http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073620/ Okay. Short story. I had been looking for this movie for well over ten years. No, I hadn’t been looking for a physical copy to buy. I had actually been trying to figure out its name, what it was called, for the longest time. More than a decade ago I saw about ¼ of this movie on a cable channel. It was a gritty police story in New York that was made in the 1970s. I recall what I saw of it being solid but what stood out to me is that a portion of the film that I caught involved a very attractive blonde police woman going undercover to help bring down a black drug lord. And one of the last moments that I saw before turning to something else was that police woman and her black target running around naked/half naked in his apartment, a form of foreplay. Eventually they would be interrupted by a white cop who had no idea that the blonde woman was a fellow officer and things went badly after that. For some reason I never took down the name of the movie nor did I recall finding a listing of another airing for the film. Because of this I never got around to learning its title. For years this annoyed me. I attempted a few searches, did some of research here and there and even inquired a couple of film buffs about the film. I found nothing. I couldn’t even use IMDB because I didn’t know who the actors were in the film. The past few years I thought about doing another search but I never got around to it. Then a few months ago a website that I frequent a lot did a retrospective of this very movie. I was gobsmacked. After all that time….to have the title revealed to me in such an easy and accidental fashion? I literally screamed out loud in joy. And while reading the writeup I learned that there were a handful of well known actors in the film that I was very aware of but had forgotten were in the film itself. People like Michael Moriarty, Yaphet Kotto and a very young Richard Gere. I kicked myself for forgetting this. Okay so the reason why the movie stood out to me, the reason why I was always in search for it in order to see it in its entirety, the reason why I’m writing about it now, is the subplot about the blonde undercover cop. She was played by Susan Blakey who in 1975 was drop dead gorgeous. She was established in earlier scenes as a tough, gutsy, policewoman (a rarity at the time) who had led to more arrests than anyone on the force. She was fearless in going after criminals and after seeing Stick (the black drug dealer) and being told by another female undercover who he was, she came up with the idea to become his woman to bring him down. She had put herself in a position in which she had gotten Slim’s attention and after a short courtship he had asked her to move in with him. She goes to her commanding officer to tell him that she wants to pursue this option. The tension in the room comes from the understanding between her and her commander that this would mean she would be sleeping with Stick. Her commanding officer takes it to his superior officer and they realize that the biggest risk may be the blonde cop getting hurt in the process leading to the public learning of how they agreed to let this white woman go to bed with a criminal who is black. The movie doesn’t avoid addressing the whole racial dynamic. I won’t give away all that goes down. Again I should reiterate that the storyline involving this female cop is just a larger subplot of the main storyline. And if any of you are hoping for a love story between the cop and the drug dealer then you will be disappointed. Clearly they both find each other attractive. The dealer is a good-looking black guy with a good physique. Ladies of various races comment on his appeal. And he isn’t played as some one-note stereotypical inner city thug/pimp-wannabe. He even havs standards. He may sell the drugs but he doesn’t want any woman in his life to be using drugs. When he thinks the blonde cop is using he threatens to throw her out. As for the cop it is evident she is about doing good work. That’s her goal in bringing down Stick. But she seems to be taking her time in getting around to it. At one point it is revealed she had been living with Stick for a couple of weeks. She seems to be enjoying herself with him to an extent, with her being the one to initiate all the playfulness and sexual activity between them when they are alone. I say there is some wiggle room to interpret that while she has not forgotten what her assignment is, she still probably likes Stick (or likes sleeping with him) more than she should. What I can’t help but think about is that how a movie that came out about five years after the Civil Rights Movement became unofficially over, is far more bold in handling the sexuality between black men and white women than the films of 2017 and this century. Slim and Patty (the cop) look good together on each other’s arms. They kiss, the make out, they have sex. It’s not sugarcoated nor is it made out to be any big deal. The 70s were crazy in how they allowed black men to be so sexual with black and white women. Black guys in films in general have been dickless ever since. Anyway if you guys can check out the movie please do so. It is on DVD. It’s far from great but it has that 70s grit. And Yaphet Kotto’s character arc and revelation towards the end is highly impressive.
That premise sounds good, maybe I'll check it out. Are there love scenes in the movie? I know the 70s never shied away from those between black men and white women either. Especially Susan Blakely she has done some steamy sex scenes before.
Most blaxploitation films did though, this was back then when black films celebrated both black and interracial.
