For the first hour this film goes along without anything that really stands out - just your basic gangster story of rising up through the criminal ranks by turning on those that brought you along. A mass killing. Some smaller ones but just gangster filler. Then whamo. A great set piece that takes place in the heart of Manhattan beginning right outside of Tiffany's and continuing with the Black Caesar trying to escape with his life and a bullet to the gut through the streets ending with him strangling one of his antagonists in Time Square as the giant clock records the passing time and the Marlboro Man puffs out smoke. Frigging brilliant. Just the logistics of this amazes me. Seeing the surprised or concerned looks on passerby's I have to wonder if they had any idea they were in a movie. Could Larry Cohen and AIP have afforded that scene or was it just shot on the go. I don't know but it saves an otherwise generic film. Though this is categorized as Blaxploitation, it is in truth just a gangster flick that takes place primarily in the black community of Harlem.
There is of course the racist element as I heard more racist epithets spit out than I have in a long time. They pretty much use every one I have come across in my life. But that is a set-up for what comes later as all these white racists meet nasty ends. And makes you glad that they do. Tommy starts early in his chosen profession. A shoeshine boy who holds one of his customers (Andrew Duggan) by the leg so that he can't get away from a hitman coming his way. When he grows up he turns into the very dapper, immaculately dressed with a series of hats I wish I had the nerve to wear Fred Williamson. It is a role made for him - though amusingly it was written for Sammy Davis Jr who could not come up with the money - as he walks the Harlem streets like they are paved with gold and that he is the King. Williamson would become one of the top actors of this genre after years of being a star in American football. He drips cool.
To establish his street creds he goes into a barber shop where a mafia thug is having a shave and tells the barber to shave him close because facial hair still grows for a few days after death and he doesn't want this fellow looking bad at his funeral. He then shoots him, cuts off his ear and drops it into the pasta of a Mafia Don - 'I heard you wanted him dead, He is. I want in". He works his way up and takes on the gangster lifestyle, but as in these films it begins to fall to pieces - his girlfriend (Gloria Hendry) and best friend betray him - his men get knocked off - he feels alone. Someone is coming for him. He is a cop. White. Corrupt. And brutal. Great soundtrack from James Brown. I am not too familiar with Cohen's work - he follows this up with Hell Up in Harlem and later made one of my favorite monster movies - Q.
Hell Up in Harlem (1973) - 6.0
With the box-office success of Black Caesar, AIP came back to director Larry Cohen and asked him for a sequel. Of course there was one small problem. At the end of Black Caesar the main character Tommy seemed to be dead. In a poetic justice manner he went back to his old tenement apartment home now torn down and a gang of young black hoodlums stomp him to death. But did they? We see no death certificate or proof of such. So Cohen said sure - I have no script but we can figure it out as we go. And the uneven choppy script indicates this but it is still a very solid action film with much more violence than the first one. The plot is a razor thin line but he puts a few good set pieces on it and what more does it need. If you have no story - do action.
So here rather than being dead, he only has the crap beaten out of him. And his father happens to come along and helps him by calling a few of Tommy's friends who take him to a hospital with guns out. The father did not have a large role in the first film - basically a missing father figure who disappeared years before while Tommy was a boy. He takes on a much bigger role here for what I would guess was a very good reason. Tommy offers him a slice of the pie and dad turns into a more vicious killer than his son. He has found his calling in life. He takes on the thug persona with his pimp hat, gold chains and sexy women draped around him. This drastic turn from his peaceful image in the first film might be hard to swallow but for the fact that he is played by Julius Harris. Harris was just coming off of the Bond film Live and Let Die in which he played the one-armed villain who fed the crocks. He is a scary MF.
In the snap of their fingers Tommy (Fred Williamson) and father are back on top. And the killings begin led by pop. A white District Attorney (Gerald Gordon) who is as crooked as a zigzag wants Tommy and dad taken out and he recruits some cops, mafia and a member of Tommy's gang to do it. When they invade his house he decides it is time for payback and he starts on a path of revenge - taking out every person who has betrayed him. The killing with the beach umbrella was a favorite.
A couple good set pieces in this. In scuba gear and spear guns he and his gang sneak ashore and take out a mafia gang - with the black maids whipping out guns and doing their share. And then - not up to the Manhattan piece in the previous film - but still pretty cool - he chases after a guy in LaGuardia - misses him - takes a plane to Los Angeles to catch him - kills a killer on board - catches his prey at the luggage carousel and kills him with the victim going down the chute and around - and walks away. Gloria Hendry his girl friend from the first film is back and so is his reverend friend played again by D'Urville Martin.
