Black Eye
An ex-police officer operating a private detective business comes face to face with a syndicate-backed dope ring. Fred “the Hammer” Williamson gives a cool, relatively subdued performance as a private eye in this slick gumshoe thriller Black Eye directed by Jack Arnold, who also worked with Fred (less successfully, I think) on ‘Boss Nigger’. It does look a lot like a TV movie, but it’s worth remembering that TV movies in the 1970s were actually quite impressive. Personally I like to imagine that it’s the pilot for a long-running detective series, possibly called ‘The Blackford Files’. A private detective takes a case involving a religious cult and a movie star's death. An LA cop, turned private detective is called to investigate the multiple murders that are all connected to a cane that was stolen, from a deceased silent movie star. Private detective investigated a series of murders connected with a drug ring in Venice, California. Shep Stone begins with the murder of a woman in his apartment building and a silver-tipped cane stolen from a dead movie star’s funeral. The search pulls him through Venice’s seedier corners, where dealers, filmmakers, cult figures, and respectable criminals all want the same missing object. Review: In Los Angeles dies movie star. After the funeral, it turns out that the famous cane with a characteristic knob, which is always walked actor, disappeared without a trace. Private detective stone finds that a spectacular thing is somehow connected with the series of murders, including in the environment of drug dealers in the Californian city Vinicio. The investigation of the crime causes the first stone to the making of porn film, and then – to the followers of a religious cult. Along the way, stone engaged in a strange relationship with a young bisexual that more ignites passion.
