Nonstop gonzo mayhem is on show in this pulp shocker from 1980, beginning with an amazingly reckless, fender-mangling, passerby-endangering car chase which more or less takes up the first 20 minutes. It’s a gritty New York sleazesploitation crime thriller with some gobsmackingly over-the-top punch-ups and shootouts; some of the attitudes to ethnicity and sexual politics can only be described as of their time. Those who prefer 21st-century standards of good taste had better look away now.
A racist paedophile (Cliff Gorman) has kidnapped the 15-year-old daughter of divorced ex-cop Sean Boyd, played by James Brolin. This sweaty creep is demanding a million-dollar ransom, but he’s got the wrong girl. He thinks that his prisoner – whom he dresses up in a diaphanous blue gown belonging to his dead mom, and at one point kisses tenderly on the lips – is the daughter of a property magnate that he blames for moving so-called undesirables into his Bronx apartment building, with a view to forcing out existing tenants so he can knock the whole thing down for a new development. (We glimpse a New York Daily News headline: “Carter Tours The S Bronx Slums”.)
So Boyd has to track down this loathsome perv to save his daughter – while Boyd himself is also being hunted down by a corrupt cop who he once exposed. This is the pop-eyed Sgt Barnes, played by Dan Hedaya, who fires at Boyd in the city street with a shotgun, causing window-shattering chaos, but because he’s a cop doesn’t seem to get into any trouble. There is a hilarious and outrageous smutty sequence when Boyd has to question sex-workers in their peep-show booths; a creative way of getting nudity into the film. You can’t help but gasp at the full-tilt craziness on display, and connoisseurs will enjoy the hothead cab driver in the chase scene, played by a young Mandy Patinkin.
Night of the Juggler is in UK cinemas from 14 Nov, and on 4K UHD from 17 November.