The Guy from Harlem

WARNING: The following review contains abuse of exclamation points.

Groooooch!

THE WORST MOVIE EVER MADE.

Let me repeat this to make sure you get it.

THE. WORST. MOVIE. EVER. MADE.

Wait. I don't think I got it quite right yet.

THE!! WORST!! MOVIE!! EVER!! MADE!!

Worse than anything made by Ed Wood (including his "adult" movies)! Worse than anything by Bill Rebane, or Coleman Francis, or Richard Cunha, or Jerry Warren! Worse than MANOS! Worse than THE CREEPING TERROR! Worse than MONSTER-A-GO-GO (okay, maybe not)! Worse than BATTLEFIELD EARTH! Worse than FREDDY GOT FINGERED! Worse than PACIFIC HEIGHTS! Worse than Eddie Murphy's BOOMERANG! Worse than BABY GENIUSES 2! Wow! Stunning! Bad film-making at its worst! An all time low! Almost impossible for it to fail more than it did! Hilarious!

Teeth-grindingly awful! Everything about this movie is substandard! The lowest possible budget! Must have been written by a 12-year-old! Worse than amateurish acting! Everyone in this movie is a terrible actor! Leaden pacing! Abysmal shot composition! Poor staging! Terrible sound! (You can hear the camera rolling throughout the movie...)

The worst stunts I've ever seen! Most fake fight scene ever filmed! Awful dialog! The least amount of romantic chemistry ever seen between a male and female lead! Lousy music! (Actually the music is the least horrible thing about this movie, but it's still pretty bad.)

Ridiculously unlikely plot! Stilted exposition! A woman supposedly from Africa with an American accent! I still have not used enough exclamation points to convince you just HOW BAD this movie truly is!!!!

All budding MST3K trainees, attention: this is boot camp for the cynical movie critic. You will be LITERALLY BLOWN AWAY (hyperbole there: you will only be METAPHORICALLY blown away, not literally) by how truly awful, laughably bad and bargain basement this movie really is. Your jaw will hit the floor, your hair will curl, and your eyes will not believe what they are seeing.

If you read this comment and all the others regarding this movie, and still take a chance, don't come running back to any of us. You will either be rolling on the floor laughing the uncontrollable laughter of the truly insane or clawing your eyes out if you stick with this bloated cinematic pustule till the end.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

I saw this movie almost 30 years ago, shortly after I participated in the filming of it. I don't remember much, but I remember thinking it was pretty good considering it was done with amateurs and almost no budget! But everything is relative, and given the choice today, I would have to say that the only reason I would watch it again is because my name is in the credits. The real life scenes that occurred during the filming of it were definitely more interesting than the movie itself. I did enjoy some of the soundtrack which was written and performed by professionals, a local Miami band called "Brand New". PS The leading lady may not win an Oscar, but she could definitely win an award for her voice!

Either this is one of the worst films ever made, even giving 70s blaxploitation an even badder name, or it is a wonderfully constructed parody of the whole genre. It could be the first satirical post-modernist film; pre-post-modernism in fact. On watching it you could think to yourself, are they being serious or is it a pastiche? Have they reduced the genre to its basic elements then re-constructed them into a profound meditation on the plight of the outsider engaged in a "left handed form of human endeavor." Are the pauses in dialogue due to the incompetence of the actors or is an attempt to cross-pollinate the gangster film with a Harold Pinter-ish sensibility? Is the crude photography a pioneering Dogme film long before its time? Is this indeed a lost masterpiece, worthy of Bergman, Dreyer or Welles? No. This is one of the worst films ever made.

I'm quite positive that a number of people who have seen The Guy from Harlem will look at my rating and conclude that I need to be committed. A 5/10 isn't a great rating, but it is for a movie as bad as The Guy from Harlem. There's a reason it has a 2.4 IMDb rating. I've always said that I rate films based on entertainment and The Guy from Harlem entertained me. Admittedly, I enjoyed a lot of the movie for the wrong reasons. Still, as I said, I was entertained.

The movie tells two stories of a private detective named Al Connors (Loye Hawkins). In the first, the CIA enlists Connors to guard a visiting African princess. In the second, Connors is hired to rescue a drug kingpin's kidnapped daughter. While the plot is nothing to write home about, given how bad the rest of the movies is, the plot is actually fairly coherent.

Beyond the plot, the rest of The Guy from Harlem is about as poorly presented as I've ever seen. It's easy to tell that for almost the entire cast, this is either their only or one of their only screen credits. The acting is abysmal, with unnatural delivery and flubbed lines. The fact that a lot of the actors' mistakes were not edited out goes to show the quality of the direction, editing, and the film's budget. Speaking of editing, The Guy from Harlem has one of the most glaring editing mistakes I've ever seen in a movie. There is a fairly routine scene with a few seconds of dialogue. Immediately after this scene is over, it is repeated a second time. How is it possible that no one noticed this? It would be like me typing a sentence and then typing it again. It would be like me typing a sentence and then typing it again. See what I mean? Next, the action set-pieces are a disaster. My five year-old could choreograph more realistic looking fight scenes. The sets look as cheap as the rest of the film. Connor's office consists of a couple of poorly furnished rooms in someone's house. It looks pathetic.

Despite these and other flaws in The Guy from Harlem, there has to be something that worked on me, right? First, these that issues many people would have with the movie, I found hysterical. The whole movie has that "so bad it's good" quality to it. Second, the music is actually quite good. I was pleasantly surprised with the funky 70s feel of the soundtrack. Third, there's a character named Harry De Bauld played by Steve Gallon that I found incredibly enjoyable. All of his lines were delivered at a volume several decibels greater than everyone else. He had a flow and style to his speech that worked on me. It reminded me a bit of WWE wrestling manager Teddy Long. What a hoot!

"The Guy From Harlem" is strictly filled with amateurs--and NOTHING about the film is polished or appears very good. It truly looks as if no one from the film had any experience in the industry and they were all just winging it! It is a terrible film--though I have seen worse.

The CIA wants the hero to protect the wife of an African head of state. So, inexplicably, instead of protecting her themselves, they seek out the private dick, Al Connors. Connors completes this assignment--along with beating up a few baddies and having his way with the sexy lady. Then, a mobster approaches Connors--his daughter has been kidnapped. So, Connors beats up some baddies and, not surprisingly, has his way with this lady as well. Both plots are amazingly similar and I have no idea why they didn't just have one plot instead of two which were nearly identical.

Al Connors (Loy Hawkins) is one of the lowest energy and least exciting blaxploitation heroes I've ever seen in a film. He lacks style but makes up for it in crappy fighting skills and no charisma. He isn't helped any by the fact that most of the supporting actors cannot deliver their lines--at least Hawkins does not stumble over his lines--he more just strolls through them in slow-motion. Overall, you've got cheap sets, poor acting, horrendous dialog, a repetitive plot and nothing positive to distinguish this film from the pack. Dull beyond belief.