The Big Black Pill

Robert Blake obviously created this story with "China Town" as its inspiration. His character, Joe Dancer, is entangled with a rich and powerful family with deep roots in LA. He is enticed and misled by a beautiful heiress. Other members of the family try to hire him away. There are some embarrassing secrets that are at the bottom of the plot as well as some political intrigue. Does this sound familiar?

The plot is helped along with some incredible "jump cuts" and implausible action scenes. Blake jumps off a water tower onto a moving train while carrying the body of a full grown adult! When he lands, no attempt is made to disguise the fact that the "body" is actually a poorly constructed dummy. Later, Blake handily disposes of a thug played by the towering Bubba Smith in a train yard fight. How the diminutive Joe Dancer achieves this feat is neatly obscured in darkness.

Unlike Jake Giddes, Jack Nicholson's flawed character in "China Town," Joe Dancer comes across as almost superhuman. I personally believe that this film reveals its star and creator, Robert Blake, to be an egomaniac of unusual proportions, even for Hollywood.

This is one of those films that is so bad, it is fun to watch. It is a testament to how a famous actor with a bad idea and a lot of influence can spin a flimsy plot into a Hollywood production.

At first I thought that I was watching a parody of a police movie, as neither the actor could be taken seriously as a tough private investigator, nor the dialogues were natural (often, there were quite illogical, as well). If you see the scene with the nun praying to God to save the good detective from drowning and him replying "Don't thank God, thank the water that was not cold and these old bones", you certainly believe that you are dealing with a parody. Then I realised that this movie was serious and that was based in a TV series. Everything here is incredibly pathetic: low-budget directory without fantasy, a script that brings into mind a soap opera and, last but not least, bad acting.

Joe dancer is a private detective working in LA. He's given a big money case by Tiffany Farinpour, one of the Farinpour family who include powerful politicians. Tiffany needs Joe to find her younger brother David who has left the family under a cloud. However in trying to find David Joe is warned off by several thugs before finally finding David in a small town just trying to live a quiet life. Seconds later David is killed by a hidden assassin and Joe finds all evidence of his life in the town has been erased and Joe is facing a murder charge. With the clock ticking Joe must find the killer in a plot that involves danger and deep family secrets.

The story here wants to be really shady and deep, but it doesn't totally make it. There's some mystery along the way but the final twists are clear once the plot starts to come together. The sense of deep family secrets isn't convincing - this is a TV movie after all, how dark can it be? However, even when the plot is being a good crime thriller it becomes lazy in it's solutions. At some points I was grabbed by the plot - who was the killer? who wanted David dead? but then at key moments the answers come too easy - the killer cleans up all bullet casings and remove David's possessions but leaves his prescription glasses at the scene, in another Joe walks for miles only to find the exact spot a gunman had stood. Things like this (and there's several) let the whole film down and make you forget the build-up and only remember the rubbish answers.

Another problem is Robert Blake he so clearly wants to Humphrey Bogart that he created this character to let him get close to those hard-boiled detective roles that Bogart played so well (Dancer even points out that he has all Bogart's films on tape at home). At one point in the film one character says "we don't have to say anything stupid like in the movies do we?", but the problem is we do - the whole film consists of poor dialogue, mostly delivered by Blake. The worst element of his Bogart impression is his voice over/narration - it's terrible. While Bogart's voiceovers usually gave an insight into his mind and feelings, Blake's treats us like children, walking us through the plot and the clues, not allowing us to work things out for ourselves. In some cases whole scenes are narrated with the action happening silently underneath. It makes this feel cheap with the Bogart-isms forced to breaking point.

The performances are not great - no one really stands out. The only actor that caught my eye was Bubba Smith but only because he later found "fame" as Hightower in the Police Academy films. Overall the performances were as good as the material required.

Overall a good plot that is spoilt by some lazy solutions and a terrible Bogart impression by Robert Blake.

Notably, Robert Blake, playing an ultra-bland version of Columbo, gets hit on by both Veronica Cartwright AND JoBeth Williams...one of the best examples of the power of producing your own starring projects.