Black Gunn * (1972, Jim Brown, Martin Landau, Brenda Sykes, Herbert Jefferson Jr, Luciana Paluzzi) – Classic Movie Review 11,827

Director Robert Hartford-Davis’s 1972 crime action thriller Black Gunn is a rather poor, and dismayingly weakly made blaxploitation movie, with Jim Brown as Gunn, a rich nightclub owner on the trail of mafia capo and used-car dealer Russ Capelli (Martin Landau) when he kills Brown’s militant brother Scott Gunn (Herbert Jefferson Jr) after a night-time robbery on an illegal mafia bookmaking operation In Los Angeles.

There are good performers aplenty, and Brown and Landau are good value, but the story by Hartford-Davis and the script by Franklin Coen and Robert Shearer amount to little more than a ragbag of tatty crime thriller clichés.

Unusually for a blaxploitation movie, it is a UK and US co-production, released by major studio Columbia Pictures, and produced by non-American film-makers. Hartford-Davis and producers John Heyman and Norman Priggen are British.

The cast are Jim Brown as Gunn, Martin Landau as Russ Capelli, Brenda Sykes as Judith, Herbert Jefferson Jr as Scott Gunn, Luciana Paluzzi as Toni, Vida Blue as Sam Green, Stephen McNally as Laurento, Keefe Brasselle as Winman, Timothy Brown as Larry, William Campbell as Rico, Bruce Glover as Ray Kriley, Bernie Casey as Seth, Gary Conway as Adams, and Chuck Daniel as Mel.

The films of Robert Hartford-Davis: Crosstrap (1962), The Yellow Teddy Bears (1963), The Black Torment (1964), Saturday Night Out (1964), Gonks Go Beat (1965), The Sandwich Man (1966), Corruption (1967), The Smashing Bird I Used to Know (1969), Incense for the Damned (1970), Nobody Ordered Love (1972), The Fiend (1972), Black Gunn (1972), and The Take (1974).

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,827

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