Retro Review: BODY AND SOUL (1981)

BODY AND SOUL
(US - 1981)

Directed by George Bowers. Written by Leon Isaac Kennedy. Cast: Leon Isaac Kennedy, Jayne Kennedy, Muhammad Ali, Peter Lawford, Michael V. Gazzo, Perry Lang, Kim Hamilton, Gilbert Lewis, Nikki Swasey, Danny Wells, Johnny Brown, Azizi Johari, Rosanne Katon, Chris Wallace, Al Denavo, Robbie Epps, J. B. Williamson, Mel Welles, DeForrest Covan, Eddie Mustafos, Ola Ray. (R, 105 mins)

"I just wish you were double-jointed so you could turn around and kiss your own ass!" 

A minor hit for Cannon in the fall of 1981 before being generally forgotten in the ensuing decades, BODY AND SOUL was a remake of the 1947 John Garfield boxing classic retooled for Leon Isaac Kennedy and Jayne Kennedy during the brief moment in time when they were a celebrity power couple. Leon was a DJ in Cleveland and Detroit who broke into movies in the early '70s with small roles in HAMMER and MEAN JOHNNY BARROWS before scoring a huge sleeper hit with Jamaa Fanaka's 1979 prison boxing saga PENITENTIARY. Jayne was a model, actress, and sportscaster who became the first African-American woman to co-host a Sunday NFL show when she replaced Phyllis George and joined Brent Musberger on CBS' NFL TODAY in 1978. Leon and Jayne were married in 1971 and appeared together in Cirio H. Santiago's 1978 Filipino actioner DEATH FORCE (aka FIGHTING MAD), but by 1981, between Leon's success with PENITENTIARY and Jayne's high-profile presence in sports broadcasting and on magazine covers, they had enough clout to get the green light on a dream project like BODY AND SOUL--written by Leon himself--even if it was with Cannon, still finding its niche in the early days of the Golan-Globus era.

Leon stars as Leon Johnson, a gifted boxer who doesn't really take the sport very seriously until his wheelchair-bound kid sister Kelly (Nikki Swasey, who had a recurring role on DIFF'RENT STROKES as Arnold's snobby nemesis, Lisa Hayes) needs expensive treatments to battle sickle cell disease. He drops out of med school to reinvent himself as Leon "The Lover" Johnson, a flashy showoff who even seeks out Muhammad Ali--as himself--as a trainer. Ali turns him down ("Look at you, you look like a mosquito!" the Champ quips), and instead gives him one of his own entourage, grizzled old Frankie (GODFATHER PART II Oscar-nominee Michael V. Gazzo, credited as "Mike Gazzo" in one of those short-lived, mid-career name changes that never stick unless you're Laurence Fishburne--just ask Charles Sheen, Chris Walken, Don Pleasence, Brad Dillman, or Jim Brolin), to function as the Mickey to his Rocky, along with Leon's usual trainer, his goofball buddy Charles (a really terrible performance by Perry Lang). All the while, Leon falls hard for sports reporter Julie Winters (Jayne), who's assigned to cover his quick ascent in the ring and ends up engaged to him over the course of a single montage set to "With You I'm Born Again" by Billy Preston and Syreeta.

Leon and director George Bowers (THE HEARSE, MY TUTOR) lean in on the montage as a way to cut through huge chunks of story, which soon relies on an extensive checklist of every rise-fall-redemption cliche in the playbook: Leon gets seduced by the glitz and glamour, starts sleeping around, Julie catches him in a foursome (!), he's offered a too-good-to-be-true-deal by sleazy, corrupt, mob-connected promoter "Big Man" (Peter Lawford, in one of his last films), and Charles falls under the spell of drugs after one of Big Man's flunkies (Gilbert Lewis) gives him some coke and immediately gets him hooked ("Hey, man...you ever heard of freebasing?" he asks Charles in the most Afterschool Special tone imaginable). Big Man then offers Leon $200,000 to bet against himself and throw a fight, forcing him to get his priorities together, win back Julie, get Charles off drugs after they have a huge falling-out ("Give your money to your dope man for your freebase and your angel dust!"), and finally get some workout time in with Ali, who takes part in a sparring sequence with the writer/star but you can tell The Champ--who would lose his final fight and retire from the ring a month after BODY AND SOUL hit theaters--is going a little easy on him.

Just out on Blu-ray from Scorpion (because physical media is dead), BODY AND SOUL has enough overwrought elements that you almost wish it would go all-in on its heavy-handed histrionics, whether it's Charles' drug addiction ("We created monsters, Leon!") or the soap opera melodrama of Leon and Julie's up-and-down relationship. She has to put up with his ego, his female fan base who call themselves "Leon's Lovelies" and throw their panties in the ring during his fights, and then she bets it all when she mortgages her house and puts it all on him to win, forcing him to put integrity first ("I don't play with hearts the way you do!" she yells, reminding him "I bet every cent I have on my man to win!"), even though he's ostensibly only in it for his sister ("You bought into it! You became your biggest fan!"). The climactic bout, pitting Leon against Big Man's next big thing--raging psycho Ricardo "Madman" Santiago (Al Denavo), who's introduced violently hurling a baby to the ground when its diaper leaks on his lap--is one of the most ludicrously absurd boxing matches ever depicted onscreen. Santiago does about 25 things worthy of disqualification--including below-the-belt hits, a very late blow to the head after the bell, and an early version of Mike Tyson's infamous Evander Holyfield ear chomp--and yet the ref never stops the fight.

Sure, BODY AND SOUL is dumb, predictable, and formulaic as hell, but there's a scrappy energy to it amidst all the stupidity. It never goes all the way into full-on bad movie territory but takes itself just seriously enough to be sufficiently amusing in an unintentional way. Leon Isaac Kennedy--who, despite his striking resemblance to Sugar Ray Leonard and starring in several boxing movies, was not an actual boxer--would reteam with Jamaa Fanaka for 1982's PENITENTIARY II and 1987's insane PENITENTIARY III (the latter tragically MIA on DVD and Blu-ray), and would write and star in 1986's KNIGHTS OF THE CITY (featuring Smokey Robinson, an old friend from his Motown radio days and best man at his and Jayne's wedding), while staying busy in B movies like 1983's LONE WOLF MCQUADE, 1985's TOO SCARED TO SCREAM, and 1986's HOLLYWOOD VICE SQUAD. Both Leon and Jayne would retire from acting by the early '90s, with Leon becoming a minister and Jayne devoting much of her time to the charity organization Children's Miracle Network and raising awareness for endometriosis after being diagnosed with the condition in the late '80s. BODY AND SOUL didn't lead to further pairings for the celebrity couple, however: they divorced in 1982, not long after the film's release.

BODY AND SOUL opening in Toledo, OH on 11/20/1981

Retro Review: COUNSELOR AT CRIME (1973)

COUNSELOR AT CRIME
aka THE COUNSELLOR
(Spain/Italy - 1973; US release 1975)

Directed by Alberto De Martino. Written by Adriano Bolzoni, Vincenzo Flamini (Vincenzo Mannino), Leonardo Martin and Alberto De Martino. Cast: Martin Balsam, Tomas Milian, Francisco Rabal, John Anderson, Dagmar Lassander, Carlo Tamberlani, Manuel Zarzo, Eduardo Fajardo, George Rigaud, Franco Angrisano, Giovanni Carbone, Fortunato Arena, Carla Mancini, Lorenzo Piani, Sacheen Littlefeather, Nello Pazzafini. (R, 102 mins)

While most films in the polziotteschi subgenre of politically-charged Italian crime movies of the 1970s took place in Rome, Naples, and Sicily, COUNSELOR AT CRIME is a bit of an outlier in that it's set almost entirely in America. Journeyman director and co-writer Alberto De Martino (whose later credits included the EXORCIST ripoff THE ANTICHRIST, the OMEN ripoff HOLOCAUST 2000, and the MST3K favorite THE PUMAMAN) fashions COUNSELOR as a pretty blatant, albeit contemporary GODFATHER knockoff. Shot largely in San Francisco and Albuquerque in January and February of 1973, COUNSELOR AT CRIME (or, as it was known in Italy, IL CONSIGLIORI) hits everything on the GODFATHER checklist: Sonny-at-the-causeway-like ambushes; a treacherous, Sollozzo-like troublemaker trying to make a name for himself by eliminating a powerful Don; an unexpected sojourn to Sicily when things get too hot at home in the States; and someone is even handed the severed head of a fish, a clever way to knock two things off the checklist by combining "sleeps with the fishes" with the horse's head in the movie mogul's bed. IL CONSIGLIORI was released in Europe in the summer of 1973 but didn't make its way to the US until 1975, when low-grade exploitation outfit Joseph Green Pictures picked it up and retitled it COUNSELOR AT CRIME. It's a largely by-the-numbers gangster picture that goes out of its way to look as American as possible, spotlighting the San Francisco locations where De Martino valiantly attempts to keep the Golden Gate Bridge visible as often as possible (there's even a sequence taking place at the same exit ramp where a pimp is killed in the same year's Dirty Harry movie MAGNUM FORCE), with Riz Ortolani's score having a definite "'70s cop show" sound to it when the composer isn't straight-up borrowing a key theme from his VALACHI PAPERS score from the previous year.

A low-level, syphilitic gangster loses his shit in a bowling alley, setting in motion a chain of events that sees underboss Garofalo (played by a backup Michael Ansara toupee planted on the head of Francisco Rabal) make a ballsy power play to take over the San Francisco organization ruled by Don Antonio Magadino (Martin Balsam). Magadino's mind is elsewhere since his godson and consigliere Thomas Accardo (Tomas Milian) is being paroled after serving a stretch for jury tampering in Santa Fe State Prison in New Mexico, the same joint that houses incarcerated Boss of Bosses Don Vito Albanese (American character actor John Anderson, dubbed by Robert Spafford). Accardo is welcomed back to the organization by Don Antonio, who raised him as his own son after he was orphaned as a child (a character trait in no way influenced by Robert Duvall's Tom Hagen in THE GODFATHER), but Accardo has other plans. He continued his legal studies while in prison, and fell in love with Laura Murchison (Dagmar Lassander), a professor at the University of New Mexico. He wants to leave the Family, marry Laura, and live a normal life away from the Mafia. Don Antonio grants him his wish, despite the ironclad rule that no one leaves, which enrages Garofalo, who then plots to whack Accardo so he doesn't talk, and Don Antonio over his flagrant disregard of their sacred Mafia oath.

COUNSELOR AT CRIME offers one bit of interesting trivia that tangentially connects it to THE GODFATHER: it's one of the very few movie appearances of Native American activist Sacheen Littlefeather, best known for taking the stage at the 1973 Oscars to refuse Marlon Brando's GODFATHER Oscar for him, and seen here in a brief bit as a hooker. Beyond that, it also offers one of the most low-key performances of Milian's career, a real surprise considering his string of flamboyantly over-the-top psycho characters in Umberto Lenzi classics like ALMOST HUMAN (1974) and ROME ARMED TO THE TEETH (1976). Rabal is dubbed by the gruff Ed Mannix but definitely looks the part as the arrogant, untrustworthy Garofalo, and Balsam is a solid pro as the stern and paternal Don Antonio, and while he may not ooze the charismatic charm of Brando's Vito Corleone, it's superb casting, and De Martino even lets him take part in some action sequences and shootouts. Balsam was in the early years of a relentlessly busy decade that found the Oscar-winning actor (1965's A THOUSAND CLOWNS) alternating between supporting roles in A-list Hollywood projects (SUMMER WISHES WINTER DREAMS, THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE, MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN) and starring roles in Italian crime films (CONFESSIONS OF A POLICE CAPTAIN, CHRONICLE OF A HOMICIDE, MEET HIM AND DIE, DEATH RAGE), and his presence here definitely helps sell the idea of making it look like an American gangster movie, and he fares much better than the miscast Anderson, whose two scenes were actually shot inside Santa Fe State Prison, complete with several inmates in the chow line turning to look straight into the camera.

It's a mostly routine post-GODFATHER mob movie until a surprisingly strong finale where both Balsam and Milian really get to show some chops without saying much at all. And it's in the finale where COUNSELOR AT CRIME makes its only real attempt to branch off from THE GODFATHER with the notion that it's not the aging mob bosses who hand off the power to the next generation, but rather, it's the older generation that's still around to pick up the pieces when their dealings and grudges end up sacrificing that next, doomed generation. It's an interesting perspective that should've been explored in a more in-depth fashion by the script, which was written by De Martino with three other writers (including frequent collaborator Vincenzo Mannino) before being translated into English and reworked by an uncredited Michael V. Gazzo, the raspy-voiced playwright and sometime actor who would get an Oscar nomination for his performance as bitter mob informant Frankie Pentangeli in 1974's THE GODFATHER PART II.

Retro Review: FEAR CITY (1985)

FEAR CITY
(US - 1985)

Directed by Abel Ferrara. Written by Nicholas St. John. Cast: Tom Berenger, Billy Dee Williams, Jack Scalia, Melanie Griffith, Rossano Brazzi, Jan Murray, Rae Dawn Chong, Joe Santos, Michael V. Gazzo, Janet Julian, Maria Conchita Alonso, Daniel Faraldo, Ola Ray, Frank Ronzio, Juan Fernandez, Tracy Griffith, Robert Miano, Frank Sivero, Neil Clifford. (R, 95 mins)

Though he established himself as a critically-acclaimed filmmaker during his '90s heyday with KING OF NEW YORK (1990), BAD LIEUTENANT (1992), and THE FUNERAL (1996) among others, the always controversial Abel Ferrara got his start in the NYC exploitation gutter. His first feature film was the 1976 porno 9 LIVES OF A WET PUSSY and he followed that with 1979's scuzzy THE DRILLER KILLER, a self-explanatory splatter film where he also starred in the title role under the name "Jimmy Laine." 1981's low-budget vigilante thriller MS .45, in which a mute garment district seamstress (Zoe Tamerlis) goes full DEATH WISH on NYC scumbags after she's raped twice in the same day, was a hit on the grindhouse and drive-in circuit and even got some accolades from critics. Bronx-born Ferrara's contemporary NYC-set films  of that era are among the grimiest presentations of the city in all of cinema. Like a cinematic Travis Bickle, he's from the streets, he knows them, he's lived them, and he's seen the worst they have to offer. Ferrara's always had a keen ability to bring that sleazy world to vivid life on the big screen like few others.

MS .45 got Ferrara some attention from the big studios, and it makes one wonder exactly what 20th Century Fox expected when they greenlit FEAR CITY, Ferrara's first sizably-budgeted film with actual Hollywood actors. Filmed in the spring and summer of 1983--with BLUE THUNDER, FLASHDANCE, OCTOPUSSY, and LONE WOLF MCQUADE visible on Times Square theater marquees--FEAR CITY was produced by Zupnik-Curtis Enterprises, with a good chunk of the budget and a distribution deal provided by Fox. A combination cop/mob/slasher movie, FEAR CITY deals with the hunt for a serial attacker dubbed "The New York Knifer." He's slashing strippers, most of whom work for the Starlite Talent Agency, run by childhood buddies Nicky Parzeno (Jack Scalia in his first big screen role, fresh off two short-lived TV series with THE DEVLIN CONNECTION and BERRENGER'S) and Matt Rossi (Tom Berenger, who had just been in THE BIG CHILL and EDDIE AND THE CRUISERS). Both are connected to powerful mob boss Carmine (Rossano Brazzi, quite a ways away from THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN and SOUTH PACIFIC), who's the cash behind their business. Matt is a former boxer who walked away from the sport after killing an opponent in the ring. He's also nursing a broken heart after a relationship with ex-junkie dancer Loretta (Melanie Griffith, around the same time she played a porn star in Brian De Palma's BODY DOUBLE) went south. Matt and Nicky's business starts collapsing after the wave of stripper murders, and when the body count starts rising, they're forced to team up with top competitor Goldstein (Borscht Belt legend Jan Murray, dropping F-bombs in what would be his last film appearance) as rival talent agents, club owners, and mobsters all set aside their ongoing beefs to organize their own hunt for the martial-arts madman (played by an uncredited Neil Clifford) who's killing their girls and costing them money. Matt also has to deal with perpetually irritable detective Wheeler (Billy Dee Williams), who doesn't seem to get much work done but has a big chip on his shoulder about Italian-Americans, never missing a chance to hurl slurs like "dago," "guinea," "greaseball," "goombah," and "wop" at Matt, Nicky, and anyone in the immediate vicinity who looks or sounds even remotely Italian.

Shot entirely on location and setting the mood with the theme song "New York Doll" by New York Dolls frontman David Johansen, FEAR CITY effectively captures the grimy filth and the neon sleaze of early 1980s NYC. The story structure in regular Ferrara collaborator Nicholas St. John's script is rather formulaic--of course Matt and Loretta will rekindle their love, and of course the horror of her friends being murdered will send her back to the needle--but the fascinating cast (also featuring Joe Santos, Michael V. Gazzo, Rae Dawn Chong, Maria Conchita Alonso, Ola Ray from Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video, and, as Loretta's dealer, a typically reptilian Juan Fernandez, best known to trash movie fans as "that shitbag Duke" in KINJITE: FORBIDDEN SUBJECTS) and various quirks keep things interesting. Ferrara goes off on a bit of a tangent near the end, invoking the kind of recurring Catholic imagery that was so prominent in MS .45 and would be again in later films like BAD LIEUTENANT. The momentum is sidetracked a bit in the late going as Ferrara and St. John explore Matt's tortured soul as everything haunting his conscience comes to a head: the murders he's witnessed as a mob flunky since being a neighborhood shoeshine boy in his youth, killing a man in the ring, Loretta using again, Nicky ending up in a coma after a near-fatal encounter with the Knifer. It all leads to not just a confessional with a sympathetic priest but also a Tom Berenger shadow-boxing/workout montage as he prepares to take out the Knifer himself.  There's another interesting character element in that African-American Wheeler and his Hispanic partner Sanchez (Daniel Faraldo) are far and away the biggest racists in the movie. Its killer (dubbed "The Karate Killer" by FEAR CITY fans even though he's only referred to as "The New York Knifer" in the movie), who attacks with ninja-like precision and often practices his martial arts moves in the nude, could be a close relative of Gene Davis' legendary in-the-buff serial killer in the Charles Bronson classic 10 TO MIDNIGHT.

With its gratuitous nudity and graphic violence, FEAR CITY didn't endear itself to the top brass at Fox. Even after Ferrara trimmed some of the violence and nixed a kissing scene between bisexual Loretta and soon-to-be-victim Leila (Chong), the studio still wasn't happy and refused to release the film. After sitting on it for over a year, Fox finally sold it back to Zupnik-Curtis, who decided to release it independently through their own Maryland-based Chevy Chase Distribution (which may have led some moviegoers to believe Chevy Chase was involved in it) while selling the New York rights to Terry Levine's Aquarius Releasing, an outfit best known for driving a Butchermobile around Manhattan to promote DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. (the uncut version of FEAR CITY was eventually released on Blu-ray in 2012 by Shout! Factory, but the reinstated shots were lesser-quality standard def). Though it was released in Europe in 1984, FEAR CITY didn't start hitting US theaters until February 1985. Berenger would get an Oscar nomination for the next year's PLATOON and Ferrara went on to direct a couple of MIAMI VICE episodes and the pilot for the acclaimed NBC series CRIME STORY in 1986. He moved on to two mishandled Vestron releases with the warring street gang ROMEO AND JULIET redux CHINA GIRL (1987) and the Elmore Leonard thriller CAT CHASER (1989) before the now-classic KING OF NEW YORK and BAD LIEUTENANT cemented his status as a key figure in the '90s indie explosion.

FEAR CITY opening with little fanfare or print support in Toledo, OH on 4/19/1985

Actual layout of the above shot, demonstrating how much
advertising support FEAR CITY was getting. 

Cult Classics Revisited: KING OF THE GYPSIES (1978)

KING OF THE GYPSIES
(US - 1978)

Written and directed by Frank Pierson. Cast: Sterling Hayden, Shelley Winters, Susan Sarandon, Judd Hirsch, Eric Roberts, Brooke Shields, Annette O'Toole, Annie Potts, Michael V. Gazzo, Antonia Rey, Stephen Mendillo, Roy Brocksmith, Matthew Labyorteaux, Danielle Brisebois. (R, 112 mins)

It's easy to forget that there was once a time in the early 1980s when critics were routinely hailing Eric Roberts as one of the greatest actors of his generation.  His performances as tragic Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten's estranged, possessive husband and eventual murderer Paul Snider in Bob Fosse's STAR 80 (1983) and as a dim-witted, small-time criminal in Stuart Rosenberg's THE POPE OF GREENWICH VILLAGE (1984) showed a raw, intense talent unlike any other leading men of the time, with the possible exception of his POPE co-star Mickey Rourke. Roberts wasn't generating big box office numbers but there was no denying that he was the real deal and an actor's actor. He received international acclaim for Yugoslav auteur Dusan Makavejev's offbeat comedy THE COCA-COLA KID (1985) and in just his sixth film, scored a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for Andrei Konchalovsky's RUNAWAY TRAIN (also 1985).  He lost to Don Ameche in COCOON, and that Oscar nod would prove to be his career pinnacle.  Word of his being "difficult" along with drug abuse and instances of assaulting a police officer and domestic violence would tarnish his image over the next decade, the same decade that saw his younger sister Julia, from whom he would soon be estranged for many years, skyrocket to the kind of worldwide fame and fan adoration that he would never receive.  Roberts wasn't exactly blackballed out of Hollywood, but the accolades that culminated in a potential Oscar for RUNAWAY TRAIN led to nothing more than the little-seen romantic comedy NOBODY'S FOOL (1986), the period drama BLOOD RED (where he used his clout to get Julia a small role in her first acting job), which was filmed in 1986 and went straight-to-video three years later, and some made-for-TV movies. By 1989, Roberts was playing a replacement Tommy Chong to Cheech Marin in RUDE AWAKENING and starring in the kickboxing actioner BEST OF THE BEST, while Julia was getting her first Oscar nod for STEEL MAGNOLIAS and was about to star in PRETTY WOMAN.  In just a decade, Roberts went from being the Marlon Brando of his day to the misbehaving, troublemaking older brother of America's Sweetheart and one of the signature faces of straight-to-VHS in the 1990s.

But back in 1978, 22-year-old Roberts came storming out of the gate, earning a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture Acting Debut for his performance in KING OF THE GYPSIES, written and directed by Frank Pierson.  Pierson got his start writing for TV shows like HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL and NAKED CITY, and created the acclaimed but short-lived 1971 James Garner TV series NICHOLS.  He received Oscar nominations for his CAT BALLOU (1965) and COOL HAND LUKE (1967) screenplays and also wrote the Sidney Lumet apartment heist favorite THE ANDERSON TAPES (1971).  Pierson won a Screenplay Oscar for Lumet's DOG DAY AFTERNOON (1975), which got him enough clout to tackle the 1976 remake of A STAR IS BORN with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson. That was his second directing effort, the first being 1970's THE LOOKING GLASS WAR, his strangely inert adaptation of the John Le Carre spy novel that's best known for a brawl-for-the-ages between Christopher Jones and Anthony Hopkins, but stumbles badly in the second half when Pierson turns it into his own tedious version of an ennui-drenched Antonioni film.  But after blockbusters like DOG DAY AFTERNOON and A STAR IS BORN, he was essentially able to make whatever he wanted, which led him to KING OF THE GYPSIES, a very loose adaptation of the non-fiction book by Serpico and The Valachi Papers author Peter Maas (the credits read "Suggested by the book..." rather than "Based on the book..."), and by "very loose," I mean "uses the title and little else." What Pierson's film does is basically take the concept of the modern-day gypsy--and all the stereotypes that come with it--and fashion it into a de facto reworking of THE GODFATHER with gypsies in place of gangsters.  It's not a bad idea as far as commercial entertainment goes, but, like THE LOOKING GLASS WAR, KING OF THE GYPSIES starts out strong and and loses its way.

Shot in NYC in early 1978 in the snowy aftermath of the legendary blizzard that dumped on the midwest and moved east, KING OF THE GYPSIES tells the story of a gypsy tribe led by the fierce and ruthless King Zharko Stepanowicz (Sterling Hayden) and his wife Queen Rachel (Shelley Winters).  Years earlier, Zharko abducted Rose, the teenage daughter of rival tribe leader Spiro Giorgio (Michael V. Gazzo), when Giorgio tried to back out of a deal that would've seen Rose marry Zharko's despicable son Groffo (when Giorgio justifies his actions by saying "She hates him!" old world Zharko replies "Since when did 'like' or 'not like' have anything to do with marriage?").  When a tribal council rules against Zharko, the old man refuses to be "fucked like a $3 whore" and takes what he believes is his.  Eventually, Rose (Susan Sarandon) enters a loveless marriage with drunken, abusive Groffo (Judd Hirsch, right around the time TAXI was taking off) and they have a son, Dave. Growing up, young Dave assists his mother in scams and thefts as Groffo continues to be an drunken lout earning the perpetual disdain of his father, who sees in Dave everything Groffo is not.  As a young adult (Roberts appears 40 minutes in), Dave gets by on insurance money he scams from staging car accidents and slip-and-falls in grocery stores, but he has bigger dreams outside of the sheltered gypsy world. He gets a job as a singing waiter in a restaurant and starts dating pretty Sharon (Annette O'Toole), but King Zharko is determined to pull him back into the family and marry Persa (Annie Potts, who gets the film's most 1978 bit of dialogue with "His family's got a Betamax!"). Zharko is dying, and recognizing that Groffo would be the Joffrey Baratheon of gypsy kings, wants Dave to be his successor. When the old man passes and Dave holds the medallion and ring signifying his kingship, Groffo is so enraged that he hires two men to kill his son.  They fail, and Dave gets back at his father by attempting a daring rescue of his 12-year-old sister Tita (Brooke Shields), who Groffo's just sold for $6000 (that he's already lost at the track) in a hastily-brokered deal with another tribe leader (Roy Brocksmith) who's arranging a marriage for his own very Groffo-like son.  The story then turns into an almost TAXI DRIVER redux as a shotgun-toting Dave goes full vigilante against his father.

David Grisman's score has cues that recall the work of Nino Rota, but the GODFATHER parallels throughout KING OF THE GYPSIES go beyond that:  Zharko is Vito Corleone, Dave is Michael (though he's even more reluctant to get involved, he eventually fulfills that role), and Groffo displays some characteristics of Sonny, though Sonny's worst offense is that he was impulsive and bad-tempered, even though he thought he was doing the right thing for the family. Groffo puts himself first and has no redeeming qualities, whether he's selling his daughter, gambling away his money, or beating Rose, ripping her shirt off and violently shoving Dave's face against her bare breasts in some imagined Oedipal outrage. The very presence of Hayden and Gazzo is another nod, with Hayden's role as corrupt cop McCluskey in THE GODFATHER and Gazzo's Oscar-nominated performance as Frankie Pentangeli in THE GODFATHER PART II. The back end of KING OF THE GYPSIES reeks of either Pierson dropping the ball or Paramount and/or producer Dino De Laurentiis demanding a big, crowd-pleasing finale.  This is a rare instance of a film that would probably be much stronger if it was an hour longer.  Pierson wants this to be an epic, but once Zharko dies, it seems as if he started panicking and realized he only had 30 minutes to wrap this thing up.  When Hayden exits the film, everything after feels rushed and incomplete and the ending is terrible, with Roberts' voiceover--never a good sign--not very confidently mumbling "Maybe I can lead them into the 20th century," demonstrating all the craft, forethought and emotional resonance of a "Poochie died on his way back to his home planet" quick fix.  KING OF THE GYPSIES also has no idea what to do with its female characters--only Sarandon's Rose is given any significant screen time, while the rest are underwritten or simply vanish from the movie (Winters has nothing to do).  Even in the case of Shields' Tita, whose fate should change the course of the story, it's like she was never even there.  It's difficult to tell if this is deliberate, as in the context of this film's depiction of gypsy women as a commodity, or if Pierson simply forgot about her and assumed audiences would too as he turned Dave into a gypsy Charles Bronson.  All of this goes to illustrate that Pierson was a much better screenwriter than a director. Pierson's writing in the hands of a guy like Lumet produces celluloid magic.  Pierson's writing in the hands of Pierson the director seems to show him at odds with himself.  By the time Pierson died in 2012 at the age of 87, he went out on top as a producer on hugely popular TV shows like THE GOOD WIFE and MAD MEN.  He also served as the President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 2001 to 2005, and before that, directed acclaimed Showtime and HBO films like SOMEBODY HAS TO SHOOT THE PICTURE (1990), CITIZEN COHN (1992), TRUMAN (1995), DIRTY PICTURES (2000), and CONSPIRACY (2001).  It's also worth noting that he didn't write any of those cable films, which again supports the notion that Pierson was at his best when he didn't have to make directorial decisions that undermined and compromised his own scripts.

If you've seen Roberts in enough shitty movies over the last 25 years, going back to his early days as an ambitious, rising star is a revelation.  Roberts was doing the kind of acting that made Brando and James Dean legends.  He has such an unusual presence in films like this, STAR 80, and THE POPE OF GREENWICH VILLAGE that it's easy to see why some may have found him off-putting in the era of post-JAWS, post-STAR WARS blockbusters.  Young Roberts was the kind of actor who would've flourished in the late '60s and early '70s.  He's terrific as the conflicted would-be king, torn between family (mainly his respect for his grandfather and his concern for his baby sister) and his own dreams ("I'd kinda like to be a surgeon, you know...help people" he haplessly tells Zharko in a scene Roberts and Hayden improvised that's almost an homage to the "I coulda been a contender!" speech in ON THE WATERFRONT).  There are numerous instances where he recalls both Brando and Dean in the way he seems uncomfortable in his own skin and lashes out because of an inability to articulate his emotions, whether he just starts punching a wall or hurling multiple coffee cups across the room.  He's occasionally mannered and jumpy, but it's an extremely impressive debut.  A look at Roberts' IMDb page is a thoroughly depressing experience. His '90s decline still included supporting roles in hit movies like FINAL ANALYSIS (1992) and THE SPECIALIST (1994), with a good lead every now and again (1996's IT'S MY PARTY got him some acclaim but led nowhere), and in recent years, he occasionally turned up in a major film like THE DARK KNIGHT (2008) or THE EXPENDABLES (2010), but these days, apart from sporadic one-shot guest spots on TV shows like CSI, JUSTIFIED, and GLEE, Tom Six's upcoming THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE III is about as high-profile as he gets. He seems incapable of turning down an offer, resulting in bit parts in scores of films that probably won't even get released and probably shouldn't.  How else does one explain Roberts having 66 credits for 2014 alone? And 42 in 2013?  Those are the kinds of cameo gigs where you're on the set for half a day, tops, or where you can literally phone in your performance as the voice of A TALKING CAT!?!  Roberts gave up years ago and is simply taking advantage of name recognition for quick cash (of course, he managed to squeeze in a season on CELEBRITY REHAB, and he and his wife Eliza just appeared on a CELEBRITY WIFE-SWAP episode that also served to alert the world to the continued existence of Robin Leach and Joan Severance).  There's no shame in that and he knows the stuff he's doing is garbage, but it's sad that it's come to that when you see the dynamic, hungry young man in KING OF THE GYPSIES.  Hollywood doesn't know what to do with unconventional actors like Roberts and Rourke.  Their star vehicles bomb and execs usually have them play villains and psychos and the actors get frustrated, sometimes acting out by deliberately sabotaging themselves and their implosions become self-fulfilling prophecies. Obviously, Roberts' career didn't pan out the way he'd hoped, he's burned every bridge along the way and, like Rourke, he'd very likely squander another chance if he got it, but guys like Roberts and Rourke are survivors. Roberts is pushing 60 and shouldn't have to schlep this hard, appearing in so many Z-grade turds that a cameo in Uwe Boll's ASSAULT ON WALL STREET actually qualifies as one of his better recent assignments. Sure, he's always working and he probably lives comfortably, but there must be a serious filmmaker out there with a late-career-defining role for Eric Roberts.  Everybody loves a comeback. Wouldn't it be nice to see him in the kind of WRESTLER-type triumph worthy of his talents?