Had long wanted to see this because of the title and Roy Scheider - TPTV broadcast it in Fuzzorama. At that early credit 'Associate Producer and Supervising Film Editor Jerry Greenberg' I commented that 'Dede's boys were everywhere' but it wasn't until the end that we realised the film had been edited by Stephen A Rotter, who we were due to Zoom with the very next day! (John Horger also worked on it, Angelo Corrao was an assistant, as was Cynthia Scheider, then Roy's wife, who also cut Breaking Away).
Initially somewhat confusing tale is actually really well written, has an awesome car chase and two great thrillery scenes involving a car wash, of all things. Screenplay by Albert Ruben and Alexander Jacobs, story by Sonny Grosso, who was a New York detective and the subject of the book / film 'The French Connection', which D'Antoni produced.
Scheider is great as usual. The other Seven-Ups are Victor Arnold, Jerry Leon and Ken Kercheval. Tony Lo Bianco is the cop's childhood friend and snitch, Larry Haines one of the Mafiosi, Richard Lynch is the scary killer.
The striking music is by Don Ellis, photographed by Urs Furrer in a dingy NYC.
Steve later gave us some background. He was brought in by Jerry Greenberg to work on it and then as it progressed was let go. He went down to Florida to visit his family and then got a call, 'Do you want to come back as an assistant?' His Mum said 'Don't go. If they want you to be the editor they should ask you' but Steve decided he would go back. He didn't rate his work on it. He said there was a little 'bip' audible whenever there was a cut and he said he'd cut it so much that the sound was 'bip-bip-bip-bip-bip' constantly. 'I got better on my next picture.' Agreed the car chase was difficult to shoot and loved the stunt where the driver goes into the back of the truck. He explained that the top of the car had been sawn almost through and when the driver hit it, he dropped into a roll cage to protect himself.
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