Top of the Heap

"Top of the Heap" is a film written, directed, produced AND starring Christopher St. John. And, while I wanted to like the movie, it was just a jumbled mess and figuring out what St. John was trying to say wasn't easy to determine as I watched. Perhaps there's a good movie hiding under all this...but as it is, I cannot recommend this one.

George (St. John) is a middle-aged DC cop who is clearly disaffected with his job and his life. He's been passed over for promotions several times, his marriage is on the skids, his daughter is using drugs and George has to deal with racism all the time. All of this is VERY interesting...or at least should have been. Sadly, the film didn't seem to know where it was going and so many times when the film started gaining some momentum, the plot would go off the deep end! Again and again, you see weird interludes...like day dreams...right in the middle of the movie. In many, he's an astronaut...or, more precisely, an astronaut who's helping fake a moon landing. Why? I honestly have no idea whatsoever....and the same could be said about the scene with his personal nurse....no idea whatsoever why it went there.

It's all really a shame. The movie could have been a wonderful blaxploitation film with a point to make about black men working within the system....but the weird storytelling, editing, bizarre dreamlike sequences and writing really leave you confused and disappointed.

Its a shame that movies like these get lost in the folds of time. The poor dude that is the director is also the producer, writer and star. Shot in Washington D.C. in 1971, Top of the Heap is the story of a black police officer, who is confused, p***ed off and slowly going crazy. Great music, great vignettes. The plot is very disjointed but all in all a great experience. Some nice dream sequences too.

Christopher St. John wrote, produced, directed and stars in this ridiculous blaxploitation drama about an angry black cop and family man in Washington, D.C., fighting the system and fighting himself. St. John, dropping n-words and f-bombs angrily but casually, isn't much of an actor--his direction is actually better than his own performance--and he's not a strong writer, either; his political, racial and sexual underpinnings aren't used for urban commentary, only shock value. This is a relentlessly cynical exploration of corruption and injustice; our hero fantasizes about being an important brother (such as an astronaut who plants the American flag on the moon) while, in reality, white people riot in a mud puddle tearing the flag apart. He's surrounded by indifference and dissension...and a wife who putters around in a housecoat nagging at him. Paula Kelly (in and out of her clothes) as St. John's "black chick" on the side and Allen Garfield as an irate cab driver give the cheap histrionics some professional polish. The rest is jive, turkey. * from ****

I can only imagine the looks on the faces of patrons who went to see this when it was originally released to theaters. The closest I can describe it is an R-rated take on Walter Mitty, with the central character repeatedly daydreaming of being an astronaut while his real life is a hellhole. It's certainly an imaginative exercise, but ultimately proves frustrating because of its almost episodic nature, plus a number of murky details (for example, we don't learn that he has more than one kid in his family until it's mentioned near the end of the movie!)

Still, if you choose to watch it (take breaks during your watching, so you don't get too strained), it does provide some entertainment and interesting moments. For one thing, this is one of the few black-themed movies of the time that isn't fully sympathetic towards its lead character. It's also one of the few that has some likable white characters; in fact, the movie seems more against "the system" than whites in general. There are also a few genuinely hilarious moments. Despite all this, the movie is still best appreciated as an artifact than a piece of entertainment.

I have a feeling that Abel Ferrara may have seen this film at some point before he made "Bad Lieutenant" (much as Sam Raimi undoubtedly saw "Equinox" before he made "Evil Dead"). There are a certain number of striking similarities between the two films: cop who seems to hate the burden of his wife and family, hates his job, is corrupt, does drugs, is p****d off and scornful of just about everything around him and...well, I won't say any more than that because I might spoil it for viewers who haven't seen one or the other film. One big difference between the two, though, is that Christopher St. John's character in "Top of the Heap" is rather more well-developed. He has an internal life (represented on-screen by a very odd astronaut/moon-shot fantasy/dream), so we have a certain understanding, if not necessarily a sympathy for his actions and motivations. This is a rather obscure (I'd never heard of it before I found my long-out-of-print Unicorn Video pre-record) but very underrated piece of filmmaking and it doesn't deserve to be heaped together with other low budget blaxploitation films of the period. It's really too bad that Christopher St. John hasn't directed another film since. I found his work a lot more interesting than the majority of Ferrara's.