Cool Breeze ** (1972, Thalmus Rasulala, Judy Pace, Julian Christopher) – Classic Movie Review 8203

Writer-director Barry Pollack’s 1972 Cool Breeze is an interesting if ordinary blaxploitation thriller movie reworking (for the third time) of the 1950 classic The Asphalt Jungle, with a predominately black cast headed by Jim Watkins [aka Julian Christopher] and Judy Pace in Sterling Hayden and Jean Hagen’s old parts.

Thalmus Rasulala stars as Sidney Lord Jones, the ex-con leader of a group of criminals who gather in LA to rob a bank, and Watkins plays one of them, well-known career criminal Travis Battle (‘the Muscle Man’), with Pace as Obalese Eaton.

It is all very rough and tough, and totally typical of its early Seventies period. It narrates the same story loosely based on W R Burnett’s 1949 novel about crooks assembled for a robbery that is now set in Los Angeles, with the fresh angles of a slight social conscience (the robbery is for a people’s bank) and a hefty injection of Seventies violence and sex. The acting and handling are both robust, though they lack finesse.

It is one of four 1972 MGM movies aimed at African American audiences in the wake of the 1971 Shaft‘s big success: see also Shaft’s Big Score!, the subsequent 1972 MGM blaxploitation film Hit Man, and Melinda. It was followed by The Slams, a 1973 heist film released by MGM.

Also in the cast are Raymond St Jacques as ‘the Money Man’ Bill Mercer, the high‐powered fence (the Louis Calhern role in The Asphalt Jungle), Lincoln Kilpatrick as Lieutenant Brian Knowles, Margaret Avery as Lark, Sam Laws as ‘Stretch’ Finian, Paula Kelly as Martha Harris, Pam Grier as Mona, Wally Taylor as John Battle, Rudy Challenger as the Reverend Roy Harris, Stewart Bradley as Captain Lloyd Harmon, Ed Cambridge as the Bus Driver, Royce Wallace as Emma Mercer, Stack Pierce as Tinker, Biff Elliot as Lieutenant Carl Mager and John Lupton as Lieutenant Holster.

Cool Breeze runs 101 minutes, is made by Penelope Productions Inc, is released by MGM, is shot in Metrocolor by Andy David and scored by Solomon Burke.

The poster says: ‘He hit the Man for $3 million. Right where it hurts. In the diamonds. And baby, that’s cold.’

It is noteworthy that producer Gene Corman and writer-director Barry Pollack are not African American, and that the film’s off-hand attitude to women is to show them as young and sexy but simple.

The other two versions of the tale are Delmer Daves’s 1958 tough and taut Western The Badlanders with Alan Ladd and director Wolf Rilla’s 1963 black and white Egypt jewel treasures heist caper thriller Cairo, with George Sanders.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8203

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com