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Out of the old neighborhood heap and into the Harlem hospital to resume the tale, as nimble and direct as Bride of Frankenstein. (Wide-angle lenses in the surgery room provide the first hint that this is less sequel to Black Caesar than groundwork for It's Alive.) The frenetic recapitulation registers Fred Williamson's underworld kingpin with a bullet in his belly, patched-up he makes a business partner of his estranged father (Julius W. Harris), "if momma could just see us now!" Dirt on the nefarious D.A. (Gerald Gordon) acquits them as "victims of racial slurs and police conspiracy," the former mistress (Gloria Hendry) is discarded for the pious maiden (Margaret Avery). Larry Cohen's staccato technique is concurrent with Rosi's in Lucky Luciano, the rushed production leaves a string of startling hammer blows on the screen: The hit on a chauffeur turncoat drags in Japanese gangsters for a melee capped with a choice overhead view (cf. Boetticher's The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond), animated blood gushes for a frame or two as a sunbathing mobster is speared on his Confederate towel, a raid on a rival's bikini party zooms in on grinning mammies with revolvers. "Your ambition is gonna get you into a lot of trouble..." The paterfamilias' inner monster, shootout in Grant's Tomb, the punishment of soul food. A preposterously exciting airport chase puts Williamson through his athletic paces, the treacherous enforcer (Tony King) ends up on the baggage carousel in anticipation of The Killer Elite. From the pointedly reversed hanging to a familial reunion in the shadows, the "happy ending" receives all of Cohen's dissonant ambivalence. With D'Urville Martin, Bobby Ramsen, James Dixon, and Esther Sutherland.
--- Fernando F. Croce |