Hangup

I must admit that it is difficult for me to realize that the great Hollywood vet director Henry Hathaway, the man who gave us THE LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER, and made movies since the early thirties, mostly excellent pictures, is responsible of this pure seventies crime flick, plus a blaxploitation material. I don't know if Quentin Tarantino knows this one, but I doubt he would love it. No trade mark of the KISS OF DEATH director here. This is the first crime movie Hathaway made since CALL NORTHSIDE 777, (1948) and, although the directing is not so bad, for a blaxploitation feature, it is more than OK, pretty well done, it is still painful to accept this as his last film. Yes, painful.

This film essentially begins with an undercover police officer by the name of "Ken Ramsey" (William Elliott) receiving a tip that an old high school friend named "Julie Turner" (Marki Bey) might have information of drug dealer responsible for the murder of one of their informants. To that end, Ken goes to see Julie and discovers that she is a heroin addict who desperately needs his help to turn her life around. Naturally, having known her since high school, he decides to help and it's during this time that the two begin a romance with one another. However, that doesn't prevent him from trying to find out everything she knows about his primary suspect--and this creates all kinds of problems for everyone involved. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this was an okay blaxploitation film which suffered somewhat from its low budget but seemed to overcome most of its problems toward the end. That being said, while there are certainly better films of this nature out there, this one managed to pass the time fairly well and I have rated it accordingly. Average.