Hustle in the Seventies

THE MONKEY HUSTLE-1976-Big Daddy Fox (Yaphet Kotto) is a hustler/con man/thief in Philly. He recruits/corrupts some street kids. All the characters talk jive and only think about money. Fox's girlfriend runs the local restaurant. Caught in the middle is Win (Randy Brooks) the older brother of one of Fox's young “students”. A side plot concerns the local community protesting the bulldozing of the neighborhood. Later Fox teams up with local con man Glitterin' Goldie (the always outrageously dressed Rudy Ray Moore) to stop the construction. 

This too hip for itself “blaxploitation” film was directed by Arthur Marks (not Groucho's son) but it's not nearly as entertaining as his previous outing J. D.'S REVENGE. 

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Revenge Is His!

J.D.'S REVENGE-1976-This unheralded blaxplotation possession flick has Glynn Thurman as Ike, a hard working cabbie studying to be a lawyer getting taken over by a scar faced New Orleans gangster (named J.D.) killed in a slaughterhouse in 1942. He's coming back because he was framed for a murder.


Ike gets a lot of headaches so a doctor recommends he smoke some weed! He rants and cries, abuses his girlfriend and gives a white female passenger an unforgettable cab ride! Lou Gossett is a flamboyant preacher who may be responsible for setting J.D. up. When the ghost finally takes over completely Ike uses a razor on various gangster victims.

Thurman gives a nice shizo-performance. He had been in COOLEY HIGH the year before and was in Ingmar Bergman's THE SERPENT EGG (with David Carradine) the next year. In 1978 he married Aretha Franklin (they divorced in '84). He still makes occasional TV appearances but this movie is pretty much overlooked.

Producer/Director Arthur Marks made BUCKTOWN (with Fred Williamson) and FRIDAY FOSTER (with Pam Grier) and several other movies but worked mostly in TV.

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