Jeanie Bell Movies
- 1947
A talented small town gal from Tennessee ends up in the big city after she is discovered by a talent scout. Though the scout is genuinely enthused about her latest discovery, her employers ignore the young girl, causing the enterprising scout to quit and team up with another former co-worker to create their own talent agency. With their help, the girl becomes a big hit. Gene Krupa and his band are the featured artists of this low-budget musical. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gene Krupa, Virginia Grey, (more)
This violent blaxploitation film stars Jim Brown as the owner of a Los Angeles nightclub. When his brother, a Vietnam veteran, is murdered by gangsters, Brown gathers some of his brother's fellow veterans and an assortment of ex-convicts to get brutal revenge. Martin Landau, Luciana Paluzzi, and Jeannie Bell head the cast, along with genre regulars Bruce Glover, Bernie Casey, and Gary Conway. Director Robert Hartford-Davis is best known for horror films like Incense of the Damned and Corruption, while Brown went on to more successful genre fare in Slaughter and Slaughter's Big Rip-Off. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- 1973
Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx) is convinced that his son Lamont (Demond Wilson) has become a homosexual. This is "confirmed" when Bubba (Don Bexley) spots Lamont and his pal Rollo (Nathaniel Taylor) entering a gay bar. In truth, it's all a big misunderstanding, but try telling that to Fred, who begins reading "hidden meanings" into every one of Lamont's utterances. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Redd Foxx, Demond Wilson, (more)
- 1973
- PG
Fass Black owns the Disco 9000, a neon-lit penthouse dance club that's one of the top nightspots in Los Angeles. He also owns Disco 9000 Records, a successful label that provides the music for this venue. A rival mogul ascertains that his company can't get a hit record in the Los Angeles market without exposure at the Disco 9000, but he fails to convince Black to play his company's records at the club. So his goons make life difficult for Black: they smash cars in the club's parking lot, destroy the Disco 9000 recording studio, ransack his office, steal the tape of his label's latest recording, and even attack the club while people are dancing. Meanwhile, one of Black's associates tries to get out of debt by providing information on Black; this leads to a woman's accidental death when she's hit by a car. The rival mogul offers to "help" Black as he struggles to overcome the damage to his business, but Black refuses the offer. Instead, he fights back by researching his rival's financial records. ~ Todd Kristel, All Movie Guide
"You don't make up for your sins in church; you do it in the streets; you do it at home. The rest is bulls--t, and you know it." Returning to the autobiographical milieu of his 1968 debut Who's That Knocking at My Door? for his third feature, Martin Scorsese examined the daily struggles of a wannabe hood to keep his morals straight on the streets of Little Italy. Driven equally by his wish to become a respectable gangster like his uncle (Cesare Danova) and his desire to live his life like St. Francis, Charlie (Harvey Keitel) takes on his energetically unhinged friend Johnny Boy (Robert De Niro) as his own personal penance, intervening to get Johnny Boy to pay off a debt to the local loan shark Michael (Richard Romanus). Despite his promises to his epileptic girlfriend Teresa (Amy Robinson) that they will move out of Little Italy once he strengthens his position in his uncle's world, Charlie's involvement with Johnny Boy further ensnares him in the neighborhood. When Johnny Boy decides to mouth off to Michael rather than pay him, Charlie, Johnny Boy, and Teresa try to flee Michael's murderous anger (and an assassin played by Scorsese), forcing Charlie to realize that the rules of the streets do not mesh with absolution. Whereas fellow "film school generation" director Francis Ford Coppola transformed the Hollywood gangster movie into metaphorical epics about the Mafia and capitalism in The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974), Scorsese revised the genre in the opposite direction, focusing on the gritty minutiae of daily life and drawing from personal memory. Combining documentary-style realism (even though most of the film was shot in L.A.); kinetic editing and camera movement; and expressionistic lighting, angles, and film speed, Scorsese presents an intimate picture of the trivial incidents and latent violence of Charlie's and Johnny Boy's world, naturalistically unfolding their experiences rather than simply explaining what motivates them. They lead a claustrophobic, petty existence that Scorsese and screenwriter Mardik Martin witnessed growing up in Little Italy, complete with a soundtrack of hit songs like "Be My Baby" and "Jumping Jack Flash" that had poured out of neighborhood radios. Mean Streets opened at the New York Film Festival to excellent notices and played strongly in New York but failed to duplicate that level of business elsewhere. Even so, Mean Streets established Scorsese and De Niro as formidable young talents and marked the beginning of a long-running and fertile collaboration that continued in such films as Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), The King of Comedy (1983), and Goodfellas (1990). Scorsese's exceptional grasp of the texture of day-to-day life, the rhythm and cadences of street talk, and cinema's visual and aural possibilities makes Mean Streets one of the pivotal films of the 1970s, as well as of Scorsese's career, and an influence on such future filmmakers as Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino, among many others. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, (more)
- 1974
- R
The "three" alluded to in the title are played by Jim Brown, Fred Williamson and Jim Kelly. Letting their fists do all the talking, the hard-nosed trio takes on a neofascist organization. It is the avowed purpose of this all-white hate group to "cleanse" Los Angeles, Detroit and Washington DC of all blacks. To do this, they plan to poison the drinking water with a secret formula that affects only African Americans. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1974
- R
The setting is Atoka County, Alabama -- the time is somewhere after the peak of the civil rights movement, after cities such as Birmingham, Alabama were out of the headlines. The movement is coming to the sticks, including Atoka County, and a lot of the white residents don't like it and are prepared to commit felonious assault, rape, or murder to get their point across. In the middle of this powder keg are two men on either side of a very dangerous line -- County Sheriff "Big Track" Bascomb (Lee Marvin) and Mayor Hardy (David Huddleston). Each man is playing both ends against the middle in the impending race war -- Bascomb wants to keep the peace as best he can, blocking the local klavern of the Ku Klux Klan from their worst excesses and making sure that the Klan's business and the county's business remain separate; Hardy, who also owns the lumber company that employs most of the county and the bank on which most of the residents depend, wants a good environment for business, which includes keeping enough poor blacks around to do the most menial work for the miserable pay he's willing to fork over; this, in turn, requires that they be too scared to ask for too much, including better treatment, but not so scared that they leave the county altogether, which would wipe out his business. Between them is Breck Stancill (Richard Burton), an eighth-generation resident with lots of land but little money and even fewer friends; a wounded war veteran and loner, he still resents the lynching of his grandfather and no longer respects what the white south purports to stand for -- he's even allowed dispossessed blacks to live for free on his property, angering the poor whites around him even more. Bascomb would like Stancill to be a little less high profile, while Hardy would like him to sell out and disappear, and wouldn't mind it if the local Klan helped that process along by trying to kill him. Bascomb's balancing act fails because of two events -- Nancy Poteet (Linda Evans) is raped one night, apparently by a black man, which precipitates the murder of a black teenager and her being violently ostracized by the white community; and a civil rights rally is planned for the town, bringing in lots of "outside agitators" and getting the local klavern eager to act against them. The prime mover in all of this is Big Track's deputy, Butt Cut Bates (Cameron Mitchell), a hardcore klansman who won't be reined in by Hardy and who is not above raping a black woman prisoner (Lola Falana) that he's arrested illegally, or trying to kill Stancill; directly opposed to him is Garth (O.J. Simpson), a young black man who witnessed a Klan murder and, in response, gets a rifle and starts meting out justice on his own. Before it's over, a major part of the county is at war and the bodies are falling everywhere. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lee Marvin, Richard Burton, (more)
- 1974
- R
Playboy Playmate Jeanne Bell stars as T.N.T.. Jackson ("...she'll put you in traction!") in this popular blaxploitation film from Filipino director Cirio H. Santiago. Jackson leaves Harlem for Hong Kong to find her missing brother, who has run afoul of the Mob. Predictably, she must pose as a prostitute in order to find him, as well as engaging in topless karate. Santiago and his New World Pictures boss, Roger Corman, were so pleased with the film's success that they essentially remade it twice more, as Firecracker in 1981 and as Angelfist in 1992. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jeanie Bell, Stan Shaw, (more)
In a way, the title of Some Like It Cool was a piquant comment on the career of star Tony Curtis, whose stardom had chilled since his 1959 appearance in Some Like It Hot. This time around, Curtis plays famed 18th-century lover Giacomo Casanova. The plot would have us believe that Casanova has suddenly turned impotent, and is deploying all manner of subterfuge to hide the fact. One of Casanova's stratagems is to hire a look-alike (also Curtis) to uphold his reputation between the sheets. The stellar supporting cast -- Marisa Berenson, Hugh Griffith, Britt Ekland et. al. -- seem far more embarrassed by their tawdry, topless surroundings than Curtis, who steamrolls his way through the film with the same dogged determination that he'd demonstrated in his "Yonda lies the castle of my fadduh" formative years. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tony Curtis, Marisa Berenson, (more)
- 1976
- R
This black-oriented women's prison film from Filipino director Cirio H. Santiago (T.N.T. Jackson) stars Playboy Playmates Rosanne Katon and Jeanne Bell as the leaders of a pirate gang who go undercover at a prison farm to save Bell's sister. As the wicked Serena, Jayne Kennedy cracks a whip and acts nasty until finally leading the obligatory insurrection. The prisoners pick coffee beans and the pirate women know kung-fu, making this one of the quirkier entries in the subgenre. Former Bond-girl Trina Parks (Diamonds Are Forever) and Santiago regular Ken Metcalfe co-star. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jeanie Bell, Rosanne Katon, (more)
- 1977
- R
Loosely based on former policeman Joseph Wambaugh's humorous novel, The Choirboys determinedly explores the stunted interior lives of a large crew of callous, bigoted L.A. policemen. These men get together to lend one another emotional support. However, the means they choose for this do not enhance their sensitivity or their judgement. When one of them has a really bad day, he asks his buddies to come to "choir practice," and they get together for alcoholic benders of fairly epic proportions. When one of them accidentally shoots a homosexual teen cruising a city park, everyone (including higher-ups) gets called on to help with the cover-up. The Choirboys, which was a critical and box-office failure, had an impressive cast list, including such well-known performers as Blair Brown, James Woods, Randy Quaid, Lou Gossett Jr., Perry King and Charles Durning. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charles Durning, Louis Gossett, Jr., (more)
- 1977
- R
Actor D'Urville Martin held the directorial reins for Fass Black. Disco owner John Poole is threatened with a takeover by the Mob. Poole puts up a fight, a few innocent people are killed, and revenge is exacted. The film's omnipresent disco music was its principal selling card back in 1977. Since no hits emerged from the soundtrack, it isn't likely to generate much interest today. Still, the film works on a "time capsule" level. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
