Last of the Mobile Hot Shots (1970)

          If nothing else, Last of the Mobile Hot Shots has an impressive pedigree: Based on Tennessee Williams’ play The Seven Descents of Myrtle, the picture was written by Gore Vidal and directed by Sidney Lumet. (The on-camera talent is not quite as luminous, since James Coburn shares the screen with Robert Hooks and a hopelessly miscast Lynn Redgrave.) Pretentions, seedy, and talky, the film seems more like an over-the-top recitation of tropes from previous Williams plays than a serious drama. The metaphors are obvious (the characters occupy a decaying mansion while awaiting a flood), the sexual material is lurid (incest, impotence, miscegenation, prostitution), and the rhapsodic speeches about the good old days of the antebellum South feel trite. While everyone involved works at a high level of skill, the only moment that feels fresh is the scene spoofing TV game shows, which is somewhat peripheral to the overall storyline. In sum, Last of the Mobile Hotshots is a straight shot of Williams’ boozy and hateful debauchery, with a pinch of Vidal’s signature bitchiness for extra spice.

          After sloppy drunk Jeb Thornton (Coburn) gets ejected from a bar in New Orleans, he staggers to a nearby TV studio, where folks are lined up to get inside. Jeb watches a taping of a redneck game show, and when the host asks for volunteers to marry onstage, total stranger Myrtle Kane (Redgrave) grabs Jeb and drags him before the cameras as her betrothed. Soon enough, the two are newlyweds, trekking back to Jeb’s family estate with the carload of appliances they won on the TV show. Upon arriving at the estate—a wreck of a place covered in filth from the last devastating flood—Myrtle meets Jeb’s half-brother, an African-American laborer nicknamed Chicken (Hooks). Turns out Jeb married Myrtle in order to produce an heir, thereby absconding with Chicken’s inheritance—but Jeb didn’t account for his own dire health issues.

          None of this is remotely believable, no matter how many scenes feature monologues about wild dreams of glory and wealth. Adding to the artificiality of the piece are dreamlike flashbacks and a recurring trope in which Lumet changes the lighting to blood-red while Jeb lurks in a wheelchair and contemplates his situation.

          Yet Last of the Mobile Hot Shots is periodically interesting. Coburn fares best here, since he has a full arsenal of actor’s gimmicks at his disposal—in addition to an accent, he gets to play several maladies at once while giving monologues about betrayal and pride. He’s quite arresting, even if his character is nothing more than a flight of fancy. Hooks is fairly strong as well, playing a character who’s equal parts opportunist and sadist. Redgrave is the weak link, because she murders dialogue by speaking in high-pitched, high-speed volleys, and her character seems insane instead of eccentric. Worst of all, the picture appears to be a misguided attempt at dark comedy, especially during the ridiculous finale. Oh, and for no discernible reason except perhaps for the general tawdriness of the themes, Last of the Mobile Hot Shots carried an X-rating during its original release.

Last of the Mobile Hot Shots: FUNKY

Carter’s Army (1970)

          Formulaic, predictable, and shot on a meager budget, the made-for-TV war picture Carter’s Army, often marketed by the alternate title Black Brigade, is nothing special from a cinematic perspective. However, because the movie features several noteworthy black actors, including future box-office heavyweights Richard Pryor and Billy Dee Williams, Carter’s Army is enjoyable as a sort of all-star African-American riff on The Dirty Dozen. Set in 1944 Germany, the exceedingly simplistic movie revolves around U.S. Army Captain Beau Carter (Stephen Boyd), a racist southerner given the thankless task of capturing a heavily guarded dam from the Nazis. Unfortunately for Carter, the only squad available to assist him is an all-black unit that’s never seen combat. Working reluctantly with the squad’s formidable commander, African-American Lieutenant Edward Wallace (Robert Hooks), Carter leads six enlisted men on the mission even though it’s likely to end in tragic failure. Along the way, the born-and-bred cracker learns to respect black people because of the bravery the soldiers demonstrate and because he witnesses the everyday humiliation the men suffer at the hands of fellow Americans.

          Not a single frame of Carter’s Army will catch viewers by surprise, and in fact, some scenes are a bit hard to take seriously because the forests of Germany look suspiciously like the high-desert woods above Palm Springs. (One could never accuse TV kingpin Aaron Spelling, who cowrote and coproduced this project, of overspending on location photography.) In lieu of a novel story, what keeps Carter’s Army lively is the cast.

          Moses Gunn appears as a professor suffering wartime indignities with grace, Pryor plays a soldier so afraid of fighting that he attempts desertion, Glynn Turman portrays a young man keeping a journal of the action-packed war that he wishes he could tell the folks back home he’s fighting, and Williams plays a tough guy from Harlem whose racial anger matches the intensity of Carter’s bigotry. Also in the mix are gentle giant Rosie Grier, the NFL star-turned-actor, and the stalwart Hooks (Trouble Man), who lends gravitas to the role of the squad’s leader. This being a Hollywood movie of a certain time, of course, the title character is a white guy whose journey to enlightenment is portrayed as having more narrative value than the lives of the black men around him. Veteran big-screen stud Boyd delivers adequate work as Carter, complete with a litany of disgusted facial expressions and an amusingly soupy accent.

Carter’s Army: FUNKY

Aaron Loves Angela (1975)

          It’s tempting to theorize that the urban romance Aaron Loves Angela contains a heavy crime element simply because the film’s producers worried that audiences would not flock to a low-budget race-themed movie in 1975 unless the movie included the movie had a blaxploitation vibe. The reason this thought comes to mind is that the drugs-and-hookers stuff in Aaron Loves Angela is so incidental to the main story that it could be extracted without making much difference. But then again, the main story is so threadbare that any attempt at adding dramatic weight, no matter how awkward, is appreciated. Essentially a Romeo-and-Juliet tale about an African-American boy romancing a Puerto Rican girl, Aaron Loves Angela is underwhelming in every way.
          When the story begins, wannabe basketball star Aaron (Kevin Hooks) and intellectually ambitious schoolgirl Angela (Irene Cara) already know each other, so the audience is deprived the magic of their first meeting. Obstacles to their courtship seem minor, because Aaron’s drunken father, Ike (Moses Gunn), wants the boy to focus on his athletic development, and Angela’s relatives (never shown onscreen) presumably want her to steer clear of boys until she’s through with school. To compensate for this lack of conflict, the filmmakers integrate a weak subplot about a pimp named Beau (Robert Hooks), who wants to escape street life by arranging a sketchy drug deal and ripping off crooks for a quarter-million in cash. Meanwhile, Aaron and Angela establish a love nest in the same tenement building where Beau stashes his dope. The inevitable intersection of these storylines is neither believable nor meaningful.

          Plus, while scenes of Aaron at home with his starry-eyed dad have some heft simply because of Gunn’s acting skill, the romantic stuff is flat and trite. Cara, who later became a singing star in addition to her acting work, comes across like a supporting player shoved into the limelight; although naturalistic, Cara lacks leading-lady charisma. Similarly, Kevin Hooks is so bland he gets overshadowed by every actor with whom he shares scenes—even real-life basketball great Walt Frazier, a non-actor who struggles through his brief cameo appearance. Speaking of cameos, blind Puerto Rican singing star José Feliciano shows up briefly to croon a tune during a nightclub scene, and he also composed and performed the movie’s score, which features a combination of background music and original songs. Especially when Aaron Loves Angela gets stuck in airy love-montage sequences, Feliciano’s lively music is the best part of the picture.
           Aaron Loves Angela was directed by the singularly unimpressive Gordon Parks Jr., who made his cinematic debut by helming the blaxploitation hit Super Fly (1972). The filmmaker’s father, famed photographer Gordon Parks, helmed several far superior pictures, including The Learning Tree (1969) and Shaft (1971).

Aaron Loves Angela: FUNKY

Trouble Man (1972)

Whereas most blaxploitation flicks take place in the dingy milieu of dealers, junkies, pimps, and streetwalkers—making exposed flesh, outrageous fashions, and tough slang important elements of their sleazy appeal—Trouble Man belongs to a more restrained crime-picture tradition. Excepting the color of the lead character’s skin, the presence of a soul-music score, and the use of terms like “honky” and “motherfucker,” Trouble Man is basically an old-fashioned potboiler in the Bogart tradition. The lead character, Mr. T. (Robert Hooks), is a take-no-guff private eye who gets framed for murder by ambitious gangsters, so he calls upon his ample resources of a clever mind, a fast gun hand, and plentiful contacts within the police force and the underworld to extricate himself from a sticky situation. Along the way, he clashes with a mixed-race pair of hoodlums (played by an overacting Ralph Waite and a hard-working but underused Paul Winfield), and he enjoys a few moderately interesting arguments with policeman Joe Marx (William Smithers). Mr. T also shares a few pointless scenes with his girlfriend, Cleo (Paula Kelly), and he hangs out in his groovy lair—a back office in a pool hall. Presenting an African-American environment free from blaxploitation’s usual clichés makes Trouble Man mildly refreshing, but the movie’s storyline is disappointing. The deadly first hour comprises lots of convoluted exposition, so, ironically, the sensationalistic extremes found in other blaxploitation flicks are missed. Things pick up a bit in the end, but not quite enough. This is a shame, not only because the picture avoids reducing African-Americans to cartoonish stereotypes, but also because director Ivan Dixon employs solid camerawork and lighting, giving the piece a polished look. Plus, Hooks is a formidable leading man who seems as if he could’ve done something with better material. Yet even the silky score, by Motown legend Marvin Gaye, lacks sufficient energy; only the main theme has a lingering groove.

Trouble Man: FUNKY