Cry Uncle

Cry Uncle is a fine piece of filmmaking. For those of you familiar with Troma video and all the junk it puts out, this is not a normal Troma film! In fact, this is the direct antithesis of a Troma film! Allen Garfield is a detective who is hired by a man being blackmailed by the women he acted with in a porno video. The movie includes acid freak outs, b/w porno video scenes, and a great necrophilia scene. Garfield was also in a bunch of other softcore films like Orgy Girls and Roommates. Nevertheless, check this film out.

As I understand it, the director, now making much more mainstream films and famous for such product as, Rocky and Karate Kid, still has a soft spot for this early piece, which he co-wrote. Not only did Mr Avildsen not 'die' in the aftermath of this extremely sleazy outing, Allen Garfield, as the overweight and obscene lead, also continued in his successful career. Not only could a film as full of non PC stuff, including hard core sequences not be made for theatres today it is likely that anyone even considering the project might face the wrath of their peers. It is indeed with amazement we look back at some of the films of the early 70s and face the fact that weird, personal, extreme and in-your-face that they were, they could find their place in the market and remain available for us to watch them now mouths agape. This is great fun loving film making. There is sex, humour and a little violence, but what really keeps this super thing afloat is the honesty of the writing and the believable, yet unbelievable way Garfield flops through the movie treading a fine line between scumbag and wise guy. It is a unique must see film. I must also mention, Madeleine Le Roux as the extraordinary leading lady. She is utterly captivating and yet as others have noted is surprisingly keen to get naked considering her imperfect body and looks twice her apparent 25 years. Something good about seeing less than perfect nakedness done with such vigour. Congratulations to all those who braved so that we might marvel and consider why now we seem to have become so precious.

Jake Masters (Allen Garfield) is a private eye detective hired by a wealthy man who is the prime suspect in the murder of a young starlet... It is Jake's job to find the real killer... He not only uncovers the case, but also a lot of hookers and call girls...

The misadventures are highly comic and include sexual intercourse, unintentional necrophilia, and sinister lesbians... The sexual overtones are stimulating and funny... They are used more to comment on the hypocrisy of society than to derive unjust profit...

There is a lot of soul in this film, especially in the performance of Garfield, who plays a very adorable investigator... Madeleine Le Roux is volcanic as the fiery blond who is as quick with a pistol as she is with her verbal assaults...

Fans of Rocky and The Karate Kid probably don't know this, but the Oscar-winning director responsible for both mainstream cocklewarmers was making some very weird sh*t in the early 70s. Before coming down with a terminal case of Good Taste, Avildsen had cranked out the superior sex comedy Guess What We Learned In School Today? (1969) and the classic Summer of Hate film Joe (1970), starring Peter Boyle as a blue collar hippie-killer, and Cry Uncle, a totally whacked-out and very black private-eye spoof marketed as a sex film since you couldn't do much else with its then porno-only X rating. Tubby Jewish comedian Allen Garfield (you'll recognize the face, guaranteed)plays the "Super Dick' hired by a millionaire suspect in a murder case. The investigation soon becomes a trail of dead bodies, including one Garfield has sex with, thinking she's a comatose junkie! Troma president Lloyd Kaufman was production assistant, as with all early Avildsen films from Joe onwards, and plays the bearded hippie on LSD in a motel room. A bad taste masterpiece, Troma later distributed the film, displaying a rare flash of good taste on their part!

Normally I wouldn't rate this kind of movie very high. However, this movie is much better better written, produced, directed and acted than other "Troma" productions. Now don't get me wrong. There is A LOT of graphic sex and nudity here. Full frontal female and male. I think that maybe all of the women but one or two had fully nude sex scenes. Some of them had several. But, this movie was very light hearted with a lot of humor. But much of that was raunchy old school 1970's humor. So if you're an easily offended person or a feminist, you might want to watch something else.