Mongo's Back in Town

Because despite Telly Savalas, Martin Sheen, and Sally Fields being in this, Joe Don Baker is clearly the star. Top Cast arranges him at 6th or 7th billing which is misleading. He is in 70 to 80% of the scenes and plays the title character, Mongo. People just curious to see early Sheen and Fields work might be led to think they do more given the billing and be disappointed. Kojak fans on the other hand might think Telly Savalas was basing that character around this one, Lietenant Tolstedt.

Anyway this is a very cheap looking made for TV movie based on an award winning novel written by a convicted murderer and armed robber, E Richard Johnson. He wrote this book from prison as well as most of his works. The story does have a strange feel to it. The weather is meant to be gray wet, cold with periods of snow turning to dark gray slush on the streets and sidewalk for most of the story. Unfortunately, they seemed to have shot this in sunny California and it is pouring rain under sunny skies right from the start. Not the greatest introduction to a movie no matter what anyone does in the scenes.

It is well acted as you would expect. The story takes some twists and turns but the worst violent scenes are not shown, just the reactions to them are. This is a made for TV movie afterall. A character gets acid thrown in his face, woman and children get murdered etc. It is a strange ending.

Its a fairly ugly story with only a few likable characters. They do manage to make Mongo sympathetic given his circumstances. Overall the movie is more a reflection of TV movies from the era. Fairly slow paced and OK for a couple hours diversion but I wouldnt be so sorry if I never saw it again.

Always happy to show appreciation for another neglected, funky down-at-heel TV movie, and director Marvin Chomsky certainly delivers the gritty gangster goodies with his bluntly effective crime drama about the desperate acts of low level hoods in the grim, twilight hours before their inevitably darker dawn. Mighty Joe Don Baker walks tall in this undeservedly obscure groovy 1970s Noirish crime thriller as big, hard luck thug Mongo who returns to his unlovely hometown after a lengthy 5 years absence in order to put right some grievous wrongs in his own inimitable, twin-fisted style, a firm crack in the jaw expediting his business far more eloquently than the fancy-schmancy talk he never had any truck with. After a suitably rain-lashed opening we are dropped into the seedy milieu of insalubrious dives and their equally ill natured inhabitants, with their bad deals, cheap suits, watered down whiskey, this deliciously downbeat film positively seethes with familial treachery and callous, underworld duplicity, this heady cinematic brew brought quickly to boiling point as the bodies start piling up like discarded cigarette butts at an overnight stakeout! 'Mongo's Back in Town' is a terse, sinewy tale of hard-nosed, double dealing hoods, strongly bolstered by an extraordinarily talented cast: Telly Savalas in on especially enigmatic form as battle-weary Lt. Peter Tolstad, and along with his youthful, mustard keen partner Gordon (Martin Sheen) these tough, straight-shooting city cops are going hard and heavy on Mongo's case, but some of the bum clues just simply don't add up!

Stone-cold ape Mongo Nash doesn't care too much for social niceties, his dames come cheap, buck an' a quarter, worth less than a greasy plate of ham & eggs at Kossoff's dreary diner, and when the big guy's naive main squeeze Vikki (Sally Field) inevitably gets burned by the encroaching heat and wants to hit the bricks Lickety-split, her mean, brick house beau don't want it playin' out like that, now way over her innocent, pretty little head, she is forced to remain at his side until the excitingly mounted finale. Much like a man-sized shot of mescal this sordid backstreets affair got a dangerous sting in its tail. Rarely screened and no less infrequently championed, 'Mongo's Back in Town' is a grimy, dark edged TV movie of some considerable distinction.