New York City is not the sort of Wild West setting I’d expect to find Lee Van Cleef in, but he shows up here as the lead in a mildly interesting caper film as an older, wiser movie villain, this time sporting a neatly trimmed beard along with the ubiquitous moustache. I’ll play devil’s advocate here and say that I found this picture somewhat interesting compared to most reviewers on this board. It had an eclectic cast featuring Edward Albert and Karen Black, and just to give you an idea how long it’s been since I saw Lionel Stander in anything at all, it would have been way back in his ‘Hart to Hart’ days of the early Eighties.

So most of the other reviewers give you an idea of what’s going on here. I’d rather comment on such quirks in the story as the newspaper headline ‘Youth Drums His Way to Jail’ as Jeff Olafson (Albert) is being ushered to jail AFTER the story breaks in print. This device was pretty common in films of the Thirties and Forties, but seeing it as late as 1978 makes no sense at all. Then there’s the ‘Shaft’ style music soundtrack for a nominally all white film except for the martial arts bad guy who appears later in the picture. And riddle me this – I don’t know anything really about gunshot forensics, but how is it that blood stains still appear on a car seat twenty four hours after being submerged in salt water? Just wondering.

Karen Black gets the booby prize for her performance here. I’ve seen her in a fair number of movies, and I’m still trying to figure out if she’s attractive or not. She has a unique look and depending on your disposition, I guess she could be a looker. It happened here once in an odd close-up. Otherwise, she’s involved in a neat twist at the end of the story I didn’t see coming, so if you need any kind of a recommendation, that would be it.