Exploitation Week: Detroit 9000

What’s shakin’ babies.  Welcome back to Day 2 of Exploitation Week and boy howdy did I find a humdinger of a film.  We have action, nudity, car chases, gunfights a complex heist leading to cop murders. Baby this is a packed film.  So brush off your patrol blues, prep your unlimited ammo six shooter and practice your racist epithets.  This is Detroit 9000.

Sing Misty for Me!

Spoilers are out of sight, baby.  Real righteous.

The Band of Brothers event; intervary becomes a charity event for Congressman Aubrey Hale Clayton (Rudy Challenger of Hit Man, ‘Sheba, Baby, The Slams, Sanford and Son, Killer on Board, Sole Survivor and Harlem Nights) gets robbed for over $400,000.  The black community screech at the cops for this robbery and wonders where police protection was.  The white community is claiming it is a scam to get attention to the media and create racial issues.  This is in the streets of Detroit has to be answered. 

We're booking you for being too fine. Heh.

Enter 14 year veteran cop Detective Lieutenant Danny Bassett (Alex Rocco of The Godfather, Herbie Goes Bananas, Nobody’s Perfekt, The Entity, Cannonball II and The George Carlin Show)a street savvy white cop that has a wife in the bug house, he is strapped for cash and is an honest cop behind the 8 ball has been assigned this robbery.  He knows he is screwed.  If it was blacks that did the crime, the community screams foul. If whites did it they scream foul and if he cannot solve it, he’s screwed.

   

The trifecta of boned doesn’t stop there as he is assigned a partner Detective Sergeant Jesse Williams (Hari Rhodes of Earth II, Conquest of Planet of the Apes, To Sir, with Love, Most Wanted and Murder Without Motive: The Edmund Perry Story) a college educated, street smart black man and member of the community is fine with the team up but cannot fathom how Bassett can deal with all the crap life has handed him. 

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They both tackle the case from different angles as well as sources in the hopes to solve the case at the ridiculous time restraint of 48 hours.  A prostitute at the local brothel Roby (Vonetta McGee of Blacula, The Norliss Tapes, Shaft in Africa, Repo Man, Hell Town, Cagney & Lacey and L.A. Law) knows of a double cross from the heist and tries to tell the cops but is conflicted as she knows Jesse from a younger and more innocent time in her life.  

The gang that hit up the felons of the heist go their separate ways to let the heat cool off and yet are packing hardware and ending up in shoot outs with cops.  WTF??!!!   Be cool cats and this could just wash over but NOoOoOOo they got to go right to blasting patrolmen.  With every tick of the clock and suspects and leads drying up Bassett and Williams are almost at their wits end.

I have just a few notes of this movie.  Cinematography is done 35 mm Panavision(anamorphic lens) and this is recorded in 4-track Stereo (double layered 2 track for audio taping) and given this was filmed in 1973 you can still see damage from the 1967 race riot in Detroit all over the town; a point referenced in the film as well.  This was well written and really embraced the time of change in both cultures attempting to tolerate one another in the hopes to acceptance. 

Writer Orville H. Hampton (Rocketship X-M,The Alligator People, Jack the Giant Killer and Riot on Sunset Strip) did his level best to show each of the stereotypes from both sides of the fence to a realistic standing…although I myself have not heard the term Honky that many times ever. 

TV director and producer Arthur Marks (Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, Linda Lovelace for President and The Monkey Hu$tle) was said the filming process was a double edged sword in that he was uncomfortable with the violence and nudity but the experience did allow him to further on into Film with a different view of how violence is portrayed.