into work. Since I mentioned that the shot is of him driving, you can probably guess that a good chunk of this movie is spent watching people go from point to point. The innovation The Guy From Harlem adds is, instead of just watching people driving and parking, we get to see them move from one part of the room to the other, thoroughly. Nary a step is overlooked. And the cameraman is always very far away so you can watch each actor move from one part of the room… all the way over… to… the other part… where the scene… might… be about… to continue… maybe.

Anyway, nothing much happens in the movie so I’ll speed through things. The CIA contacts Al to guard the wife of an African President. They don’t say which country, just that “she’s the wife of an African head of state.” She reveals that it’s a president although she also never says which country. The CIA is hiring Al because they’re afraid there’s a leak in their organization. Al takes her to a hotel, starts hitting on her, thwarts a kidnapping attempt by Big Daddy, and then takes her to his white girlfriend’s place. He asks the girlfriend to stay at a hotel and then hooks up with the president’s wife.

Next day (maybe?), he’s back in the office, job well done. Harry De Bauld, a former gambling magnate that’s moved into the drug trade, wants Al to save his daughter Wanda who’s been kidnapped by Big Daddy. Turns out she’s the woman we saw at the beginning. Harry wants Al to deliver $500,000 worth of cocaine and a $250,000 ransom to Big Daddy to get Wanda back. He’s hiring Al because he’s afraid of betrayal within his organization. Al manages to rescue Wanda without doing the handoff, kills all the henchmen, and then takes her to his white girlfriend’s place. He asks the girlfriend to stay at a hotel and then hooks up with Wanda.

Next day, he hands Wanda over to her dad, tells him he’s disposed of the cocaine to convince him to get out of the drug business. Then Big Daddy calls Al, they agree to meet, and Al and Big Daddy have a fight. Al kills Big Daddy and walks off with Wanda, laughing. THE END

The movie sucks, y’all. It has the aesthetics of a porno but, thankfully, never goes all the way down that road. Not to say this isn’t an exploitation flick and that it doesn’t have gratuitous nudity (hope you enjoy seeing a woman take her top off… from across the room… in a mirror), but it’s pretty fleeting. The Rifftrax version I watched actually cut all of it out and the only reason I knew it’d been cut was that I’d scanned through my copy of the movie to see if there were any Mill Creek bugs in it.

Nothing about the movie is interesting. The few fight scenes it has are plodding and poorly choreographed, there really aren’t any characters, and the whole “facing off against Big Daddy” feels contrived just to have a final showdown with a villain. Big Daddy isn’t even present or a character much in the movie. On top of that, with Wanda being tied up in a shack for a good portion of the movie, things get kind of rapey. She’s never assaulted, but it’s not for lack of trying on the part of the goons. Since the movie has that porno aesthetic, it always felt like the only thing keeping the movie from going down that road was that it would take too much effort.

Obviously, not a recommend, not even the Rifftrax version. They can’t work against how little is going on in this film and even their jokes start to fall into that leery space that the movie seems to invite. They constantly refer to the white girlfriend as “Jessica Simpson with smaller boobs” which just isn’t the Rifftrax tone.

While I suggest giving this one a pass, it is in the public domain. I’ve uploaded an MPEG2 copy to archive.org here, but I’d say the only use you could get from it would be to do a complete redubbing for comic effect. It’s pretty bad.