Change Your Image
spropes
Reviews
Double Jeopardy (1999)
love conquers parole violations, bullet wounds & miscellaneous felonies
Where do I start? When she picks up the "murder" weapon to insure her prints will be on it. When the kindly ex-atty female prisoner gives her idea, you've been convicted of murdering him, so now you can and get away with it. And, is TLJ a parole agent or a house mother? Instead of running car back & forth on ferry, all she had to do is use to keys in ignition to spring the cuffs, of course, that would have defeated that development: no sinking cars, no swimming away, no gun, no conking TLJ on the head underwater. She visits her mother - do you think cops might be monitoring mom for this visit? One good scene: chasing the boy in the cemetery, which I think was cut brutally to fit CBS's requirements. But the main thought is: Louisiana is the only Napoleanic justice state in U.S., do their laws about double jeopardy apply uniformly with other states? Now that would be an interesting question, instead of this chase her down mercilessly, then fall in love with her in the end with a twinkle-in-the eye-style drama.
Street Sisters (1974)
the lowdown
When I worked with L.A. County, I knew Art Roberson fairly well, tho I have no idea of his current status or whereabouts. We were both social workers in the ghetto (really) in the 1970s. My impression was that being a social worker was his day job, that being a movie maker was his primary ambition...so what else is new?
The movie, some interiors of which were shot at the legendary Joe Jost's in Long Beach, premiered for friends and associates at Warner Bros. screening room in Burbank. At the end of the showing, it was greeted by dead silence, replacing excitement or applause.
I think the viewers realized that the director had blown a pretty good chance to do something worthwhile after all his work, investment and attention to this film.
Originally entitled something like "Don't Leave Go My Hand" (or maybe
"Don't Let Go My Hand"), it was supposed to sensitively portray the horrible life of a neglected (or abused, I don't recall which) black child, the son of a...you guessed it...black hooker!
But that original intent didn't play, so the title was changed to "Black Hooker," presumably to piggyback on the blaxploitation movement at the time.
As sort of a metaphor for that all-too-sensitive evening's experience, after the showing, as the cars were wending out of the Warner Bros. lot, I clearly recall the car of a black viewer rear-ending the car of a white viewer who had stopped short at a traffic light...an embarrassing wreck.