I, THE JURY (1982)

THE FILM

FILM DIRECTOR: Richard T. Heffron

SCREENWRITER: Larry Cohen

FILM STARS: Armand Assante, Barbara Carrera, Laurene Landon, Alan King, Geoffrey Lewis, Paul Sorvino, Judson Scott, Barry Snider, Larry Pine

COUNTRY: USA

THIS BOOK

AUTHOR: Mickey Spillane

TYPE: Novel

PUBLISHER: NEL

THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1982

COUNTRY: Great Britain

COVER: Paperback

THE ORIGINAL BOOK

ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above

YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1947

ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title

NOTES

GENRE: Crime

WORDS: Mike Hammer – a much-loved private eye.

I, The Jury (1947) (great title) was his first adventure. I haven’t read enough of him or of Spillane to make any statements I would be happy with but I can make some observations.

Hammer is a boorish right-wing type that is hard, violent, largely unsentimental and a misogynist that all kinds of women find attractive (okay that sounds like a statement not an observation). Why do females like him? Because he is a bad boy but not one on the wrong side of the law. He was a cop. He is also a hard man grown up through the depression and combat served in World War 2. So he is resourceful and dependent. Against a backdrop of post war, come cold war, restrained cynicism he cuts through bad guys and women without a second thought. Afterall, his name is Hammer, and he does all sorts of hammering.

I can see why his character was appealing in the 1950s and 1960s as his hardness was anti-authoritarian making him the perfect anti-hero of the times. There is nothing wrong but he is a little one note. I would rather hang out with Lew Archer, Travis McGee or Sam Spade.

Spillane’s book has no time for subtleties as chapters of violence and sex follow each other around in essentially what is an updated who done it with errr sex and violence. The book is flippant and a little coy and the big (almost) reveal at the end at the big tennis game is no different than having all the suspects in the parlour in a who done it. It is pulp, but superior pulp. I can see why readers (mainly men I assume) read the novels but they would not have made any literary reviews of the time. Like all pulps with reoccurring characters we read them not to open the mind but to make us happy, like comfort food for the brain.

I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it, because I did, but Mike Hammer is the whole show which is why, perhaps it is easy to update hm from 1947 in the novel to 1982 in the film.

Much like Nero Wolfe and James Bond, Mike Hammer lives in a literature floating timeline. The times change around him, but he remains always about the same age. And this is a problem. Hard men doing violent things in an 80s novel doesn’t hit as hard as hard men doing violent things in a 40s or 50s novel even if history shows that those hard men doing violent things have always existed. The protagonists of the 50s novels seem to be breaking taboos. Some of the taboos may be what we assume things were like but some of the taboos were real but these heroes took on extra danger by transgressing the mores of the time. It just doesn’t mean as much in 1982. I mean, a man that beds any number of women in 1982 isn’t playing the same game as the 1952 bloke. The world has changed and he doesn’t stand out as much. Before this Spillane’s previous Hammer novel (Survival … Zero!) was from 1970 (set in 1970), he would return to Hammer in the late 80s (set in the 80s). I haven’t read any of those so I can’t say how Hammer travels in a world where there are many people not dissimilar to him, though the film may give me a clue.

Armand Assante is an actor I have always liked. He can be smooth, but he can also be can also be very nasty and reptilian. With Mike Hammer he can be both. The trouble is Mike Hammer (in my mind) was a WASP or Anglo-Celt American who did not suffer racist slurs. Why? Because he looked WASP or Anglo-Celt. Armand Assante looks like a Latin American because he is one. I’m not saying Latin Americans can’t play Anglo roles and vice versa (Anthony Quinn did and he also played a convincing though, again, too Latin, PI called Johnny McBride in The Long Wait (1956) also from a novel by Spillane). It’s just that Armand looks too Latin here. You fully expect characters to throw racist abuse at him, as Hammer, which is not what the story is about.

There have been a number of Mike Hammer’s, especially in the post war period , which attest to the popularity of the character,:

Biff Elliot in the film I, the Jury (1953).

Brian Keith in the TV film (pilot) Mickey Spillane’s ‘Mike Hammer!'(1954) (he also played private detective Lew Archer in the short lives TV series Archer (1975)).

Robert Bray in the film My Gun Is Quick (1957).

Darren McGavin in the TV series Mike Hammer (1958-59).

Mickey Spillane (yes, the author) in the film The Girl Hunters (1963).

Stacy Keach in TV films and TV series Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (1984-1989) and Mike Hammer, Private Eye (1997–1998).

Kevin Dobson in the TV film Margin for Murder (1981).

Rob Estes in the TV film Come Die with Me: A Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer Mystery (1994).

But to me Hammer looks best in the 1950s. Especially as portrayed in the Robert Aldrich masterpiece, Kiss Me Deadly (1955). Ralph Meeker, perhaps not handsome enough for the ladies, was otherwise, the perfect Mike Hammer …. thuggish, uncompromising and hard.

I note here that it is perhaps unsurprising that Hammer hasn’t been revived in the 2000s …. his character would create meltdowns

That aside Assante is as hard as you expect Hammer to be, so, his Latin-ess you can put to one side. He is a toro with a bit of Brando thrown in and all he has to do is shoot and screw. Which he does. His career was riding high at the time in second leads and supports – Paradise Alley (1978), Private Benjamin (1980), Prophecy (1979), Little Darlings (1980), Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (1980) (TV) – so I assumed he thought a leading role in this would be a good idea, and it would have been if the film had a bigger budget.

The big problem with the film is its budget. It’s a low to mid-budget mainstream film.

According to screenwriter Larry Cohen, he was originally hired to direct but was fired after expressing his concerns to cast or crew over the producers running out of money. Cohen immediately starting shooting Q – The Winged Serpent in Manhattan, filming concurrently with Richard T. Heffron’s completion of I, the Jury. Cohen claimed that “we finished way ahead of them. They went way over budget and the company went bankrupt. They sold the picture at a bankruptcy sale.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_the_Jury_(1982_film)

So, the violence is fun to watch but it is a little on the TV violence side – bullets fly with few people getting hit and fewer still bleeding in any significant way. Having said that there seemed to be a lot of these films in the early 80s (and usually made by Cannon films). The film seems to anticipate (also in its hero’s casual suited attire) the TV show Miami Vice (1984-1989). Where is doesn’t scrimp is on the sex of which there is enough …. I assume nudity is cheaper than bullets and blood. Of course the relatively simple plotline of the book has to be amped up for the 80s. The film is true to the feel of book but turns it up … it is an action film with violence and sex and then some more sex and violence (that in some ways it anticipates Scarface (1983)). For example, the body (kill) count in the book is reasonable (two people), in the film it is high (I lost count, but it is over ten).

The rest of the cast – Barbara Carrera (the next big thing for a while), Laurene Landon, Alan King, Geoffrey Lewis, Paul Sorvino, Judson Scott, Barry Snider, Larry Pine are fine and more ethnically diverse than you would anticipate from the book. Well, it is 1982.

Richard T. Heffron was mainly a TV director with some interesting features from the 70s – Outlaw Blues (1977), The California Kid (1974), Newman’s Law (1974) Futureworld (1976), the excellent Trackdown (1976) – but he wasn’t really an action director. The scenes are staged but they don’t punch you.

The great Larry Cohen (Scream Baby Scream (1969), Black Caesar (1973), Hell Up in Harlem (1973), God Told Me To (1976), It Lives Again (1978), Q The Winged Serpent (1982), The Stuff (1985), Maniac Cop (1988), Uncle Sam (1996)) wrote the script and he is very liberal with the book. He is not averse to urban crime, urban decay, sex and violence with dollops of social commentary in his screenplays (and films he directed on occasion). So, he was perhaps a good choice for creating a Mike Hammer for the 80s.

Obviously, because of the updates there are going to be some changes in temperament Apart from Mike Hammer trying to track down the killer of his friend the book and the film are essentially different. Cohen’s screenplay also contains his favourite 1980s-era sub-plots not present in the novel, such as government conspiracies, torture and mind-control techniques. You can never have enough going on. Some of the characters remain but they have different roles and relationships to Hammer, some have different jobs altogether, but most are distinctly modern …

Hammer’s (true) love in the novel is his secretary. A mutual love but unconsummated, she frets over him and gets jealous when he beds other women (only two in the book). In the film she is almost like a sidekick though their relationship suggests love but also a consummated one.

The main female character in the book is the doctor (psychiatrist) who he falls in love with (unconsummated). They hang out, discuss marriage and carry on a like a couple in love with not a cross word between them. In the film the doctor is the director of a sex clinic where people come to work out their sexual problems by bedding prostitutes she has working at the clinic. They shag a couple of times, don’t have a relationship and are difficult with each other (which is why the film’s version of the ending works better because Hammer’s coldness to the central female character is more understandable – there is little affection). Welcome to the 80s.

The rich twins in the book, one normal and one a nymphomaniac (who beds Hammer a couple of times once whilst pretending to be her sister) are rich, and well bred … and feature throughout the story. In the film they have a scene and they are both sex workers.

The film has a whole subplot involving nefarious killer – guards at the clinic

There are at least two car chases, one foot chase as well as climactic shootout against the bad guys not in the book … I did say it was an action movie.

Assante may be right as Hammer, a Latin Hammer, and there is a lot going on but the film is just another action film with nudity, albeit a watchable one. Aren’t they all?

I prefer the book

LINKS

TRAILER

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5G-m6lLBLI