I, the Jury
               
Director: Richard Heffron
Year: 1982
Rating: 5.0
Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer is brought into the 1980s and I have to admit I didn't like him much. When Robert Aldrich directed Spillane's Kiss Me Deadly, he changed the main plot device from drug dealers to an atomic weapon. Here they switch it from drug dealers in the book to who the hell knows. This film barely makes any sense, but it has something to do with the CIA, a renegade CIA group, mind-control, terrorists and a lot of naked breasts. Mainly naked breasts really. Who was thinking about the plot with all those naked breasts in your face. And Armand Assante is as close to the Mike Hammer of the books as I am to a Mensa scholar. He is so slick and smooth that it gave me the creeps. Hammer is square. Nothing smooth about him. He likes the feel of his fist hitting soft flesh. Nothing about Assante feels tough. Smirky and sardonic. I was actually surprised to read that a lot of critics - i.e. Roger Ebert - thought he was good in this film but then Ebert also praised the actress who plays Velda like a boa constrictor. She is dreadful and has no clue how to play Velda - not like a secretary who keeps trying to seduce her boss. Not Velda. But this was scripted by Larry Cohen who never rubbed shoulders with subtlety. He was supposed to direct this, but they fired him after a week. Maybe he got to direct the orgy.



I, the Jury was Spillane's first novel and though critics hated the book, it took off like a rocket and sold millions. There was a 1953 low-budget version that I prefer to this one. No nudity though. Like the book, it starts with the murder of a good friend who lost his arm in the war saving Hammer. Hammer never leaves a man behind. Even if he is dead. His simple rule. You find out who killed him. And kill them. As he says at the end of the book and this film, "It was easy". His first clue takes him to a sex therapist who treated his friend for impotency. Of course, the therapist played by Barbara Carrera could raise the dead. The viewer becomes quite familiar with her nude body. I felt like we were best friends by the end.



I generally had no clue what was going on and I would guess neither did the director who took over. But as soon as Hammer starts looking into this, they start trying to kill him and other witnesses. Two carloads of CIA come after him, there is a psychotic killer who likes redheads and asks them to tell him they love him and if they don't "I will punish you". None of them were Meryl Streep capable. There are twin sexual surrogates at the clinic, right out of the pages of Playboy I expect. These killers are so smart that they brainwash a Japanese chef to kill a witness who just happens to be sitting there talking to Hammer. Shocking but stupid. The final 20-minutes saves the film when Hammer leaves his condescending smirk behind and picks up his gun and goes to business. Killing is his business. There are four straight solid scenes that are all done well. But I never really figured out why anyone killed anyone. Or why Hammer's fish keep dying.