And just like that… Isaac Hayes is back, baby!

Welcome back to B-Movie Enema, and welcome back, Isaac Hayes, and especially welcome back, blaxploitation! Just not too long ago, we had a quick appearance of Isaac Hayes in Return to Sleepaway Camp, playing the chef at the camp. He was dressed just like his Chef character from South Park. That’s how everyone knew that was Isaac Hayes, aka Chef, playing a chef.

This week, though, we’re getting Isaac Hayes into the place I think most people expect him to be – blaxploitation action. Yes, it’s 1974’s Truck Turner, also known as Black Bullet. By the time Truck Turner hit screens in June 1974, Hayes was already an Oscar winner. Yeah, I don’t think many people realize that Hayes won the Oscar for Best Original Song for his “Theme from Shaft.” That was a major achievement in 1972. Most Best Original Song Oscar winners were kind of stuffy, or sappy, or, to put it mildly, very white. Shaft was a hit, though, and it signified a shift into the 70s that black folks could play in the movie sandbox too… quite well. Isaac Hayes put together a banger of a theme song for the movie, and Oscar history was made.

And that history? It wasn’t so much the act of winning an Oscar as much as Hayes was only the THIRD black person EVER to win a competitive Academy Award. The other two were Hattie McDaniel for Gone with the Wind and Sidney Poitier for Lilies of the Field. It was an incredible feat.

What’s also kind of incredible is this movie. This isn’t so much outside the norm that this movie, like many other blaxploitation movies, was directed by a white man. To be exact, it was directed by Jonathan Kaplan. Kaplan was one of the Corman guys. He would go on to make some pretty great films in the 80s, including directing Jodie Foster to her first Academy Award win for Best Actress in The Accused. Funny enough, he also made Project X, which I referred to in last week’s Shakma review.

The incredible thing about Truck Turner is that it was conceived by a woman, Leigh Chapman. She was credited under a pseudonym, Jerry Wilkes. She originally intended for this movie to star a white man, specifically, she wanted either Lee Marvin, Robert Mitchum, or Ernest Borgnine to star in the movie. The pseudonym and the journey to it becoming a blaxploitation movie are kind of hilarious. You see, Kaplan was brought in to direct and intended to stick to the original script’s premise as written by Chapman. When Kaplan was told by producers that there was no money for a Marvin, Mitchum, or Borgnine lead, he was told right then, it was going to be blaxploitation. Chapman was booted from the project at that time. She wasn’t going to do a rewrite anyway. She admits that maybe she was slightly arrogant about it, but when she found out it was rewritten to be a black picture with pimps and whores, she recalled that was not part of her original story, so she used the pseudonym to still get the credit but not have her name on the film. She ultimately worked a few times over with Chuck Norris. She wrote the pilot episode of Walker, Texas Ranger, and also wrote The Octagon.

I’m not too sure if her comments about Truck Turner being turned into a black movie with pimps and whores are any kind of comment about her on a social awareness level, but she did want to try to do a feminist adaptation of The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand, which gives me a great deal of pause. Anyone interested in doing any Ayn Rand adaptation leaves me to question a lot of things about them on a social level.

Right out of the gate in Truck Turner, we get some bitchin’ Isaac Hayes funk. We see construction guys doing construction shit. We see business guys doing business shit. We see a homeless guy with his kitty on a leash, with a bottle of booze in his back pocket. They’re doin’ homeless guy and kitty shit. We have a woman beating the shit out of her no-good man on the street. This is the grimy version of Los Angeles largely reserved for New York-based movies of the time. I love it.

We meet Truck Turner in his messy apartment that doubles as his office. He’s a former football player-turned-bounty hunter. He left the game of football due to an injury. He, like the homeless boozer we saw earlier, owns a cat. That is awesome. Also awesome? He sleeps without a shirt but still wears his holster with his fuckin’ gun in it. That’s when you know you’re dealing with a serious motherfucker.

His partner, Jerry Barnes (clearly less cool a name than “Truck Turner”) kind of keeps the business afloat. He calls Truck to wake him up and motivate him to get to work. They drive out to an army base to collect some pervert named Garrity who skipped out on bail. When they get some beef from a redneck MP at the gate, Truck decides to bust through the gate. The MPs shoot his tire, but apparently they were in the right because they are tasked to bring in a guy who skips out on bail by any means necessary. While the redneck MP repairs Truck’s tire, they face another roadblock when the Major explains that 1) Garrity is a good guy, even if he spends a lot of time in the brig. 2) Garrity’s been injured twice in the line of duty. 3) As civilians, Truck and Jerry just don’t know what it means to serve and put their lives on the line for duty and country.

Truck doesn’t have time for this shit. Garrity raped and beat a 13 year old girl. If the Major wants to harbor a child molester, they have no problem spilling that to the press. So, the Major lets Garrity leave the base in civilian clothes.

However, like the MPs at the gate, Garrity is a racist piece of shit. So, Truck beats the holy livin’ shit out of him to prove he’s every bit the tough guy he says he is. Truck and Jerry deliver Garrity to the police station. From there, Truck goes to visit his girlfriend, Annie. She asks him if they can go away together once she’s released.

Their bounties come from bail bondsman Nate Dinwiddie (that’s a hell of a name). Nate and Jerry give Truck some shit over his relationship with Annie. She’s a serial booster. She’s been in jail for the past month for stealing a television. More importantly, Nate refers them to see Fogarty (good ol’ Dick Miller). He needs Jerry and Truck to pick up a pimp named Gator. Gator’s skipped his $30,000 bail. Truck knows Gator is a dangerous guy. He’s not going to let Fogarty low-ball them on their bounty.

Fogarty is desperate. No one else will go after Gator. That’s how dangerous this pimp is. If he loses this guy, he’ll be tossed out by his insurers. Truck and Jerry manage to shake Fogarty down for a pretty sweet reward for catching Gator.

Truck’s first stop is to visit what he calls “the hen.” This leads him to track down Dorinda, a madam who runs Gator’s bitches. I love how this movie has twice had Isaac Hayes walk into a room and get cat-called by, like, two dozen women. The first was the women’s prison when he visited Annie. This time, at a salon where white and black girls wooed and whistled at what one called “a fine piece of chocolate cake.” No notes, movie. I love it.

Not as much as I love who’s playing Dorinda – the always lovely Nichelle Nichols!

Dorinda is not just a pretty face. She can hold her own against Truck Turner. She refuses to tell him where Gator is. She walks off while Jerry keeps an eye on her, and Truck appears to take off in his car. Gator shows up, leading to a car chase through the streets of L.A.

This chase is every bit the chaos you want in a city street chase. Gator hits another car when he’s not looking ahead. He runs up on a sidewalk where he destroys a Rabbi’s cart of… what else… bagels. He also smashes into a flower cart. He loses one of the doors on his car. He hits a homeless guy’s trash can fire pit. He loses another door, smashes into cars, and eventually jumps out of his car to let it crash off a ravine.

Then the chase continues on foot! Eat your heart out, The French Connection. You ain’t got shit on Truck Turner! Biiiiiitch. I dunno… That “Biiiiiitch” seemed appropriate.

Anyway, eventually, Gator gets away and into a dive bar. There, he pays everyone inside, which is surprisingly a lot of people during the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, 50 bucks to stop two punks from coming in. He even tells them to send them to Boot Hill (i.e. fucking kill them). Truck runs inside, and a guy starts beating him up. Later, Jerry runs inside, and a guy starts beating him up. It’s chaos. Eventually, Truck and Jerry pull their guns, and that’s when the guys in the bar find out they were beating on football star Mack Truck Turner. The guys realized they needed more than 50 bucks to beat on a guy like that.

Gator slips away. So, Truck goes and finds a friend of his who might know a thing or two about this pimp. This is a case of “it takes one to know one.” That means you gotta find the flyest pimp of them all, Duke, played by Scatman Crothers. Duke tells Truck something he already knows – Gator is one bad dude. In fact, he calls him a dog among pimps. But, he does drop some pretty good intel that helps Truck and Jerry find some guys who can tell them where to find Gator.

Something else he tells Truck is that a new guy in town named Harvard Blue is looking for Gator too. This Harvard Blue guy is a high roller. He’s hustling women, drugs, gambling, you name it. There is a pimp civil war a-brewin’.

Truck and Jerry hang a guy out the window to find out where Gator is holed up. When Gator gets a phone call from this guy, he’s none too happy. In fact, he calls him a “Jive ass sucka!” Everything I know about blaxploitation says to never be called that.

So Jerry and Truck know exactly where Gator is. This also means that with the jive ass sucka calling him, Gator knows there’s trouble coming his way. So this leads to a shootout. While Jerry draws fire from Gator, Truck tries to sneak in through the back door. Gator runs out of the place and tries to catch Truck off guard by offering him more money than he’ll make in a year. As he pulls the wad of cash out of his pocket, he’s also pulling a gun from behind his back. Truck and Jerry smoke Gator with a couple of shots right into his torso.

While Jerry collects the money that fell out of Gator’s hand after being shot, the white bitch that Gator was shacking up with while on the run comes running out of the house with a pair of scissors.

Now, I’m going to try to describe this scene because I had all sorts of reactions to this. All of these reactions were good… in the best way possible, even. First, I busted out laughing at the slow-motion shot of this blonde woman running at full speed with her tits out and slapping back and forth. I did not expect this. I could not contain the laughter. Then! She raises up these giant scissors while running up behind Jerry. I literally exclaimed, “Oh no!!!” But don’t worry, Jerry’s fine. He’s injured but fine. That’s probably because she only got one stab in because Truck comes over to her and smacks her real hard, making her fall to the ground, possibly dead, but definitely unconscious. That made me laugh again. Then, I laughed even harder when Truck looks down at her and says, “Bitch!”

I think I love this movie.

Truck is in the doghouse with Annie. That little escapade with Gator, and he and Jerry subsequently collecting their bounty from Dick Miller and needing to drown their sorrows of very nearly being killed today, caused him to be late picking Annie up at the bus stop after she was released from prison. To be fair, Truck is drunk when he picked her up. She also calls him out for just wanting to give her beer and fuck. So he makes up for it by saying he’ll take her to get something to eat first. They return to his place with a box of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Damn… I miss original recipe KFC. All the KFCs are closed by me. I could really go for a bucket with some mashed potatoes, gravy, and cole slaw.

Now, if I didn’t love this movie after that moment in the car chase in which Gator hit the Rabbi’s cart full of bagels, or after that moment when Truck and Jerry had to deal with the scissor-wielding bitch after they killed Gator, it is impossible to not love this movie after this moment…

Your eyes do not deceive you, my dear Enemaniacs. This is a pimp funeral for Gator. You have sobbing bitches. There’s a procession of funky cars with vanity plates that tell you who is driving said cars. There’s a pimp flicking cocaine into Gator’s casket as if he’s pouring one out for the fallen homie. There’s a woman with a rainbow-colored afro. One of the pimps has a diamond-studded eye patch. The preacher looks like he’s gonna be pimpin’ bitches out the moment this fucking thing is over.

This is the greatest film ever made.

We finally meet Harvard Blue. He’s played by Yaphet Kotto, fresh off his turn as Mr. Big/Dr. Kananga in the James Bond adventure Live and Let Die. All things considered, I wonder if that would technically make Kotto the guy with the widest appeal out of all the principal actors here. Sure, Nichelle Nichols is on a beloved TV series. Scatman Crothers is a very popular musician and character actor. Isaac Hayes is an Oscar winner. I feel like it was a steal to get Yaphet Kotto in this movie. Plus, he’s kinda been hinted at earlier, and he’s finally here. I expect big things for him in this movie.

It appears he’s here to pay his respects, but he stares down a visibly upset Dorinda, then leans over and spits on Gator’s corpse.

Dorinda is adamant about keeping Gator’s business going. All the other pimps want to buy her stable. However, she is willing to make a deal with the devil to get revenge. She wants Truck Turner dead. The friendlier pimps don’t want to get involved in murder. They are happy just doing the prostitution and drugs. She offers her bitches. Basically, whoever kills Truck Turner will get her girls, who last year pulled in around a quarter of a million bucks collectively, and she’ll continue running the stable as she did for Gator.

Most aren’t willing to take her up on this. They don’t want to be in the blood revenge game. Even Harvard Blue says she’s coming in so hot that it’s only a matter of time before Truck Turner is her problem, just like it was Gator’s. One of the pimps, specifically seeing the money in this, attempts to kill Truck but is dispatched somewhat easily, especially when the pimp’s buddy refuses to kill Truck Turner.

After escaping the first attempt on his life, Truck and Annie come home to find Harvard Blue inside his apartment, sizing him up. Harvard Blue has a plan. He’s going to help Dorinda finance Truck’s murder with the plan to take over her stable of girls, and ultimately freeze her out. Blue’s goons keep trying to ambush Truck, but they end up dead. Truck even dispatches a few of them James Bond-style with a quick trigger finger and expert sharpshooting.

Blue makes an official deal with Dorinda to call in professional hitmen. He convinces her that if they don’t bring in professionals (which he refers to as the “insurance company”), Truck will soon discover she’s the one turning all the guns on him, and he’s going to come for her. Side note, one of the hitmen is called “Joe Dante,” presumably as a reference to the Roger Corman stable of filmmakers through American International Pictures, the company releasing this film.

Blue’s guys ambush Nate Dinwiddie. They beat him up to call Truck to lure him to his office. Truck answers the late night call, but is too drunk to go there to help Nate. Instead, he calls Jerry to send him down there ahead of him so he can sober up. This, sadly, is bad news for Jerry.

Blue is worried that Truck is now going to be a rabid bulldog coming for them after his friend was killed. They need to set another trap. Meanwhile, an extremely pissed off Truck visits Nate in the hospital. Nate tries to explain what happened. He mentions that some guy named Blue was there with these guys talking about insurance while they were beating on him.

Knowing the name Blue could only mean Harvard Blue. The police warn Truck that he needs to keep his nose clean and not go off half-cocked after what happened to Jerry and Nate. They do agree to keep a guy on Nate’s room for protection. When Truck and Annie come home, they find the apartment tossed and their cat strung up, dead. Truck wants Annie to go to her parents’ while this blows over, but she refuses. He knows they are being followed, so he takes her shopping, where he can frame her for shoplifting to get her out of the way so he can do all the big action shootout stuff with the bad guys.

With Annie out of the way, it’s time for Truck to kill some motherfuckers. He goes straight to a guy named Desmond’s place. Desmond is working with Blue to get Truck Turner for Dorinda. He threatens the security guard at the gate by shoving his gun into the guy’s butthole, and says that if he doesn’t let him in, he’s gonna get the biggest enema of his life. I love it when part of this site’s name is used in a movie of this caliber. After he shoves his gun into one of Desmond’s bitch’s mouths, Desmond tells him where to find Blue… which was part of the plan all along.

The hitmen are waiting for Truck, but he basically blows these motherfuckers away with three pulls of his trigger. These were supposedly the best hitmen that Blue knew, and they were killed after about 30 seconds. Truck Turner is a fuckin’ man!

The fourth hitman is at the hospital. Truck delivers Nate some flowers and a gun. Turns out, he needed it! Blue and some goons show up and start a whole ass shootout at the hospital. It’s fucking chaos. There’s nurses and doctors getting shot. Blue hides out in the operating room where doctors are doing surgery. Bags of bloody something or another get exploded. A goon gets shot in the face. Some poor bastard on a gurney gets dumped onto the floor, as does a guy in a wheelchair, and another son of a bitch in a wheelchair. This movie is glorious.

This ends the threat of Harvard Blue. The shootout is bonkers to begin with, in that it has just about everything you could possibly want with an action scene inside a confined space that you NEVER see a shootout in (a hospital). It ends with some excellence too. First, you have Yaphet Kotto slowly dying. He’s acting his balls right off. Then, you have the camera attached to him, creating this trippy motion while we watch him slowly dying. Then, Truck walking behind him, like he’s the angel of death there to see him off to the afterlife. It’s all fantastic.

That just leaves one more bad guy to go – Dorinda.

Truck goes straight to her place after dispatching everything that Harvard Blue could possibly throw at him. Truck tosses Dorinda around and starts rifling through her closet and packing her clothes up. He tells her he killed Blue and all his goons, and she’s next if she doesn’t get the fuck out of town. She slowly reaches for a gun in her bedside nightstand. She mistakenly thinks Truck won’t kill a woman.

He can and will. He most definitely will. And does.

Truck arrives to pick Annie up after she gets released from prison again. He’s packed all their stuff up and plans to leave Los Angeles like she wanted. She’s pissed at him for setting her up, but wins her back over when he reveals he got her a new kitten. They drive off for a new life together.

This glorious piece of near-perfect filmmaking ends with that bitchin’ Isaac Hayes funk.

I know you might think that I’m kind of overreacting or playing up this fairly obscure piece of blaxploitation cinema. I’m really not. This is the most fun I’ve had watching a movie in a really long time. Have I seen better, more impactful (or funnier) blaxploitation films? Sure. Have I seen ANY movie that gave me as much joy watching this in the last few months? Maybe not. Hell, it might be years since I’ve had as much joy watching a movie.

Isaac Hayes is great as always. He’s macho but also can show some emotion once things get a little too close to him. He’s got some fun, comedic moments too, especially with Jerry (Alan Weeks). You actually care what happens to people around Truck. I hated that Jerry was killed, and I hated that Nate was beaten to a pulp. I really hoped nothing was going to happen to Annie, and, as a cat lover myself, I was sad to see that their cat paid an unfortunate price for Truck doing his job.

That’s one of the greatest testaments to a movie’s quality – you give a shit about the characters and want to see the good guys come to no harm and the bad guys get punished. There are some really great action scenes here too. Jonathan Kaplan was very adept at shooting some really crazy chases and shootouts. I would be shocked to learn that people didn’t have a blast on this set.

Truck Turner, as I alluded to earlier, is no groundbreaking film in the blaxploitation genre, but not every movie has to be. The key thing here is that fun factor. If you aren’t enjoying this movie, something is wrong with you. It ain’t the movie’s fault. That’s on you, bucko. At the time of writing this review, Truck Turner is streaming on Pluto and Amazon Prime for free. Check this movie out. If you like gritty action flicks or blaxploitation movies, or, I suppose better yet, gritty blaxploitation action flicks, you are not going to be disappointed.

Goddamn! What a revelation! You know, in Roger Ebert’s tribute to Gene Siskel after the latter passed away in 1999, Roger talked about how Gene would sometimes see a movie that made him feel so good that weeks later, he would still talk about how good he felt. This is one of those moments for me. I am so happy I finally watched this movie. I had the DVD from Kino Lorber (by the way, it’s a beautiful-looking movie even on DVD) for a bit now. I don’t remember what put this on my radar, but I’m so glad I finally got it on the calendar and can say, with a full heart, this was an amazing time.

That’s kind of the joy of movies, ain’t it? Finding something you didn’t know you would love, but totally head over heels for, and wanting all your friends to watch it. Ah… It’s a good feeling. Let’s hope next week’s movie has a tenth of that feeling, because even a tenth of how I feel after Truck Turner would be fantastic. It’s time for a late-stage Cannon Film release starring Charles Bronson. Look out, everybody… It’s Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects!