Awesome Movie

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Blistering performances.

Blistering performances.

Having performed the theme song for blaxploitation classic Shaft (1971), soul singer Isaac Hayes got to be the star of his own funky black action flick, appearing as Mac 'Truck' Turner, an ex-football star turned bounty hunter who becomes the target of hired hit men after killing vicious pimp Richard Leroy 'Gator' Johnson (Paul Harris) during a shootout.Although Hayes isn't in the same league as blaxploitation legends Richard Roundtree, Fred Williamson or Jim Kelly, his acting leaving quite a lot to be desired, he acquits himself well enough in the lively action scenes, of which there are plenty. Truck Turner delivers car chases, fist-fights and shootouts aplenty, with the film getting more and more bloody as it progresses, every bullet wound spurting bright red. The film also benefits from an unforgettable turn from Nichelle 'Lt. Uhura' Nichols as foul-mouthed bitch Dorinda, the woman who wants Truck dead: she couldn't be more unlike her wholesome Star Trek character if she tried.Other moments that guarantee a good time for fans of the genre include a wild-eyed topless woman attacking Truck's partner Jerry (Alan Weeks) with a knife, Gator's burial (you ain't lived until you've seen a funeral where all the guests are pimps and hos), Dorinda's hilarious sales pitch for her whores ("We call her Turnpike, cuz you gotta pay to get on and pay to get off!"), Jerry getting blasted to bits by the hired killers, a wonderfully violent gun-fight in a hospital, and the agonising death scene of pimp Harvard Blue (Yaphet Kotto), who deserves everything he gets for using a child as a human shield.7.5 out of 10, rounded up to 8 for Scatman 'Kick the Can' Crothers sporting a silky white shirt and cult actor Dick Miller wearing a salmon pink jacket. Nice duds, guys!

The string of blaxploitation movies continued with Jonathan Kaplan's "Truck Turner", starring Isaac Hayes as a football player looking for a bail-jumping pimp. The trailer proclaims HE MAKES A HEALTHY LIVING...BY MAKING LIVING UNHEALTHY! The movie has everything that you might expect in such a movie. What I thought was really neat was the cast. Aside from Hayes (known to later generations as Chef on "South Park"), there's Nichelle Nichols (Uhura on "Star Trek"), Scatman Crothers (Dick Hallorann in "The Shining"), and character actor Dick Miller, who often plays a character named Walter Paisley, but has also appeared in every one of Joe Dante's movies.All in all, a really fun flick.

Isaac Hayes is bail bondsman Truck Turner; he's a man's man, no he's a man's man's man. Charming with the ladies and mean with the baddies, "he's like a bulldog with eyes up his ass". For someone more famous for his funky and cool music, which also won him the Oscar for the score of Shaft, Hayes displays an abundance of natural charisma and screen presence that it's really a shame he didn't have more lead roles in his day. He was also considered for the role of Shaft but it ended up in Richard Roundtree's hands.Truck Turner the movie is every bit the blaxploitation classic one should expect. Filled with hot rods, jive ass broads, pimps and crooks, superb dialogues in that outdated but always funny 70's genre lingo and enough slow motion gunfights to equal Sam Peckinpah, Truck Turner is a thrill a minute and one of the best the genre has to offer. It starts off as a buddy movie as Turner and his bail bondsman friend are trying to track down a pimp called Gator and before long it turns 180 degrees into a revenge movie to rival Coffy. There's a long chase sequence in the first act that ranks among the best of the decade: it has everything from cars chasing and crushing their way through anything to gunfights en route and ends with a good old bar fight. That's just one of the good parts of the movie, as it manages to work on all levels: the action is nice in that good old fashioned way, the dialogues are not just filler, the drama works when it has to and the comedic timing is spot on.Eighteen days from the posting of this review Isaac Hayes passed away and heaven became a little funkier. We'll always have stuff like Truck Turner to remember and cherish him for. RIP man.

A fan of 70s Blaxploitation cinema, I've had "Truck Turner" of 1974 sitting on my DVD shelf for some time now, always eager to watch it, and the recent death of Isaac Hayes (R.I.P. big man) was reason enough to finally do so. And I was not disappointed. Isaac Hayes is probably most prominent in Blaxploitation cinema for composing and performing the theme song for the sub-genre's most famous film, Gordon Parks' "Shaft" of 1971, and he also starred as the super-tough and super-cool eponymous hero in a flick that ranges among the most entertaining of its kind - namely this, "Truck Turner". The bald and bearded Mac 'Truck' Turner is a former football player turned bounty hunter and Hayes is supremely bad-ass in the role. Inbetween crime-busting and drinking sessions with his colleague Jerry (Alan Weeks), Truck, who sleeps with his holster on and whose mere name makes the bad guys shake in fear, pays visits to his sexy girlfriend who tends to get jailed for her quick temper...The film basically has everything good blaxploitation cinema needs: A super-tough bad-ass of a hero as you will only see them in 70s cinema, a cool sidekick, eccentric villains, violent shootouts, funky music, delightfully vulgar slang dialogue including many unforgettable lines and, last but definitely not least, dozens of sexy and dangerous women. None other than Star Trek's Nichelle Nichols plays the beautiful and lethal crime-madame and prostitution-mastermind Dorinda, and Yaphet Kotto (Alien) makes a perfect crime-boss in his role of Harvard Blue. Alan Weeks makes a good sidekick for Truck Turner and beautiful Annazette Chase fits greatly in the role of Truck's girlfriend. Isaac Hayes himself is great, simply the definition of Bad-Ass in his role. Every line he says is the epitome of coolness, and so is everything he does. The funky theme-song, which was, of course, composed and sung by Hayes himself, is great and contributes a lot to the unique blaxploitation feeling. The film furthermore profits from great camera work - Truck blows them baddies away from some very cool angles. All in all, "Truck Turner" should not be missed by a fan of 70s Exploitation cinema. Highly Recommended!