Truck Turner & Cie.

Truck Turner is an ex-football star, built like a Mack truck. Fortunately his name IS Mac (though why they released it as BLACK BULLET in Australia is beyond me) which makes for a sensible nickname. There is practically nothing else remotely sensible thereon in, when Mac goes head-to-head with a bunch of no-good…well, macks (pimps).

It is a typically paradoxical blaxpolitation film. It serves as both a reminder why the genre were so enjoyable - brazen heroes and villains, loads of sexy chicks for each, a top soul soundtrack - and why it had to die eventually - the burden of uninspired cashing in, here there and everywhere.

BLACK BULLET is as b-grade as they come, and it's surprisingly nasty in places. With a similar cast and crew to the far-superior BLACK BELT JONES (a blaxploitation gem), you expect tongue in cheek, but by the time you've heard the world `bitch' a thousand times, it starts to lose its comic gleam.

But at the end of the day it's all in good fun. It's just a shame the modern gangstas didn't get the joke.

A fan of 70s Blaxploitation cinema, I've had "Truck Turner" of 1974 sitting on my DVD shelf for some time now, always eager to watch it, and the recent death of Isaac Hayes (R.I.P. big man) was reason enough to finally do so. And I was not disappointed. Isaac Hayes is probably most prominent in Blaxploitation cinema for composing and performing the theme song for the sub-genre's most famous film, Gordon Parks' "Shaft" of 1971, and he also starred as the super-tough and super-cool eponymous hero in a flick that ranges among the most entertaining of its kind - namely this, "Truck Turner". The bald and bearded Mac 'Truck' Turner is a former football player turned bounty hunter and Hayes is supremely bad-ass in the role. Inbetween crime-busting and drinking sessions with his colleague Jerry (Alan Weeks), Truck, who sleeps with his holster on and whose mere name makes the bad guys shake in fear, pays visits to his sexy girlfriend who tends to get jailed for her quick temper...

The film basically has everything good blaxploitation cinema needs: A super-tough bad-ass of a hero as you will only see them in 70s cinema, a cool sidekick, eccentric villains, violent shootouts, funky music, delightfully vulgar slang dialogue including many unforgettable lines and, last but definitely not least, dozens of sexy and dangerous women. None other than Star Trek's Nichelle Nichols plays the beautiful and lethal crime-madame and prostitution-mastermind Dorinda, and Yaphet Kotto (Alien) makes a perfect crime-boss in his role of Harvard Blue. Alan Weeks makes a good sidekick for Truck Turner and beautiful Annazette Chase fits greatly in the role of Truck's girlfriend. Isaac Hayes himself is great, simply the definition of Bad-Ass in his role. Every line he says is the epitome of coolness, and so is everything he does. The funky theme-song, which was, of course, composed and sung by Hayes himself, is great and contributes a lot to the unique blaxploitation feeling. The film furthermore profits from great camera work - Truck blows them baddies away from some very cool angles. All in all, "Truck Turner" should not be missed by a fan of 70s Exploitation cinema. Highly Recommended!

Skip tracer Isaac Hayes tracks down Paul Harris. In the ensuing chase, Harris is killed. His woman, Nichelle Nichols, who runs a stable of prostitutes, offers half her take to whoever kills Hayes.

It's a decent if unexceptional blaxploitation flick, with its strength being performers like Yaphet Kotto -- he was going through a divorce at the time and needed the cash -- and Scatman Crothers, as well as Hayes doing the film score. To someone who doesn't know, it may sound like typical chik-a-boom music that infested every cop show and movie in the era, but there's a flair and drive to it that lifts it out of the ordinary.

Truck Turner and his partner Jerry are bounty hunters for bail bonds men. Turner has a reputation for being an intimidating and confident force and can command top dollar for the jobs nobody else is willing to take. When the job of retrieving pimp Gator Johnson turns sour, Tuner has to kill Gator and invokes the ire of his girl Dorinda. While Dorinda tries to hold her stable of girls together in a male dominated industry, she offers up a significant business share in her girls to the man who is able to kill Turner for her revenge.

I have taken recently to watching some Blaxploitation films mostly because I find the genre to be agreeably trashy and in a way the weaknesses can be accepted and almost enjoyed as part of the experience that you have come for. Trashily made, violent, tough black male leads, gorgeous females with lots of sass, funky soundtrack, solid action and unintentional laughs – all of these things sort of come with the territory. Truck Turner actually stands out as one of the more enjoyable of the genre, while still very much being a genre film with all the staples in place. The film is built on the usual sense of tough cool in the packaging and in the lead character and the plot pretty much does what you expect as a revenge plot provides plenty of gun battles and bright red blood squibs going off – none of it particularly thrilling but none of it dull either.

Where it actually benefits is in the casting. Hayes is not the best actor of course but he does have a lazy cool charm about him and he leads the film well. He is totally out-acted though by Nichelle Nichols who is not only sexy but is convincingly full of murderous rage – as others have said, it is a world away from her character on Star Trek but she really dominates the screen here with a marvellously over the top and driven house-mother harpie. Kotto is not quite as good but he is a very good presence and deserved to be used a bit better than he was. That said he still rocks most of his scenes and is rewarded with a memorable final scene. Weeks is funny, Chase is cute and beyond that everyone is par for the genre course, with plenty of bad hair and overacting in the men and lots of flesh in the women.

Truck Turner is still a genre film of course and it needs to be met on those terms but it does stand out as a good example of the genre – tough, cool, good performances, lots of pimp etc stereotypes and plenty of silly gun action. Far from being a great film, it is still a very good genre piece.

Carrying around a 44 Magnum that was probably bought at the same place Dirty Harry Callahan bought his, Isaac Hayes essays the role of Truck Turner, former pro-football player turned skip tracer. Hayes is not too squeamish about what he has to do to bring back a given quarry and along with partner Alan Weeks, being a skip tracer he's not bound by the rules that Clint Eastwood has to live by as a cop.

My best recollection of Isaac Hayes is as the jail house friend of James Garner in The Rockford Files. Gandolf Fitch was a man of few words and a very short fuse and next to him, Truck Turner is positively garrulous.

The first part of the film is almost lighthearted in nature as we see Hayes and Weeks go about their jobs and we Hayes's relationship with girlfriend Anazette Chase. She's a nice woman, but an incurable shoplifter that Hayes constantly has to bail out and pay the fines or the merchandise for. The end of the first half though concludes with a car chase to rival Bullitt in which Weeks is wounded and their skip trace, a pimp played by Paul Harris is killed.

After this the film changes mood so abruptly it's like watching a second film. Harris's woman and partner Nichelle Nichols wants Hayes dead and will pay anything for it and brings in a whole bunch of business competitors led by Yaphett Kotto to do the job. The second half of the film is a serious of gunfights, climaxed by a blazing shootout in a hospital.

For those who remember Nichelle Nichols as the nice Lieutenant Uhura forever with that earpiece and trying to open channels on the starship Enterprise, you won't recognize the murderous fury that's in this character played by the same woman. She steals the film from Hayes in every scene she's in. I would not want her on my case.

Truck Turner is a good action film with an astonishing portrayal from Nichelle Nichols. Star Trek fans might want to check this one out.