***SPOILERS*** In 1980 Cannon Films took an 1969 unfinished film with then unknown actor Robert De Niro called " Sam's Song" and then added in new footage, shot some ten years later, making the movie look like most of it took place in 1979 instead of 1969, and called it "The Swap".
Robert De Niro who instead of being the kind shy sweet and sensitive young film director Sammy, who tried to get a couple of friends of his back together who were having serious marital problems, in the original film "Sam's Song" is made into the sleazy low-life porno film maker, of both straight and gay X-rated flicks, Sammy Nicoletti.
Sammy is murdered at the start of the movie, when his head is bashed in by an unknown assailant, as he's sitting in his film studio in 1969. Ten years later Sammy's older brother Vito, Anthony Charnota, is released from prison and the first thing he does is go out looking for Sammy's killer. Vito also felt guilty about Sammy's death because he promised his mom, who died due to a stroke because of the shock that Sammy's death brought on, that he would always take care and look after Sammy.
Checking out all the leads Vito goes to see book publisher Erica Moore,Sybil Danning and in the flash-back sequences Jennifer Warren, who was with Sammy at a big house party that she threw at her Long Island estate. The last weekend of Sammy's life before he was murdered. Erica tells Vito that Sammy was with her and here husband Andrew, Jarred Micky, and his girlfriend Carol, Terrayne Crawford, at the estate and later on a ferry sailing off the Island.
It turns out that there was a swap involved between Sammy & Carol and Erica & Andrew where Erica became romantically involved with Sammy and Andrew left Erica for Carol whom he later married. Vito Later tracks down Marge, Phylis Black, who he found out went to the cemetery every week to lay flowers at Sammy's grave. It turns out that Marge was an actress in some of Sammy's kiddie-porn films when she was 12 and 13 years-old.
Together with Marge Vito slowly uncovers the reason for Sammy's murder and it had to do with him blackmailing people of wealth and power who financed his porno film career and in one case was a performer in a gay X-rated porno flick that Sammy directed.
Vito hits pay-dirt when he comes across a number of films, that Sammy left to him which in them shows the person, with XXX sex acts. In one of them is the person who eventually murdered Sammy. Vito is drugged gassed kidnapped and shot during the course of the movie in his efforts to find Sammy's killer and exact justice & vengeance on him but, as it turned out, at the cost of his life.
The ending of "The Swap" has almost the entire cast killed off by somehow trying to fit all the loose ends in this very uneven movie together but that makes the film even more confusing then it already was up to then.
"The Swap" is a bargain-basement-type of crime movie, with organized crime implications added in it, that in many ways comes across more comical then serious. As for the dialog it's more tongue and cheek,"Hey I Can Take My Own Pants Off!", then anything else. The movies ending, that was so obviously forced and contrived, looked as if those making "The Swap" suddenly realized just how silly and inane it was and quickly rapped it up. This in order not to have people in the audience laughing themselves to death and having their family members sue Cannon Films for damages.
