Black Heat

Rating

Director

Al Adamson

Screenplay

John R. D’Amato, Sheldon Lee, Budd Donnelly

Length

1h 34m

Starring

Timothy Brown, Russ Tamblyn, Jana Bellan, Geoffrey Land, Reegina Carrol, Al Richardson, Tanya Boyd, Darlene Anders, Jerry Mills, Neal Furst

MPAA Rating

R

Review

PREFACE:
In the early 2000s, I was writing reviews for an outfit called Apollo Guide Reviews. That website has since been closed down.

Attempting to reconstruct those reviews has been an exercise in frustration. Having sent them to Apollo Guide via email on a server I no longer have access to (and which probably doesn’t have records going back that far), my only option was to dig through The Wayback Machine to see if I could find them there. Unfortunately, while I found a number of reviews, a handful of them have disappeared into the ether. At this point, almost two decades later, it is rather unlikely that I will find them again.

Luckily, I was able to locate my original review of this particular film. Please note that I was not doing my own editing at the time, Apollo Guide was. As such, there may be more than your standard number of grammatical and spelling errors in this review. In an attempt to preserve what my style had been like back then, I am not re-editing these reviews, which are presented as-is.

REVIEW:
It was an era during which black actors were being exploited to get African Americans into theatres. Black Heat is a prime example of the Blaxploitation era.

Kicks Carter (Timothy Brown) is a Las Vegas cop who, with his partner, is trying to take down a group of individuals who are using tenants at an all women’s hotel to pull of illegal operations. Kicks is dating one of these residents, Stephanie (Tanya Boyd), and worries for her safety, as she also works as a reporter and has a penchant for showing up at gun fights and taking pictures at the most inopportune times. Along for the ride are Ziggy (Russ Tamblyn), an unscrupulous thug who rejoices in killing Kicks’ partner, Terry (Jana Bellan), another occupant of the hotel, whose life turns into a gamblers’ nightmare when Kicks’ partner, who happens to be her boyfriend, is killed, and a bevy of other no-name stars with important roles.

Black Heat’s plot is pretty simple. There are no complications, no surprises and certainly no fun. The only hard thinking that’s called for here is our efforts to understand the purpose of such a film, which is tough, even when one understands its roots. The characters are used as sex symbols and are put into outrageous positions. One scene involves Terry running out of money at a private poker table that appears to be populated by the cast of Deliverance. She’s sitting on an ace-high full house – a terrific hand – but when she offers herself in place of money as the rest of her bet, she soon discovers that one of the others at the table has four-of-a-kind. Terry darts for the door, but her table-mates stop her before she can escape and do unpleasant things to her. This is a prime example of an unnecessary voyeuristic scene where a woman’s pride is bruised beyond repair. Later, when another woman tries to seduce her, Terry has no choice but to go along, since she’s gotten herself into this position.

The performances here are certainly no prize, each yielding an artificially emotional performance while preventing the audience from caring whether they live, die or move away. With new and uncertified talent, this is the product you get. Director Al Adamson should know better than anyone what this type of cast can do. His productions of such B-movie titles as Psycho a Go-Go, Horror of the Blood Monsters and I Spit on Your Corpse! prove that he wasn’t interested in making critical successes, but instead in tantalizing audiences with unusual titles, hoping they would come out to see the products of such odd labels. These types of titles were sure to entice younger viewers to theatres, but wouldn’t make them stay. In the end, the films sat on dusty shelves, their owners hoping to never let them see the light of day again.

With the popularity of cult films, the Blaxploitation era has found a niche again. Despite Black Heat’s obvious flaws, there are bound to be fans out there who want nothing more than to see this movie, and those of its ilk, succeed. I am not one of them. This sad excuse for a motion picture should be as quickly forgotten as John Waters’ Mondo Trasho.

Review Written

June 10, 2003