It's another cheap programmer for Al Adamson as a couple of cops go after an international dope ring. With a post-Motown chick-a-boom soundtrack being run out of a hotel where the women guests are recruited for criminal activities, some of it is shot in Vegas for that gritty-but-luxurious feel that people felt appealed to the 1970s, and some in a pink-walled pool hall.This seems to have been so discouraging that after appearing in it, Russ Tamblyn didn't show up in another movie for six years. He had been in some awful dreck over the years -- he has an Oscar nomination for PEYTON PLACE -- but some things discourage a man.

Another bottom-of-the-barrel Graze Z exploitation quickie from director Al Adamson, widely considered to be one of the worst directors of all time (even worse than Ed Wood, yes...at least Wood's films were somewhat entertaining). After a run of shoddy horror epics in the late '60s/early '70s, Adamson, ever one to cash in on a popular cinema trend to make a few bucks, turned his hand to the blaxploitation genre and ran off a couple of thrillers (DEATH DIMENSION is another of his cardboard productions, slightly - ever so slightly - more interesting due to the introduction of martial arts). This is a boringly sub-standard cops-and-robbers thriller yarn in which a black policeman goes after the people running a crime syndicate from a brothel which fronts as a hotel. There's more than that, but the plot is so convoluted and contrived that you can't be bothered to care. The only good thing is the funky music score that permeates through the action.The main problem with the film is that the entire cast is so unappealing. The women are frequently naked (of course) which doesn't help and the men are just sweaty bad actors. Timothy Brown is the blaxploitation hero obviously modelled to be a Shaft clone, yet lacks the natural charisma his role demands - he just seems wooden and a clichéd macho-type (check out his hilariously dated - not to mention - Shaft-style love scene with a reporter). And Russ Tamblyn is just pathetic as a moustachioed villain, his weight blossoming and good looks vanished both at the same time (it's amazing that he enjoyed a second stage of his career in later life, even if it was in the hands of Fred Olen Ray).The action highlights include a hostage-taker who accidentally blows himself and his hostage up when his bomb becomes trapped in a car door, a handful of boringly routine shoot-outs in the street where bad actors clutch their chests as they die, and a really unexciting car crash where a vehicle rolls down a cliff in slow-motion after some poor editing attempts to convince you it was nudged off the road by another car. Adamson does manage a few choice moments, such as an uncomfortable spot which displays the downside of gambling where a penniless broad bets her body to a group of greasy thugs and loses, but these are few and far between. Mostly it's just rip-off after rip-off after cliché, with that old hoary chestnut of a rooftop chase being dragged out of the closet yet again for another airing down.The finale involves a police raid on the villains' headquarters, where the lesbian crime queen (!) is arrested and Tamblyn is impaled on a piece of scrap metal (the only moderately gory shot the film offers). Things still drag on though, to a showdown in the desert straight out of CHARLEY VARRICK, where the final bad guy (a Bobby Rhodes wannabe) attempts to escape via plane before it's blown out of the sky by an incredibly lucky - perhaps darned near impossible - shot from Brown's gun. One thing that did make me chuckle was the misleading box art for this video. If you check the top of the box carefully there's a drawing of an airliner exploding. The actual plane in the movie is a BI-PLANE! Yes, once again artistic license is to blame for making a film look more expensive than it really is. SYNDICATE VICE - a film only for those with acute insomnia and looking for a cure.

When a big-time drug dealer from Detroit by the name of "Guido" (J. C. Wells) comes to Las Vegas and gets involved with a local hoodlum known as "Ziggy" (Russ Tamblyn) a local detective named "Tony" (Geoffrey Land) and his partner "Kicks Carter" (Timothy Brown) become highly suspicious since Ziggy isn't in the same league as Guido and he doesn't deal in drugs. What neither Tony nor Kicks realize is that Guido needs about $100,000 in order to purchase weapons which he then intends to trade for high-quality drugs. Ziggy needs Guido's help to kidnap a courier carrying $250,000 from a security company. But in order to do that Ziggy needs information from a gambling addict by the name of "Terry" (Jana Bellan) who works at the security company. The problem is that Terry happens to be dating Tony and he doesn't want Ziggy anywhere near her. Now, rather than reveal what transpires next I will just say that I thought that for a blaxploitation movie produced in the mid-70's this particular film wasn't too bad. I especially liked the complex plot and some of the unexpected twists this movie presented. Slightly above average.

Black Heat (1976) ** (out of 4)A tough black cop (Timothy Brown) from Las Vegas, with the help from his white partner (Geoffrey Land), tries to stop some criminals who are bringing heroin, weapons and other items into a local hotel. Director Al Adamson tackled just about every genre and he managed to make both decent and horrible films in each of them. BLACK HEAT might not be as much fun as something like Dracula VS. FRANKENSTEIN but for the most part it's probably the best made film I've seen from the director. Had the running time been edited down another ten-minutes you might even say this was a good film from Adamson and that there would have been quite rare. The storyline itself certainly isn't anything we haven't seen from other Blaxploitation pictures but for the most part the cast is fun and we're given a couple good villains to help keep everything moving. On a technical level it appears to a little more effort went into the picture including a higher production value and some nice cinematography. There's a car chase towards the start of the picture that might be the best sequence from the director's filmmography and this includes a terrific shot of the action from on top of a cliff. Brown isn't the greatest actor in the world but I think he's good on screen and manages to help keep the film entertaining. Russ Tamblyn plays a drug dealer named Ziggy and adds a lot of fun and especially during his introduction scene. The film eventually runs out of gas and it drags too much during the finale but overall this is a minor effort in the genre that fans of the director's should like. The most bizarre scene is when a woman offers to do a gang bang if she loses a card game. She does lose but then tries to back out when the men force themselves on her. I'm really not sure what Adamson was trying to go for during this scene but it's pretty bizarre with the type of score on it.