Isaac Hayes won an Oscar for his theme song for Shaft, so when it came time to do the score for Truck Turner, he asked if he could star in it and the producers said, “Why not?” Hayes plays the eponymous badass bounty hunter (in a role originally intended for Robert Mitchum!) who inadvertently stirs up a hornets’ nest when he is forced to kill a pimp named Gator while trying to collect a bounty. Gator’s death almost immediately creates a power vacuum on the streets. Things come to a head when his main lady (Star Trek’s Nichelle Nichols) puts an open hit out on Truck Turner with Gator’s stable of saucy streetwalkers being the prize.
Director Jonathan (Bad Girls) Kaplan delivers on the demands of the genre in the form of car chases, barroom brawls, and shootouts, but with slightly more flair than you may expect. (The hospital gunfight finale is especially memorable.) He also offers up such interesting sights as a pimp’s funeral along the way. Most of the fun comes from how rapidly the plot escalates into an all-out war.
Hayes delivers a fine turn in his first starring vehicle. He has an affable world weariness that suits the character nicely. While his theme song falls short of the heights of Shaft, it remains a solid second tier blaxploitation anthem. Likewise, the film falls just short of the classics of the genre, but it remains one entertaining blast of Blaxploitation goodness.
Hayes is buoyed by a murderer’s row of talent in the supporting cast. Yaphet Kotto makes for a fine foil as a villainous pimp. We also have Dick Miller as a lawyer, Scatman Crothers as a retired pimp, Stan Shaw as a young pimp, and Werewolf Woman’s Annik Borel as a sex worker. It’s Nichols who’s the most entertaining. You haven’t lived till you’ve seen the usually demure Lt. Uhura playing a foul-mouthed trash talking streetwalker.
Editor Michael Kahn went on to be the go-to editor for Spielberg.
AKA: Black Bullet. AKA: Chicago Poker.
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