Review: Hell Up in Harlem

Despite what we learned at the end of “Black Caesar”, gangster Tommy Gibbs (Fred Williamson) is alive – barely – as his father (Julius Harris) get him medical help, whilst also getting his hands on the ledgers that detail the bribing of high-ranking city officials. The man behind the assassination attempt on Tommy is a corrupt, mafia-connected  DA named DiAngelo (a completely forgettable Gerald Gordon), with Tommy’s ex-wife Helen (Gloria Hendry) inadvertently making things worse by pleading to DiAngelo for Tommy’s life and just arresting him instead. She’s got their two kids to think about, so having their father dead wouldn’t be good for them. Once Tommy is back fighting fit, he goes about taking down all of those who wronged him, backed by two chief lieutenants, the blood-thirsty and ambitious Zach (Tony King) and surprisingly, Tommy’s formerly estranged father (Julius Harris). The latter gets to liking the taste of power and wealth that being a paid thug and shakedown man affords him. Tommy also find the time to marry a sweet church lady (Margaret Avery) he meets at the church of old friend Rev. Rufus (D’Urville Martin), who is now fully legit.

 

Everything bad you’ve likely heard about this 1973 sequel from writer-director Larry Cohen (“It’s Alive!”, “The Stuff”, “Q – The Winged Serpent”, “Uncle Sam”) is pretty much true. The first “Black Caesar” is for me, if not the best blaxploitation film of all-time, certainly the most ambitious in the subgenre to also deliver solid results. This sequel – and even Cohen himself admitted this – was hastily put together to get out there the same year as the original and cash in on its success. Hell, the on screen credit for Fred Williamson is ‘as Black Caesar’, not ‘as Tommy Gibbs’. And let’s be honest, Tommy pretty clearly died in the first film, and Cohen knows he’s only resurrecting him to make some cash at the box-office. There’s zero legit reason for another chapter in the Tommy Gibbs story. It’s a cheapjack sequel rushed to release and obviously a greatly inferior product. It’s also still somehow a highly watchable experience. I know, right? Warts and all, it still actually deserves a recommendation, albeit one with the crushing disappointment of what might’ve been on one’s mind throughout.

 

Things start OK, with Edwin Starr providing a funky AF theme song that does the job, albeit not nearly as well as James Brown’s anthemic ‘Down and Out in New York City’ did for the first film. The film has clearly been shot in the same places as the first film, with the handheld camerawork of Fenton Hamilton (“Black Caesar”, “It’s Alive”) attempting to convince you that this is every bit the film that “Black Caesar” was. The performances are all OK to very good, the latter particularly applying to Julius Harris returning as Papa Gibbs and Tony King as a treacherous, enterprising henchman/thug. However, with Harris’ Papa Gibbs, the difference between the two films shows its first signs. Harris is indeed very good, but last time we saw Papa, he was horrified and embarrassed by his son’s criminal activities, and although wanting a relationship with him, seemed to take a hard-line approach. Here, Papa Gibbs becomes one of Tommy’s chief enforcers and starts to seemingly enjoy being a violent thug, earning money and having plenty of action with the ladies. It’s entertaining stuff, interesting actually, but it’s so diametrically opposed to the character from the first film, and Cohen doesn’t even really bother trying to connect the dots. After a while, I just tried to forget about it and enjoy the film Cohen gives us here. I was able to do that, especially due to Harris’ performance, but the lumps and bumps are still there. Harris at times actually comes across more like his Bond henchman Tee Hee from “Live and Let Die”, quite sadistic and menacing. I liked that film and it had some of the series’ best henchmen, Tee Hee included so I was fine with it at the end of the day (even though Papa Gibbs was surely too old at this point to be capable of roughing people up). Tony King is a pretty familiar presence from the Blaxploitation era, and this represents one of his best showings. As Tommy’s treacherous, sadistic #2 he makes for a damn fine cold psycho, if perhaps not quite as effective a foe for Tommy as Art Lund’s sadistic racist cop was in the first film. Also on hand is the always welcome D’Urville Martin as Tommy’s childhood friend Rufus. He’s undergone a bit of a change between films, too. Here he’s gotten a little taste of power and responsibility to the community, and tries to put a stop to Tommy’s evil gangster ways. Unlike Papa Gibbs however, the change in Rufus is more believable in that he doesn’t hate Tommy. He still loves him. He just hates what he is doing and what he has become. It’s a good performance from the underrated actor. From the female side of things we get a returning Gloria Hendry, and a surprising Margaret Avery, who gets naked and freaky with Tommy within about two minutes of screen time. Bit startling for the future Shug Avery, I must say, but the soft-spoken Avery is quite lovely nonetheless. As for Ms. Hendry, in both films she tends to do a lot of shrieking and crying. Still, she probably gets a little more to chew on this time and plays it more effectively. That’s “Superfly” co-star Charles McGregor (whose name is misspelled in the credits – nice one!) accompanying Papa Gibbs one on of his intimidation gigs. He was an underrated character actor.

 

As for Williamson, he’s his usual self, which means less interesting than he was in the first film, which was one of his best-ever performances. The material is lesser, so Hammer acts accordingly I guess. He’s solid, but just not nearly as compelling or magnetic. Part of that is also because the film is more of the same, only lesser. Look to the mafioso massacre getting a re-run here, except this time it’s machine gun-wielding black maids doing the killing. It’s a silly joke. It’s a profit-motivated sequel churned out quickly, so a little repetition goes with the territory, but it’s lesser repetition. Also, I’m not sure using so much Williamson voiceover to tell the story was such a good idea. I’m not sure if Williamson was away filming elsewhere at the time and the voiceover was a cover (they filmed it on weekends because both Cohen and Williamson were making other movies at the time, so it’s very likely), or if Cohen was just trying to be fancy. If anything it seems a bit cheapjack to me. On the plus side of things, the film is exciting and Cohen keeps it all moving quickly. If you just want a film with action and excitement, the film works on that level. It’s largely why I’m recommending it. On the downside, that brevity means a great deal of choppiness to the narrative. One minute Tommy and his new love are shagging, a minute later and it's 3 years later and they have a kid. WTF?

 

Although “Black Caesar” was every bit the blaxploitation film, it was ambitious and owed a lot to gangster movies of the 30s. This hastily put together sequel is an entertaining watch, but only on a trashy exploitation movie level. There’s zero ambition here beyond raking in the money, whether you blame Cohen or AIP for that greed. It proves entertaining, but very messy and choppy and frankly not always terribly coherent. For a cheap cash-in rushed into production, this is still fun stuff, but it should’ve been better. Tommy Gibbs and his story deserve so much better. Still, you kinda have to admire Cohen for his quick, cheap guerrilla-style filmmaking to get this thing even made at all even if that style also serves to make it a lesser film than the original (there was no completed script prior to filming!). Julius Harris, Tony King, and the funky soul soundtrack are the highlights here. Perhaps one of the least enthusiastic recommendations I’ll ever give, but that just goes to show how much the first film means to me. Also, it’s blaxploitation – all blaxploitation movies have flaws, even the best ones.

 

Rating: B-