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Thursday, August 18, 2022

THEY CALL ME MISTER TIBBS (1970)

Oscar’d in ‘67, if now little celebrated, IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT/’67 at least had timing going for it.  With hot-button Civil Rights issues lending purpose to its murder investigation, it’s deservedly half-remembered.  Three years on, the sequel is all swings & misses, the precipitous drop in quality matching dud sequels like TRUE GRIT ➔ ROOSTER COGBURN; 2001 ➔ 2010; THE EXORCIST ➔ THE EXORCIST II; or THE HANGOVER ➔ PARTS II ➔ III.  With subpar production values & under-dressed sets you might have seen at the time in a Quinn Martin tv series, it's unaccountable from a heavyweight producer like Walter Mirisch.  Hack director Gordon Douglas (fresh off a declining trio of Frank Sinatra detective pics) suffering shoddy tech work & some odd, smeary lensing.  But then, what could anyone have done with this lazy police procedural?  Hookers, flaccid dicks, cocaine, hypocritical curates, politics and propositions; plus Mister Tibbs’ personal parental problems.  Poitier, smelling a dog, goes on auto-pilot, only rising for a few scenes with Martin Landau's not-so-principled pastor and disciplining his stubborn brat of a boy, slapping the disrespectful 'tween on the face.  Isn’t that what obnoxious kid’s bottoms are for?   So the welts won’t show.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Stick with IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT.  And let us know how it holds up.

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