I, the Jury - Richard T. Heffron - (1982) DVD

This is a rehash of both the Mickey Spillane 1947 novel and the 1953 film of the same name. Here, though, Mike Hammer's secretary Velda not only carries a gun but can use it as well as her boss. And here as well, unlike the 1953 Hollywood Code restrictions that kept film directors from showing all the naughty bits, director Richard Heffron can and does display Armand Assante's Hammer and Barbara Carrera's sexy Caroline Bennett going at it with wild abandon.

This movie moves through its Spillane-juiced plot fairly effortlessly. Assante is fine, Paul Sorvino is appropriately tight-lipped as Pat Chambers, Mike Hammer's police force contact, and the women all flagrantly disobey women's lib edicts of equal status and respect by submitting (either immediately or eventually) to Hammer's virile presence.

Spillane was known, when he started out, as the number one purveyor of pure pulp in detective fiction - i.e., overt sex and violence. Heffron's film gives a few sly winks at this; the director realizes that juxtaposing some of the writer's themes with '80s mentality fits and doesn't fit, both at the same time. This paradox mostly works because nobody watching the film has to think much about anything at all - it is pure pulp. Hammer is subjected to the pain of seeing the corpse of his best friend and to some gritty torture, later in the film, and this all adds to the juicy pulpy ride.

I, the Jury is not just a hard-boiled detective thriller; it is a whodunit and murder mystery as well - and Hammer possesses intellectual as well as physical power

Note:
Optical Censoring of Pubic Hair
Non-removable Japanese Subtitles

Quality Rating Score:
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