‘The Guy From Harlem’ has a bit of a legendary status amongst lovers of bad movies and in particular, listeners to ‘Rifftrax’ who covered the film as their first ever ‘Blaxsploitation’ entry back in 2012. There seem to be a lot of folk who have a real soft spot for this film. So when AGFA announced that it was going to be releasing a mini boxset of films directed by Rene Martinez Jr. and that one of those films would be a HD scan of ‘Harlem’ I took the plunge thinking watching it for the first time in HD would probably be the best way to catch it…and I was…underwhelmed.

The plot of the film follows the titular ‘Guy from Harlem’ a detective for hire as we follow him on two connected cases. The first sees our man acting as bodyguard to the wife of an African national meeting with diplomats in the States to try and broker stronger relations. He’s given the mission of keeping the wife safe and happy during the discussions, with only one rule. Do NOT try to bang the African nationals wife…

You can imagine what happens next…

Once thats over and done with our ‘Guy’ is introduced to his next case, the daughter of a fairly wealthy gentlman has been kidnapped by a mob group led by the nefarious ‘Big Daddy’. The aim? to rescue the daughter and exchange her for drugs and cash. and…well…thats kind of what happens.

This is one of those movies that trades on the awkwardness of the cast being miscast and the budget so low they cant even afford to properly dress the sets. The idea being that we laugh at our lead because hes a guy who clearly isnt comfortable playing the suave cool detective type, but he’s been cast as just that, and its funny to see him (and the other miscast actors) desperately try to fill the roles. They fumble the ‘cool guy’ lines, can bearly do the physical segments without nearly injuring themselves and from thence the humour arose.

But the problem I have with this one is that its just SO so dry…WAY too dry for me…Not helped at all either by the fact this is essentially two 45 minute films slammed together rather than one long coherent plot.

Its not witty enough to be charming, its not awkward enough to make your jaw drop, its not got the budget to be interesting enough to hold my attention. What this is is a first half thats 45 minutes of two people rambling awkwardly in a hotel room set, with the highlight being a scene where our detective punches a maid who is CLEARLY a woman in one shot, only for it to cut to reveal its CLEARLY a man in a dress as part of an assassination attempt (that bad cut did make me laugh).

While the second half actually has some action and fight scenes (really…REALLY badly shot fight scenes and fight choreography that feels like watching pool noodles fight.) but again, its essentially just folks talking either in the detectives office or in Big Daddys hideout…for 45 minutes…awkwardly…

And dont get me wrong, a bit of awkward acting, the odd weird line delivery, can be really funny, especially if its paced out and timed well…But this is non stop across the whole thing, and its exhausting.

The characters are all super flexible in terms of their character profile, they just kind of, mould into whatever the film needs them to be, whether they naturally fit or not. The tones aiming for straight cut seriouis. But the cringey weirdness ends up leaving it feeling like the answer to the question ‘What if Napolion Dynamite was real life?’

The directions flat, lifeless and bland, theres really nothing standout to me, the cine is ultra basic tripod shots for the most part with maybe 1-2 tracking shots thrown in?…But thats about it, colour use is basically whatever they could get their hands on, with little coherency or ‘coding’ put into the set design. it is very literally just thrown together.

The edit is rough around the edges with cuts happening way to late or way to early quite regularly. they didnt film enough B-roll to help keep sequence structuring fluid so the whole thing is just LONG stretches of mid wide shots cutting occasionally to a head and shoulder close up, and then back again…and thats it.

The performances are probably the only reason to stick around. Loye hawkins turn as our lead detective Al Connors could best be described as ‘So close to shaft, but just…ONE CLICK off’ which is JUST enough to make the entire performance awkward. He’s sincere! my GOD he wants you to believe he’s a super cool detective. But he just cant quite sell me on a single line that comes out of his mouth. and the vast majority of the time he comes across as ‘well intentioned, slightly trippy neighbour’ than ‘Badass detective on a mission’

Wildman Steve is here in a cameo playing Harry De Bauld the father of the Daughter who’s kidnapped in the 2nd half of the film. and he’s probably the most GENUINELY entertaining part of this movie, because he can rev up from a 1 on energy to a 10 in about 3 seconds. He does it so effortlessly and he has some of the best deliveries here…That isnt saying much honestly…But its the best we’ve got.

The rest of the cast get maybe a sentence or two to say every 5-10 minutes, most of it just exposition. they dont have a whole lot of physical presence. In fact i’d say a good 75-80% of the performances here are delivered while fixed firmly in place, or sat in a clearly marked chair to avoid them going off camera or missing the frame. for low budget indie film making from the 70s? this isnt *Too* out of the ordinary…but its sparse and absolutely on the lower end of the scale.

And as for the soundtrack? ‘The Guy from Harlem Theme’ is a bop…but everything else is just elevator music to me. I really didnt get into it. and the editing of the scoring was blunt to say the least. its basically either on, or off. No attempt to time a needle drop well at all.

I didnt outright HATE ‘The Guy from Harlem’…But I just dont see a whole lot here to really LOVE. To me? it just felt like an incredibly low budget blaxsploitation film that had a handful of entertainingly bad moments…But not enough to carry the production as a whole.

Who knows? maybe the Rifftrax riff is the ‘secret sauce’ to this whole thing, and a good set of riffers will take this 1.5 star rating up to a 4? It’s definitely piqued my interest to see what Mike and the gang had to say about this one. But unriffed? it was a slog, not one i’d recommend and not one i’ll be revisiting any time soon if I can help it.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-guy-from-harlem/