Synopsis
Black, bold and bloody mean!
Truck Turner and his partner Jerry, who make their living as bounty hunters in Los Angeles, are hired to hunt down Gator, a pimp who has skipped bail.
1974 Directed by Jonathan Kaplan
Truck Turner and his partner Jerry, who make their living as bounty hunters in Los Angeles, are hired to hunt down Gator, a pimp who has skipped bail.
Isaac Hayes Yaphet Kotto Alan Weeks Annazette Chase Nichelle Nichols Sam Laws Paul Harris Charles Cyphers John Kramer Scatman Crothers Dick Miller Bob Harris Jac Emel Stan Shaw Wendell Tucker Sonny Barnes Don Watters Eddie Smith Esther Sutherland Earl Maynard Henry Kingi Lawrence Gabriel Jr. James Millhollin Jon Jacobs Douglas Anderson Don Megowan Richard Selzer Ruth Warshawsky Cheryl Sampson Show All…
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Nichelle Nichols doesn't get the praise she deserves for her performance in this film. The scene where she presents her girls to Yaphet's crew is one of my favorite scenes ever... that's not hyperbole.
And of course Isaac Hayes, Yaphet Kotto, Paul Harris... well, the entire cast is fantastic. Also, 1973 downtown LA imagery is fascinating. Might just be my favorite Blaxploitation film.
Watched the 101 Films import Blu-ray
The original blaxploitation-masquerading-as-Elmore Leonard movie: the sun-baked outskirts-of-LA backdrop, the simple wry humor, the flamboyant, dangerously stupid villains and casually hyper-competent heroes, and the pragmatics of crime and hustle. One of my favorite films.
85
Jam-packed with amazing elements:
1. Isaac Hayes, Yaphet Kotto, Scatman Crothers, Dick Miller, and so many other incredible actors.
2. Isaac Hayes singing his own theme song.
3. Isaac Hayes.
4. Car chases, shoot-outs, great fashion, a couple cats. All you need, really.
5. A funeral scene for a pimp where *other* pimps arrive to pay their respects, sprinkling coke over the dead body.
6. Isaac Hayes.
"you hurt?"
"nah, i'm indestructible."
basically the perfect LA neo-noir blaxploitation hangout jam with isaac hayes drinking, sweating and sprinting his way around town (and once again providing his own soundtrack) like a funky cross between philip marlowe and dirty harry; bounty hunting rapists, hitmen, pimps named gator, etc and blasting away half of the criminal underworld in the process. a non-stop train of sun-stroked car chases, bloody bar brawls, and beautiful LA location work that becomes home to some of the nastiest shootouts of the 70s. i will be watching this about a million more times.
“Truck Turner” takes a hand canon, and blows away the slums of toxic expectations for the blaxploitation genre.
What is so essential to the magnitude of “Truck’s” force is, that it isn't burdened with blaxploitation’s backwards methods of empowerment. Those being; respect earned through methods of crime and fear. That’s because…. “Truck” — was written to be a white man.
The script, about a professional football player-turned-bounty hunter, was intended as a vehicle for the likes of Robert Mitchum or Don Siegel. When they didn’t buy the pitch for the part — the film became blaxploitation.
“Truck,” then, finally allows its African American protagonist to be a hero. Turner isn’t dealing alongside the pimps and the junkies. He’s putting them…
"They call her 'Turnpike' 'cause you gotta pay to get on and pay to get off!"
Almost a western-like universe here, with pimps and skip tracers subbing for cattle rustlers and lawmen, and Truck and his various associates running amok across all manner of metropolitan environs, including ultimately (and hilariously) a crowded hospital, with no cops in sight. Isaac Hayes (pulling double duty as star and composer), Yaphet Kotto, Scatman Crothers, Dick Miller, and an absolutely transcendent Nichelle Nichols, a very long way from the Enterprise - this is easily one of the most entertaining movies ever made, and appropriately for a movie and protagonist named "Truck" it gearshifts subtly into an almost mournful mode regarding his lifestyle of seemingly…
A 90-minute endorphin jolt, and the pleasure comes from its expert construction but also its absolute tonal mastery, from good time vibes to Peckinpah-like mournful death and back again with no visible strain or effort. I'm pretty sure the secret of life is hidden somewhere in the pause before the last three notes of the main riff in Isaac Hayes' title song.
So much fun! Some things that stood out:
🔹 Amazing post-getting-shot/pre-death choreography. One guy gets shot and starts stumbling around like drunk Gumby. Then a tight shot of him wobbling like tweaked out Ellen Burstyn in Requiem for a Dream. He slinks into his car, garbles out some blood, and finally dies, his lifeless head blaring on the horn. Incredible! It was like an episode of So You Think You Can Die!
🔹Incredible music by Isaac Hayes in a film starring Isaac Hayes. Good job, Isaac Hayes!
🔹A scene where Hayes un-cocks his gun smash-cutting to a shot of Yaphet Kotto un-cocking his. A subtly cool sound design moment in a film with a lot of gonzo cool moments.
🔹Amazing feline acting, in a…
South Park's Chef as Truck Turner, one badass mutha fuckin bounty hunter. Gator the pimp. A kleptomaniac girlfriend fresh outta the slammer. An indestructible sidekick with a mini-fro. Parker before his ride on the Nostromo. A pimp funeral. A pimp with an eye-patch. A high dollar Ho' fashion show. Dreaming of tits in Tahiti. Hangin' pussy. The Insurance Company pisses off the wrong mutha fucka. A pimp's patio full of Ho's and nobody is getting fucked. Hospital chaos straight outta Hard Boiled. Blue's last ride. A madam gets what's coming. A cool-breezy-fun flick. Isaac Hayes is big, bold, and believable in the lead. If Truck and Shaft have a fight, my money is on Truck.
This feels like the comic book flipside to Coffy, cut from the same ragged cloth, but making that roughness go down easier with flashy costumes, coke-sprinkled funerals, and kitty kat comic relief. What really impresses me, though, is that even with all of the cartoonish dressings, this still has a moral center -- it's not glorifying the violence or the lifestyles that these rhinestone-studded eyepatch-wearing pimps live. Behind the dynamite clothes and the badass dialogue, these characters are all damaged humans doing what they have to in order to survive. The countless exploding squibs and gouts of paint blood splattered across the screen only serve as an exclamation point to all of this.
This isn't just one of the best blaxploitation films ever made -- it's also the best use of KFC product placement since Blast-Off Girls.
when a pimp dies, all his fellow souteneurs line up and sprinkle some yola on his fly-ass corpse.
‘nuff said.
Truck Turner is an unapologetically badass, fast paced blaxploitation thriller that managed to win me over scene be scene, element by element, until the ending had me pumping my fist as Isaac Hayes pumped holes into the brutal criminals who did him wrong. It's the textbook example of a movie that begins with lowered expectations only to blow right past them as it careens into its final act with mounting passion, a dash of weirdo humor, and a triumphantly funky soundtrack. After the first couple scenes, I was convinced it would be a pretty standard seventies action flick, but by the middle point - after we've been introduced to Truck's orange tabby, his jailbird girlfriend, and the greatest madame in…