"A Noir for the raincoat grindhouse crowd" (Noirsville)
Directed and lensed by John G. Avildsen. Avildsen directed (Save The Tiger (1973), Rocky (1976), The Karate Kid (1984).
Written by David Odell based on the novel Live a Little Die a Little by Michael Brett. With a additional dialogue by Allen Garfield and John G. Avildsen. Cinematography by John G. Avildsen and Music by Harper MacKay.
The film Stars Allen Garfield (Nashville, The Conversation) as Jake Masters, Madeleine Le Roux as Cora Merrill, Devin Goldenberg as Keith, David Kirk as Jason Dominic, Pamela Gruen as Renee, Sean Walsh as Gene Sprigg, Debbi Morgan (Taxi Driver, Eve's Bayou, The Hurricane) as Olga Winter, Maureen Byrnes as Lena Right, Nancy Salmon as Connie Landfield, Bruce Pecheur as Larry Caulk, Paul Sorvino (The Panic in Needle Park, Cruising, The Brinks Job, I. the Jury, Goodfellas) as Coughing Cop, Ray Barron as Bald Cop, Mel Stewart (Odds Against Tomorrow, Nothing But a Man, Trick Baby) as Fowler, Marcia Jean Kurtz as accosted Russian woman at LaGuardia, and Jackson Beck as Narrator.
"FILM NOIR HAD AN INEVITABLE TRAJECTORY…
THE ECCENTRIC & OFTEN GUTSY STYLE OF FILM NOIR HAD NO WHERE ELSE TO GO… BUT TO REACH FOR EVEN MORE OFF-BEAT, DEVIANT– ENDLESSLY RISKY & TABOO ORIENTED SET OF NARRATIVES FOUND IN THE SUBVERSIVE AND EXPLOITATIVE CULT FILMS OF THE MID TO LATE 50s through the 60s and into the early 70s!" The Last Drive In (thelastdrivein.com)
Story
So this film knew it's target audience, the raincoat crowd, habitues of the 42nd Street grindhouse theaters. It even played up to their tumescent fantasies having our beefy P.I. Jake Masters (Alan Garfield) plowing various beauties that claim afterwards that he's a great lay.
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| Allen Garfield as P.I. Jake Masters with Pamela Gruen as Renee |
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| Devin Goldenberg as Keith |
We get a coitus interruptus when Jake receives an urgent call from nephew Keith manning his office aka a phone booth in the lobby of the flop apartment house where he lives.
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Jason Dominic a porn film producer / star resembling Al Goldstein is in hiding on a derelict cruise ship because the police want him as a suspect in the killing of a cocktail waitress named Lucille Reynolds. They suspect him because she filmed an orgy with Jason and three prostitutes and they think she was going to blackmail him for $50,000.
Jason wants to hire Jake to find the real killer who is framing him, it can only be one of the others involved with the film, but Jason also needs Jake to meet a flight at LaGuardia and pick up Cora Merrill a female bodyguard he has hired to protect himself from the killer.
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| Marcia Jean Kurtz |
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| Paul Sorvino |
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Eventually Jake, Cora, and Keith track down each of the participants in the orgy. Of course this being a Sexploitation Noir each encounter is used to exploit the new ratings system.
Noirsville
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| Madeleine Le Roux as Cora Merrill |
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| David Kirk as Jason Dominic |
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| Mel Stewart as Lt. Fowler |
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| Debbi Morgan as Olga Winter |
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| What a way to go... |
Back in the 1960s and 70s a grindhouse film only had to play two weeks to make all its money back. John G. Avildsen gave us one with interesting locations, halfway decent acting, and decent noir-ish cinematography giving us it all an entertaining quasi- black comedy film that will definitely be not for all tastes. It's not a porn film just R rated with a lot of T&A&B, how NOIR of them? A hoot, 6/10.
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