The screenplay was written by Evan Hunter based on the 1968 novel of the same name that is part of his 87th Precinct written under the pen name Ed McBain. Dave Grusin composed the film's soundtrack score. Noted illustrator Richard Amsel painted the poster artwork,[2] featuring Reynolds in a reclining pose reminiscent of his famous centerfold in Cosmopolitan magazine appearing earlier that year.
Although the 87th Precinct novels are set in a fictional metropolis based on New York City, Fuzz is set in, and was shot on location in, Boston, Massachusetts.
Plot
Over a period of several days, detectives in the Boston Police Department's 87th Precinct investigate a variety of cases.
Detective Steve Carella goes undercover as a homeless man to investigate a spate of attacks where homeless men have been set on fire. In an alleyway two youths approach him, throw flammable liquid over him and set him alight. Carella is hospitalised but recovers and returns to his job.
A mysterious caller threatens to kill a city official unless he is paid a $5,000 ransom. Detectives Kling and Brown stake out the drop and follow a man, Tony La Bresca, who takes the box containing the ransom. The police have placed paper in the box. Later, the city Parks Commissioner is shot dead. A further demand for $50,000 is issued. Another box is placed at an arranged spot and police lie in wait. A man collects the box and is captured but he proves to be an opportunist who thought the box contained marijuana. Later the deputy mayor is killed with a car bomb.
Detective Eileen McHenry is transferred to the precinct to help solve a series of rapes. Detective Meyer asks her to interview a witness, who turns out to be a mentally ill woman who claims to have been attacked by a cape-wearing man. Carella and Meyer laugh while McHenry realises it is a set up. Later McHenry walks through a park late at night and is approached by a man who begins to attack her. She fights him off and arrests him, bringing the man's spree of attacks to an end.
The extortionist is a partially Deaf Man, together with his associates Buck and Ahmad. They devise the next part of their campaign, to extort $500,000 from businessman Henry Jefferson. In disguise, they infiltrate the police protection around his mansion and plant a bomb inside. The Deaf Man telephones Jefferson and makes his demand for the money.
The detectives continue to shadow Tony, believing that he is connected to the Deaf Man. Instead they discover he is a petty criminal planning to rob a liquor store with his associate Schroeder. Carella and Kling are placed inside a back room of the store, ready to catch the robbers in the act. The cases converge when, after having planted the bomb in Jefferson's mansion, the Deaf Man and his associates stop to buy champagne at the liquor store. The robbers enter through a rear door and burst in. On seeing Buck in his police disguise, they begin shooting. Buck is shot dead and the Deaf Man flees, but is wounded by Kling he as tries to escape. Ahmad crashes their getaway car. Kling finds evidence linking them to the mansion in the car and the bombing is averted.
The Deaf Man flees on foot to a nearby waterfront area, only to encounter the same two youths who earlier had attacked Carella. They set him on fire and he jumps into the river to escape. No trace of him is found. The police celebrate the conclusion to the case. As they leave however, a hand emerges from the water and retrieves the hearing aid.
Reynolds recalled: "It was kind of fuzzy. It was made by one of those hot shot TV directors. I liked working with Jack Weston; it began our relationship. I did like working again with Raquel. And I liked the writer whose book the film was based on, Ed McBain, The 87th Precinct. I'd like to direct one of his books."[3]
Welch was paid $100,000 for nine days of work. There was a scene in which Welch's character appears in her bra and panties in the men's room, but Welch initially refused to appear in it. Despite attempting alternate shoots, producer Ed Feldman said that "it just didn't work. ... We promised United Artists we'd deliver a certain picture and we haven't got it."[4]
Reception
Roger Ebert awarded the film three stars out of four and called it "an offbeat, funny, quietly cheerful movie in which Ed McBain's 87th Precinct is finally brought to life. Several movies have been based on McBain's 87th Precinct novels, but never one in which the squad room was explored so lovingly by the camera, and the detectives were made so human."[5]
In a negative review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby remarked that the film "looks more like a dress rehearsal than a finished film, a very dry run for something that is apparently meant to be a comedy-melodrama about ineptitude, especially the day-to-day ineptitude of a group of detectives attached to a Boston police station."[6]
Arthur D. Murphy of Variety praised the screenplay as "excellent" and "a rare combination of effective interlocking vignettes which logically and literately evolve towards a climax." Of the performances, Murphy wrote, "Reynolds is very good, Weston and James McEachin are excellent, and Skerritt is outstanding as the principal quartet of detectives spotlighted in the hunt for Brynner. Miss Welch's developed cameo as a sexy policewoman is a decided plus."[7]
Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune awarded the film three stars out of four and wrote that it has "something for everyone: Raquel Welch and Burt Reynolds. Only a solve-three-plots-at-once ending spoils the entertainment."[8]
Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times declared the film "a solid piece of craftsmanship, well-paced and skilfully assembled," although he felt that it "could have been just as diverting had it been played less broadly and for more in-depth characterization. As it is, 'Fuzz' succeeds as a mindless entertainment."[9]
Gary Arnold of The Washington Post called the film "a sprightly, genial take-off on the cops-and-robbers formula" as well as "the most amusing and attractive commercial vehicle I've seen since 'Play It Again, Sam,' and it recommends itself in a similar way — as an agreeable throwaway entertainment, ideally suited for summertime moviegoing."[10]
Tony Collier of The Monthly Film Bulletin thought that "the comedy here, ladled on with a satirical fervour that invites overstatement, works in isolation, with no real interplay between it and the violence, so that the two elements coexist without ever quite managing to coalesce. Fuzz is nevertheless an intelligent and enjoyable film, and often very funny."[11]
Controversy
In Boston on October 2, 1973, 24-year-old white woman Evelyn Wagler was walking to her car with a two-gallon can of gasoline. Six black teenagers dragged her into an alley and forced her to pour gasoline on herself. She complied and was then set ablaze by the teenagers, who walked away laughing. The hate crime occurred during a racially tense period in Boston. After the incident, the press reported that Fuzz had aired on nationwide television the previous weekend and that the perpetrators may have reenacted an attack portrayed in the movie. The case was never solved.[12]
In Miami on October 20, 1973, 38-year-old Charles Scales, a homeless person sleeping outdoors behind an abandoned building, was approached by a group of teenagers, doused with gasoline and set on fire. Two other homeless people were also attacked in the same incident but escaped. A survivor stated the teenagers "were laughing and throwing gas and striking matches" at them.[13] The film was mentioned in news reports about the murder, as the attack closely resembled one of its scenes. This murder did not appear to have been racially motivated.[citation needed]
The incidents led to a careful review by network television Standards and Practices departments and a general feeling among the public that television violence was inspiring real-life acts of violence. Networks were forced to curb the amount of violence that they broadcast throughout the decade, and Fuzz was temporarily withdrawn from television broadcast until it returned to cable television years later.[citation needed]
Burton Leon Reynolds Jr. was an American actor and icon of 1970s American popular culture. Reynolds first rose to prominence when he starred in television series such as Gunsmoke (1962–1965), Hawk (1966), and Dan August (1970–1971). He had leading roles in films such as Navajo Joe (1966) and 100 Rifles (1969), and his breakthrough role was as Lewis Medlock in Deliverance (1972).
Deaf-mute is a term which was used historically to identify a person who was either deaf and used sign language or both deaf and could not speak. The term continues to be used to refer to deaf people who cannot speak an oral language or have some degree of speaking ability, but choose not to speak because of the negative or unwanted attention atypical voices sometimes attract. Such people communicate using sign language. Some consider it to be a derogatory term if used outside its historical context; the preferred term today is simply deaf.
Evan Hunter was an American author of crime and mystery fiction. He is best known as the author of 87th Precinct novels, published under the pen name Ed McBain, which are considered staples of police procedural genre.
The 87th Precinct is a series of police procedural novels and stories by American author Ed McBain. McBain's 87th Precinct works have been adapted, sometimes loosely, into movies and television on several occasions.
The police procedural, police show, or police crime drama is a subgenre of procedural drama and detective fiction that emphasizes the investigative procedure of police officers, police detectives, or law enforcement agencies as the protagonists, as contrasted with other genres that focus on non-police investigators such as private investigators.
Robert Lansing was an American stage, film, and television actor.
100 Rifles is a 1969 American Western film directed by Tom Gries and starring Jim Brown, Raquel Welch and Burt Reynolds. It is based on Robert MacLeod's 1966 novel The Californio. The film was shot in Spain. The original music score was composed by Jerry Goldsmith, who had previously also scored Bandolero!, another Western starring Welch.
Cop and a Half is a 1993 American family buddy cop-comedy film directed by Henry Winkler, and stars Burt Reynolds, Norman D. Golden II, and Ray Sharkey in his final role. Reynolds plays a veteran cop who reluctantly takes an eight-year-old boy (Golden) as his partner to solve a murder investigation.
Sharky's Machine is a 1981 American neo-noir action thriller film directed by Burt Reynolds, who stars in the title role. It is the film adaptation of William Diehl's 1978 novel of the same name, with a screenplay by Gerald Di Pego. It also stars Vittorio Gassman, Brian Keith, Charles Durning, Earl Holliman, Bernie Casey, Henry Silva, Darryl Hickman, Richard Libertini, Rachel Ward and Joseph Mascolo.
Cop Hater (1956) is the first 87th Precinct police procedural novel by Ed McBain. The murder of three detectives in quick succession in the 87th Precinct leads Detective Steve Carella on a search that takes him into the city's underworld and ultimately to a .45 automatic aimed straight at his head.
87th Precinct is an American crime drama starring Robert Lansing, Gena Rowlands, Ron Harper, Gregory Walcott and Norman Fell, which aired on NBC on Monday evenings during the 1961–1962 television season.
Kansas City Bomber is a 1972 American sports drama film released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, directed by Jerrold Freedman and starring Raquel Welch. It also marks one of the earliest film appearances of Jodie Foster.
Shamus is a 1973 American comedy thriller film directed by Buzz Kulik, and starring Burt Reynolds and Dyan Cannon. The word "shamus" means "detective" in American slang.
Cop Hater is a 1958 American crime film noir police procedural film based on the 1956 novel Cop Hater written by Ed McBain, the first in a series of books about the 87th Precinct in New York City. The film was produced and directed by William Berke, written by Henry Kane and stars Robert Loggia and Gerald O'Loughlin.
The Mugger is a (1956) novel by Ed McBain, the second in his 87th Precinct series. It was adapted for a film of the same name in 1958. In 2002 the author wrote an introduction to this and to his earlier novel Cop Hater when both were published in an omnibus edition.
Blood Relatives is a 1978 Canadian-French mystery film directed by Claude Chabrol from a screenplay that he and Sydney Banks adapted from the 1975 novel of the same name by Ed McBain. Set in Montreal, Canada, it involves the brutal murder of a teenage girl and the subsequent investigation led by Donald Sutherland as Steve Carella, the lead character of McBain's 87th Precinct series. Blood Relatives was filmed under a policy that allowed full tax deferment to foreign produced films if they reflected a specific portrait of Canada. For this reason, the novel's setting of a thinly-veiled New York City is changed to Montreal. Filmmaker Akira Kurosawa called Chabrol a "pretty skillful director" and this film "the best of all Ed McBain adaptations".
Without Apparent Motive is a 1971 French thriller film directed by Philippe Labro and adapted from the 1963 novel Ten Plus One by Ed McBain. Set in Nice, it tells the story of a police detective faced with a series of unexplained killings of apparently unconnected people by a mystery sniper.
The Pusher is a 1960 American crime film directed and co-produced by Gene Milford. The screenplay—based on Ed McBain's novel of the same name, from his 87th Precinct series—was written by Harold Robbins. The film stars Kathy Carlyle, Robert Lansing, Felice Orlandi, Douglas Rodgers and Sloan Simpson. The film was released in February 1960, by United Artists.
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