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Johnny LaRue's Crane Shot
Thursday, February 16, 2006
What If It Was Your Sister?
Now Playing: TRACKDOWN
Here's a rarity for you. TRACKDOWN appears to have been an independently produced action movie released by United Artists in 1976, but it has never been released on home video in any form, and it's unlikely that it'll ever be at this point. My copy isn't the greatest quality--it's a fuzzy television print with a missing rape scene--but where else am I going to see this movie?

Big Jim Mitchum stars as Big Jim Calhoun, a Montana rancher who journeys to the big, bad city of Los Angeles to hunt his teenage runaway sister Betsy (Karen Lamm, married to Dennis Wilson at the time). Like many a youngster who runs away to Hollywood, Betsy runs afoul of some bad dudes. First she's ripped off by a Latino street gang, but when one of the gang members, Chucho (Erik Estrada, who's good here), feels sorry for her, he gets her a decent job, takes her dancing, and then back to his place for lovin'. Then she's abducted by Chucho's alleged pals, gangraped, drugged, and sold into hood Johnny Dee's (Vince Cannon) stable of call girls.

The head madam, the classy Barbara (beautiful Anne Archer), manages to convince the 17-year-old Betsy that prostitution is a big barrel of laughs, which it appears to be (lots of nice clothes, extravagant parties and partying with rock stars), until one of Dee's pals gets a little too rough with her.

Meanwhile, Jim, after getting nowhere with the cops, crashes through the streets of Hollywood like an ox in a china shop before finally teaming up with Chucho and women's shelter director Lynn (Cathy Lee Crosby) for more rough stuff, but of a more organized nature.

TRACKDOWN isn't anything special, but it isn't a bad timewaster either. The first half is a bit short on action and is too much like the superior HARDCORE, but director Richard T. Heffron (NEWMAN'S LAW) really picks things up in the second half with an exciting shootout inside an elevator shaft and a fiery desert climax. Mitchum isn't the world's greatest actor, but he looks like he really can kick plenty of ass.

TRACKDOWN features a supporting actor named John Kerry, has a closing theme song performed by Kenny Rogers, and features a story credit for Ivan Nagy, who later married Heidi Fleiss.

Posted by Marty at 11:10 PM CST
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