Truck Turner (1974)

Isaac Hayes effortlessly projects tons of cool in this starring feature. He plays the title role, a football star turned skip tracer (a detective who tracks down bail jumpers) who works with a partner, Jerry (Alan Weeks). He gets an assignment to nab a ruthless pimp named Gator (Paul Harris). In the course of attempting to apprehend Gator, Truck and Jerry are forced to gun the man down. This doesn't sit well with Gators' woman, a madam and maniacal harridan named Dorinda (Nichelle Nichols, a long way from Lt. Uhura). So she recruits other pimps to act as assassins and take out Truck.Hayes's screen presence makes all the difference. This is a mighty fine vehicle for him, and he composes the delightful score as well. He has fine chemistry with both the amiable Weeks and the very sexy Annazette Chase as Trucks' frustrated girlfriend Annie. Jonathan Kaplan ("The Accused", "Heart Like a Wheel") directs in high style, and there's quite an enjoyable amount of action. Things get effectively violent, too, with lots of squibs going off and much gushing of the red stuff. "Truck Turner" is not without a sense of humour, as proved by the "funeral for a pimp" sequence. The final shootout inside the hospital is visceral and exciting.Nichols is a fiery and striking villainess with a foul mouth, and the other supporting players fare pretty well. Yaphet Kotto does what he can with an under-written role as an ambitious crook who understands Truck better than most of the inept would be killers in the story. But get a load of the actors who also appear: Sam Laws, Charles Cyphers, Scatman Crothers (sporting a hilarious, ridiculous wig), Dick Miller, Stan Shaw, Henry Kingi, Don Megowan, Tara Strohmeier, Mel Novak, Matthew "Stymie" Beard, Johnny Ray McGhee, and John Dennis. Look for director Kaplan in an uncredited cameo as a cook."Truck Turner" is solid and diverting, a good example of the blaxploitation genre overall.Eight out of 10.

Late in the film, Isaac Hayes shows his sensitive side, buying his girlfriend a kitten. Up to that point Hayes and his nemesis, Yaphet Kotto have been shooting up a hospital. This is a very fast moving Blaxploitation classic, featuring plenty of action. There is ghetto talk , classic pimp mobiles, knife wielding "hoes", and a pimps funeral that is just fantastic. What makes the film work, is Isaac Hayes as a very likable hero, with a surprise appearance by Dick Miller as a desperate bail bondsman another plus. If you are looking for ghetto stereotypes on parade, "Isaac Hayes is Truck Turner" will not disappoint. Recommended of it's type. - MERK

Isaac Hayes is Truck Turner, a skip tracer. He, and his partner Jerry (Alan Weeks) go after a sleazy pimp and end up killing him. Now, the pimp's babe (Nichelle Nichols - Star Trek) is after Truck. She's offering half her $250,000 annual income from her girls. Hey, it's the early 70s. That's a lot of money! Like all blaxploitation with pimps, this one has some fantastic outfits on both men and women - some really bitchin cars, too.Yaphet Kotto is the biggest pimp out to get truck. You can expect a lot of shooting before this is settled.Kotto should have been given an Academy Award for his death scene. :-)

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.