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13 reviews in total

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11 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
A very amusing, tightly directed humorous of the old murder mystery formula…, 20 September 2008

Author: ironside (robertfrangie@hotmail.com) from Mexico

Jake Masters (Allen Garfield) is a private eye detective hired by a wealthy man who is the prime suspect in the murder of a young starlet... It is Jake's job to find the real killer... He not only uncovers the case, but also a lot of hookers and call girls...

The misadventures are highly comic and include sexual intercourse, unintentional necrophilia, and sinister lesbians... The sexual overtones are stimulating and funny... They are used more to comment on the hypocrisy of society than to derive unjust profit...

There is a lot of soul in this film, especially in the performance of Garfield, who plays a very adorable investigator... Madeleine Le Roux is volcanic as the fiery blond who is as quick with a pistol as she is with her verbal assaults...

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10 out of 17 people found the following review useful:
One of the weirdest Tromas ever!, 19 February 2004
Author: Andrew Leavold (trash@trashvideo.com.au) from Brisbane, Australia

Fans of Rocky and The Karate Kid probably don't know this, but the Oscar-winning director responsible for both mainstream cocklewarmers was making some very weird sh*t in the early 70s. Before coming down with a terminal case of Good Taste, Avildsen had cranked out the superior sex comedy Guess What We Learned In School Today? (1969) and the classic Summer of Hate film Joe (1970), starring Peter Boyle as a blue collar hippie-killer, and Cry Uncle, a totally whacked-out and very black private-eye spoof marketed as a sex film since you couldn't do much else with its then porno-only X rating. Tubby Jewish comedian Allen Garfield (you'll recognize the face, guaranteed)plays the "Super Dick' hired by a millionaire suspect in a murder case. The investigation soon becomes a trail of dead bodies, including one Garfield has sex with, thinking she's a comatose junkie! Troma president Lloyd Kaufman was production assistant, as with all early Avildsen films from Joe onwards, and plays the bearded hippie on LSD in a motel room. A bad taste masterpiece, Troma later distributed the film, displaying a rare flash of good taste on their part!

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4 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Surprisingly Explicit and Still Outrageous, 23 June 2008

Author: rwint1611 from Indianapolis, Indiana

THE PLOT: A down and out private eye (Garfield) becomes embroiled in a complex case involving murder, intrigue, and a lot of sex.

THE POSITIVE: This is one drive-in flick that definitely does not skimp on the sex. There is a lot of it and it is very explicit and done in some outlandish ways. One features a couple having sex during the national anthem, while another shows Garfield having sex with a prostitute while in front of a picture of Christ, yet the most notorious one involves Garfield having sex with a dead body while ragtime music plays in the background. Garfield, in the lead, is quite amusing as he seems to be always running his mouth off about something. Sorvino also has a funny cameo as a policeman plagued with a terrible case of smoker's cough.

THE NEGATIVE: Although she delivers her lines well Le Roux, in the female lead role, is not real sexy. Her face resembles that of Cruella De Vil's in the cartoon version of 101 DALMATIONS and her body is very flat making her nude scenes unexciting. She also doesn't seem too young either. Certain camera angles make her look like a youthful 30 while others give the impression that she is pushing 45. There are also enough nude shots of overweight and out of shape Garfield to make just about anyone sick. The film is also unable to sustain its nice slam bang funny pace that it has at the beginning with the second half being not as outrageous or inspired.

THE LOWDOWN: For fans of low-grade, T & A, drive-in fare this one pretty much hits the target and makes the most of its low budget, underground roots.

THE RATING: 5 out of 10.

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6 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
X-rated bawdy porn detective film, 25 April 2003

Author: Chuck Rothman (crothman) from Schenectady, NY, USA

This movie was something of a revelation when it came out -- a full-tilt x-rated film that had little to do with sex. It's structured as a detective film, with Alan Garfield (Goorwitz) in one of his early roles. Everyone talks sex (and often takes part), but the film is ultimately a bizarre comedy about sex. Accidental necrophilia may not sound like fertile ground for jokes, but it does work.

Sort of like x-rated Preston Sturges crossed with South Park. (I'm not claiming it's as good as either, but they give you an idea of the sensibility.) It will offend the uptight, that's for sure.

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1 out of 1 people found the following review useful:
Something good about seeing less than perfect nakedness, 28 September 2009

Author: christopher-underwood from Greenwich - London

As I understand it, the director, now making much more mainstream films and famous for such product as, Rocky and Karate Kid, still has a soft spot for this early piece, which he co-wrote. Not only did Mr Avildsen not 'die' in the aftermath of this extremely sleazy outing, Allen Garfield, as the overweight and obscene lead, also continued in his successful career. Not only could a film as full of non PC stuff, including hard core sequences not be made for theatres today it is likely that anyone even considering the project might face the wrath of their peers. It is indeed with amazement we look back at some of the films of the early 70s and face the fact that weird, personal, extreme and in-your-face that they were, they could find their place in the market and remain available for us to watch them now mouths agape. This is great fun loving film making. There is sex, humour and a little violence, but what really keeps this super thing afloat is the honesty of the writing and the believable, yet unbelievable way Garfield flops through the movie treading a fine line between scumbag and wise guy. It is a unique must see film. I must also mention, Madeleine Le Roux as the extraordinary leading lady. She is utterly captivating and yet as others have noted is surprisingly keen to get naked considering her imperfect body and looks twice her apparent 25 years. Something good about seeing less than perfect nakedness done with such vigour. Congratulations to all those who braved so that we might marvel and consider why now we seem to have become so precious.

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5 out of 9 people found the following review useful:
Brilliant -- if you can find an uncut copy, 12 January 2007

Author: WaldoOtten from Chicagoland

This is the first film to cause me to fall out of my seat, laughing, onto the floor of the theatre. Not hard to laugh out loud at this one if you don't take yourself too seriously -- one of the few soft-core porn flicks that had great bathroom humor as a bonus. Garfield stole the show.

HOWEVER -- hoping to relive the moment 30 years later, I rented a copy from a video store and was severely disappointed to find out all of the great gags I remembered had been cut out, leaving a mess.

So if you rent this one, make sure you get a copy of the original theatre version. The sanitized version stinks.

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6 out of 12 people found the following review useful:
Dated, overrated., 2 January 2005

Author: Rich359 (Rich359@netscape.net) from Los Angeles, California

After viewing the film 34 years ofter its release, I must say it doesn't hold up and is quite tedious and boring in spots. For those of you old enough to remember, the early 70's was filled with these semi-porn x-rated independent films with wide-spread theatrical release. It was new and legal, and many genre themes were sexed-up for releases like this.

To be fair, there are moments in this film that are genuinely funny and well done, but like a hard-core porn film, it takes every opportunity it can to portray sex and nudity on screen, with the subsequent boring results.

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10 out of 20 people found the following review useful:
Ugly, 13 December 2007

Author: ccthemovieman-1 from United States

If you are looking for examples of how bad some films were in the early 1970s, you would be hard-pressed to find a better example than this Grade B soft porn flick. In truth, Grade B might be giving it too much credit.

Allan Goorwitz, who later changed his last name to "Garfield," is the slobby-looking, garbage-mouth detective in this sleazy film about. a man who was in a porno film and now the babes in the picture are blackmailing him. Mostly, this films is about "Jake Masters" (Goorwitz) just making a lot of classless jokes about sex. It even features a scene involving necrophilia - not exactly a nice topic. Neither is it pleasant to see this actor naked. In fact, it's downright disgusting.

The movie was produced by a company - Troma - which was famous for this kind of pushing-the-envelope low budget films. I bought the video because it was cheap and it had a ton of great reviews on the back cover. I didn't make either mistake a second time, regarding my purchase of VHS tapes.

Also, this is a film which garnered notice because of its shock value back in 1971 but would be looked at today by most viewers as, frankly, boring and too talky. Much of the humor in here also had more effect 35 years ago than it does today.

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1 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Superb Send-Up Of Gumshoe Sagas, 13 January 2008

Author: zardoz-13 from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

John G. Avildsen, best known for directing "Joe," "Save the Tiger," and "Rocky," pokes fun at the formulaic private eye genre with his tawdry little comedy "Cry, Uncle," that skewers the shenanigans of the sleaziest private eye in cinematic history. Avildsen's protagonist Jake Masters qualifies as the most libidinous and pusillanimous character to come along in ages. Mind you, "Cry, Uncle" doesn't make allowances for all tastes. If full frontal female nudity as well as fellatio and necrophilia offend you, you should refrain from ogling this epic. The dialogue ripples with sexually risqué material, but Avildsen always keeps things amusing and lightweight. Compared with Robert Altman's better known spoof of private eye conventions in the 1973 Elliot Gould movie "The Long Goodbye," "Cry, Uncle" emerges as the more trenchant with its conspicuous but casual depiction of sex and its relentless ridiculing of its hero.

"Cry Uncle" opens with a narrator summarizing the story: "Somewhere on New York City's waterfront, private investigator Jacob Masters is about to take on the most bizarre murder case of his career, a case that will test the limits of his stamina, resourcefulness, and endurance." The compelling voice belongs to Jackson Beck. He voiced Bluto in dozens of "Popeye" cartoons as well as Lex Luthor in the Saturday morning TV series "The Batman and Superman Hour." The camera pans the cabin of a cruise ship where we first encounter Jake Masters. We see a beautiful woman's breasts bouncing as she experiences incredible sex with an individual framed off camera. The woman croons in ecstasy at the hero's lovemaking exertions until the telephone interrupts them. Jake lives up to the usual description of private eyes. He is an obese, obnoxious, sexist, low-life that wears his hat and T-shirt to bed when he mounts a dame. Jake pauses long enough from humping to hear his young nephew inform him that wealthy Jason Dominic (David Kirk of "Putney Swope") is going to pay him $5-thousand dollars to handle an important case.

It seems that the N.Y.P.D. believes that millionaire Dominic iced a cocktail waitress. Jake goes out to La Guardia Airport to pick up a dame in a black outfit with a green scarf and red hair. Scrambling to dress as he backs out of his girlfriend's cruise cabin, Jake bids her a fond farewell. After Jake's departure, she reaches over the side of the bed and retrieves a patriotic red, white, and blue Uncle Sam vibrator and resumes having sex. Avildsen cuts from the girl and her vibrator to a long shot of several water fountains spewing geysers. Hah! Although it doesn't foreshadow everything that it occurs in "Cry, Uncle," this scene provides the sweetly salacious tone for what remains.

At the airport, Jake runs into a lunatic that answers the description of the dame that his nephew gave him. The N.Y.P.D. brings in Jake for questioning about molesting this woman. Actually, Jake startled her, and she spilled coffee on her blouse. Frantically, Jake tried to blot out the coffee. and the dame started screaming. Later, we learn that this girl is crazy and there after in the police station, Jake's nephew Keith (Devin Goldenberg of "Savage Weekend") shows up with the real woman, Cora Merrill (Madeleine Le Roux of "Behind Locked Doors"), with a red wig in her hand. The investigating uniform cop (Paul Sorvino of "Nixon" in a cameo) spends most of his time ensconced behind a desk coughing up his lungs from what he suspects is the wrong brand of cigarette. He releases Jake and Keith, Cora, and our hero ride out to Dominic's yacht.

Bathrobe-clad Dominic hires Jake to discover who killed Lucille Reynolds. The police suspect that Dominic killed her because she lensed a porno movie of his orgy with three cockamamie whores. Dominic shouts into Jake's ears: "She was blackmailing me; she had me by the balls!" He seizes Jake by the genitals and our surprised hero's eyes bulge. Dominic shelled out $50-thousand dollars in blackmail money, but he describes it merely as 'cigarette money.' Jake assures the horny nabob that the porno movie is so tame that it could be exhibited in a neighborhood theatre. The actual porno film itself is nothing more than the negative version of the sex act and it mercilessly ridicules Dominic's stuck-up character. Earlier, Dominic categorized humanity into two groups: those who f*#&k and those who get f*#&ked. Jake's finest moment has him asking Dominic to which category does he belong as the millionaire wallows in the arms and lips of the $500 dollar prostitutes.

When Jake tries to get the film developed so that he can track down the whores, Dominic refuses because he fears that Jake may blackmail him, too. Jake's nephew convinces Dominic that one frame of the celluloid with his face scratched out will suffice to identification purposes. Dominic demands that Keith scratch out his genitals for fear that somebody might recognize his schlong.

Jake tracks down a suspect, Connie, to a fleabag hotel where he finds her sprawled on the bed in the buff. Initially, he thinks that she has passed out, so he takes advantage of her, little realizing that she has been shot in the head and is dead. This audacious scene predates a similar scene in Larry Clark's "Kids" when a teen makes out with an unconscious girl.

Allen Garfield is great as the grimy, overweight gumshoe. Black character actor Mel Stuart utters the best line of dialogue in the movie when his police character, Lieutenant Fowler, tells Jake: "The first rule you learn in the police academy is don't f*&%k them if they stop breathing." Director John G. Avildsen emphasizes realism with his on-location lensing in New York City's grimy environs. Not only did Avildsen serve as the cinematographer, but he also edited this movie. "Cry, Uncle" is a gritty gem of a classic with Lloyd Kaufman of TROMA fame listed in the opening credits as the production manager.

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5 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Best Gumshoe Flick Ever...(9 out of 10), 22 November 2003

Author: MrNefarious from U.S.A.

This movie was wonderful from beginning to end. No dragging or dull moments. Great cast,score,acting,locations,script,and direction can all be found right in this one movie. Some of the lines in this movie are classic. This is a must own movie. (9 out of 10)

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