Target: Harry

According to IMDB, "Target: Harry" was a pilot movie for a proposed series that was never picked up by the networks. So, instead, they creatively re-edited the film (adding a couple nude scenes) and released it as a feature film.

Harry (Vic Morrow) is a pilot who is transporting Mr. Carlyle to Instanbul. However, Carlyle is killed and a gang of thugs think that Harry was working for Carlyle...and so Harry must have the stolen plates that were in Carlyle's possession. So, he spends the rest of the film being chased about, shot at and getting the snot knocked out of him in the movie...all while trying to look very cool.

This is a decent thriller....nothing special but yet another example of a Roger Corman film that managed to make money...as all but one of his over 400 films did! Worth seeing but far from a great film.

Director Roger Corman once said about "Target: Harry" that it was a TV-movie before there was such a thing. Financed by the ABC Broadcasting Company, it may have been meant for television, though it was mostly seen in overseas markets with two new (and nude!) scenes added by producer Gene Corman: a sex scene 6mns in and the murder of a topless woman. Vic Morrow is cagey as Harry Black, a pilot sprung from jail in Monte Carlo who is hired to fly a British businessman to Istanbul. His client is murdered upon arrival because of what's not in his possession: currency plates for counterfeiting, stolen from the Royal Bank of London. The film has some good things in it, particularly Victor Buono as nefarious Mosul Rashi (Morrow and Buono make quite a team later in the film), and Suzanne Pleshette as a super-cool mystery lady who keeps popping up in crowds and hotel rooms. There's an exciting (if improbable) prison break, followed by a shoot-out amongst the Turkish ruins, but the effort seems pasted together. Too bad, Morrow holds his own as a latter-day Bogie wannabe. ** from ****

Mr New York Swagger that is the only actor in history that could ever get away with being Mr. New York Tough Guy, who would have died from lung cancer and emphasema had he lived any longer; well its not him at the beginning. Vic's been one of my goons for a long time so i know him well. The sex scene at the beginning which sparked my constant case of jealousy, i thought that's not Vic's back. Anyone who knows Vic as intimatly as I knows his right index finger is greatly shorter than normal. The guy in bed with the Suzanne chick has a normal finger.

I watched Target: Harry because I thought it was a type of James Bond spy movie starring Cesar Romero as the "M" character. While that turned out to be true, Cesar was only in about fifteen minutes the movie. He's in the first ten minutes, luring unsuspecting audience members like me in. Then, we hang in there for the next hour, hoping in vain to see him again.

The bulk of the movie is extremely cheesy. "I'll buy that." "You can't afford it," she quips back. It's all very 1970s tv-movie-ish. Lots of zooms, lots of unrealistic, supposedly clever dialogue, and a huge rip-off of the James Bond theme. Vic Morrow is the too-cool-for-school lead who can't be bothered to care about anything. Suzanne Pleshette is his love interest who can't be trusted. Victor Buono is the bad guy. There's not much else to know, really, but you'll see some familiar faces as well: Stanley Holloway, Michael Ansara, and Charlotte Rampling as a blonde. I don't really recommend this one.

Roger Corman had successfully directed an "A" movie in 1967, "The St. Valentine's Day Massacre", but he reverted to his much-lauded quickie movie roots for "Target: Harry", an ABC-TV pilot/telefilm that boasts a very fine cast but plays as flat as a pancake. It's a shame.

Watching it so many decades later was like sitting in a screening room watching an assemblage of film dailies: lots of background shots, listless reverse-shots' conversations (edited by Monte Hellman, who apparently had not much material to work with) and evident guerrilla filmmaking (extras staring toward the camera, no film permits obtained for a shoot) that reminded me of a couple of my favorite indie directors of the time, like Larry Cohen and Fred Williamson. The footage was lifeless, and if it had been a major film studio project I suspect Corman would have been fired and replaced (as later happened with Cohen on "I, The Jury") after a week or so.

The actors are pros, and even though at times he seems to be acting under protest, Vic Morrow is believable as our no-nonsense tough guy hero, the type (like Mitchum) that might get into bar fights with "fans" anxious to pick an argument with him. Supporting cast on paper is A-List, but only Victor Buono, too obviously styled as an imitation of Sydney Greenstreet, seems alive. The fault is not all Corman's - a screenplay by hack Bob Barbash is completely uninteresting throughout.