When The Subtext Is Deemed More Important Than The Text
It's a drive-in exploitation movie which tries to say something about toleration, as Police Lieutenant Gerald Mohr sends in a man undercover to try bust up a middle-class marijuana ring, and pick up some evidence on who killed Don Eltner. They've got Mexican Richard Laurier in jail, but he didn't do it. Meanwhile, blackfaced Mark Damon tries to get close to Eitner's sister, Rita Moreno.
It's the Los Angeles, suburban response to the urban THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE, from the other side. It's a spiffy grindhouse movie, with lots of young lovelies -- it's Dyan Cannon's second film role, but while director Richard Bare and DP Monroe Askins aren't afraid to show you the real slums, there's a certain air of trying to overstate the case visually, particularly with the two-shot portraits, with one person standing downscreen to the left, and the other upscreen and to the right that seems trite after a while. That sense of making the point first and the story later gives the movie a lecturing tone that prevents it from being great.
It's the Los Angeles, suburban response to the urban THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE, from the other side. It's a spiffy grindhouse movie, with lots of young lovelies -- it's Dyan Cannon's second film role, but while director Richard Bare and DP Monroe Askins aren't afraid to show you the real slums, there's a certain air of trying to overstate the case visually, particularly with the two-shot portraits, with one person standing downscreen to the left, and the other upscreen and to the right that seems trite after a while. That sense of making the point first and the story later gives the movie a lecturing tone that prevents it from being great.
- boblipton
- 4 jun 2019