Truck Turner

In Los Angeles, the tough bounty hunter Mac 'Truck' Turner (Isaac Hayes ) and his partner and friend Jerry (Alan Weeks) work for Nate Dinwiddie (Sam Laws) hunting down fugitives from the law. When the drug dealer and pimp Richard Leroy 'Gator' Johnson (Paul Harris) is murdered by Turner, Gator´s woman Dorinda (Nichelle Nichols) hiresthe gangster Harvard Blue (Yaphet Kotto) and his professional killers to kill Turner. Will they succeed?

"Truck Turner" is another full of action blaxploitation movie from the 70´s. The tall Isaac Hayes is funny in the role of a tough bounty hunter and former football player hard to be killed and the film is highly entertaining. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Truck Turner"

The once-almighty American International Pictures had every bit of success going in the 70s with movies like BLACK CAESAR, BLACULA, COFFY, and many others, that turned the blaxploitation genre into a phenomenon. TRUCK TURNER continues the timeless tradition with style. With Isaac Hayes in his only notable role of a bounty hunter, you can expect this to be the meanest, most wildest, most violent "blaction" flick on celluloid. Aiming the gun close to the camera looked fascinating. The combination of action and exploitation is not just smooth as velvet, but also rough as guts. Apparently, critics wanted to dismiss this film from all the graphic violence it displays, and while that still remains the case, it gave the genre a step forward and was much needed to satisfy its fans. Hayes' music score is pure all the way, and runs along with the plentiful, but simple straightforward action sequences. I felt the piano score was tiringly repetitive for a film that offered more punch. It wouldn't be a blaxploiter without some groove, humor, and soul poured in, and there's a lot here. TRUCK TURNER is one of the finer movies from an era that's been vanished a good long time, but do check out BLACK CAESAR, SUPER FLY, and BLACK BELT JONES for the very best. Great fun for all "blaxplo" fanatics!

Isaac Hayes provides whole new dimensions to the term "Coolness" in his own and first Blaxploitation highlight "Truck Turner" (not counting the Italian Blaxploitation-Crime thriller crossover "Three Tough Guys"). Prior to this movie Hayes was only known as the performer of the legendary Shaft theme, but God bless the person who came up with the idea of giving him his very own movie-franchise! Hayes is brilliant and much cooler & tougher than all the other Blaxploitation heroes together, in my humble opinion. If I were to be stuck in a dark alley late at night, I would rather run into a combination of Richard Roundtree, Fred Williamson and Jim Brown than facing the gigantically postured and naturally petrifying Hayes. The plot of "Truck Turner" is rudimentary but nevertheless engaging and literally stuffed with awesome characters, witty comical undertones and phenomenal action sequences. I truly adore how each and every character that walks through the screen, even including Truck and his lovely wife, is a bit of a "badass" and living on the edge of the law him/herself. Mack 'Truck' Turner is a former football player who now works as a feared bounty hunter since an injury ruined his career. Truck loves his wife, even though she's a recidivist shoplifter and all the women in the neighborhood crave him, and there isn't a single thug on the streets who doesn't fear and respects him. Together with his partner Jerry he's tailing the fugitive big shot pimp Gator, but when the latter gets killed during a spontaneous bust, all hell breaks loose. Gator's main bi-atch Dorinda (Nichelle Nichols, acting like the black version of Ilsa Harem keeper of the Oil Sheiks) gathers all the city's most prominent pimps and promises the ownership of all her top-class prostitutes to whoever succeeds in killing Truck. Seeing the main story lines are so thin, "Truck Turner" mostly benefices from its 'shoot first ask questions later' action sequences, the splendid soundtrack and multiple stellar performances. Hayes receives great support from Yaphet Kotto (as a really creepy super-pimp), Alan Weeks (as the sidekick) and Sam Laws (as their employer). There are also excellent cameos for prominent B-actors like Scatman Crothers and Dick Miller. The violent climax in the hospital is simply awesome and has an original and tense anti-climax. Another downright brilliant and unforgettable scene takes place during the pimp's funeral. Pure 70's goodness!

Blaxploitation films are so frequently ridiculed and parodied (much of it with reason) these days, that it's easy to forget that some of them were actually pretty good. Shaft (1971) paved the way for the sub-genre with its strutting bad-ass lead who's a sex-machine to all the chicks, and Isaac Hayes' Oscar-winning score (for what he will forever be best remembered for). Hayes himself steps into the lead role here as ex- American football star and bail bondsman Mac 'Truck' Turner, who according to Yaphet Kotto's bad-guy pimp Blue, is "like a bulldog with eyes up his ass!", and displays some surprisingly charismatic qualities that makes it quite a shame he didn't appear in more.

Greasy lawyer Fogarty (the great Dick Miller) employs bounty-hunters 'Truck' Turner and his partner Jerry (Alan Weeks - with the best grin in cinema) to track down a low-down pusher and pimp named Gator (Paul Harris). After an extended chase scene, Turner and Jerry manage to kill Gator, much to the dismay of Gator's lady Dorinda (Nichelle Nichols - Uhura!). Dorinda rounds up the big pimps and offers her valuable collection of whores in exchange for Turner's head, a deal in which Blue accepts. Wanting to settle down with his girlfriend Annie (Annazette Chase), Turner finds his life turned upside when Blue employs a gang of hired killers.

Beginning almost as a buddy-comedy, the witty script and some genuine chemistry serve up some amusing early scenes, showing off Hayes' natural screen presence. But this turns into pure police procedural blaxploitation as the main plot kicks in, with jive-talk, pimps in some of the most delightfully ludicrous dress I've ever seen, car-chases, slow-motion shoot-outs, cocaine, hookers, and of course a tragically neglected soundtrack from Hayes himself. The action scenes are surprisingly good, and Corman protégé Jonathan Kaplan (director of fellow Grindhouse Project feature Night Call Nurses (1972) - review #443) makes sure he includes as much slow-motion men falling off rooftops and gushing fake blood as possible. Bloody good fun, and probably better than Shaft.

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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.