VEILED THREATS by Phil Mershon
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THE SEVEN-UPS
Directed by Philip D'Antoni
Written by Albert Ruben and Alexander Jacobs
Starring Roy Scheider and Tony Lo Bianco
Released in 1973
Picture
Even in 1973 it was a challenge to make a cop film that was somehow different from the hundreds of other such films being released, seemingly, every other day. You had your Buford Pusser Redneck Against Corruption flick, your Billy Jack Indian Chief on the Rez flick, your Anti-Counterculture Dirty Harry flick, your Only Thing Worse Than A Cop is Everybody Else Onion Fields flick, your Racist Cops Mofo Blaxploitation flick, your Racist Cops Against Drug Dealers Connection flick, your What We Really Need is Less Cops and More Social Workers flicks, and all the others that were really just more of the same. The genre appeared to be played out. 
    Then director Philip D'Antoni came along and said, "We could always make a cop film about an elite squad in New York where the head elite cop grew up and stayed friends with some dago who wears nice suits and is kind of mobbed up. The cop, well, he'd be like Roy Scheider, you know, Italian without looking like it, and he could have some guys work with him in his squad who won't steal scenes, you know. Then his friend, some really major wop like Tony Lo Biano, who can actually act from what I hear, his friend could be like, you know, a hood. A well-dressed hood, am I right? The Vito, he'll be suave as all get-out and he'll be shaking down his own people 'cause you know how they are. He'll use that small talk he gets from Scheider to shake down the other hoods in some way that has something to do with a car."
    "A car? What's you mean?"
    "We gotta have a car chase, man. It's a cop movie, dig? So, I know! We'll bring in a car wash!"
    "You gots to be putting on my ass."
    "No, no, it'll play, it'll play. Like, the Vito Dago, he'll have these ugly guys working with him. They'll be in the drive-through car wash waiting to pop the trunk and steal the ransom."
    "Shit, man! What ransom?"
    "The ransom. Dude, there's always a ransom. Listen to me. Scheider, he and his boys will be hated by the regular beat cops 'cause he dresses nice just like his Vito Dago pal. The other cops'll figure him for a skell, but he ain't. He bends the rules, he don't break 'em."
    "Until--"
   "Correct! Until his friend gets offed. Then we have the car chase. And brother this chase will be the best one ever. We'll make it like ten minutes long."
    "Jeezoy!"
    "Don't you 'Jeezoy" me, cat. That was one hell of an expensive scene. Cost more'n the rest of the picture minus salaries, clown."
    "Was pretty good, huh?"
    "Yeah, cat. It was good. So anyway, what happens is that the guy back in the garage, the guy they arrested for opening the garage door, I guess that's a crime, he'll never talk, so they'll free his ass and follow him to the hideout, which is cool 'cause Vito Dago will be waiting there, or more likely his boys'll be there, them two ugly bastards, and Scheider will blow their heads off and then he'll know it was Vito who tipped them off, so what we'll have is a good old fashioned buddy cop movie that goes different because in this movie the cop only turns bad to take revenge on his friend the criminal. Slick, right?"
    "Slicker 'an ole Miss Slick and she died slick. Who's the target aud?"
   "Oh, there's your standard JD crowd, for one. There's also your standard Archie who likes law and order no matter how it comes. You got your stock car crowd who'll watch anything with a Pontiac in it--and boy this one'll have more Pontiacs than Nixon got thieves."
    "What about broads?"
    "Man, you a dumb sumbitch. First, we don't calls 'em broads no more, right? Second, there ain't no chicks in this here movie, not one, Jack. So fogetabowtit."
    "Cool. Just one question."
    "Hits me."
    "Why you talk like that?"
    "Dunno. It's in the script." 
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  • Home
  • Links
  • The Deluge
    • Veiled Threats >
      • 1939-1945
      • 1946-1963
      • 1964-1975
      • 1976-1985
      • Born Losers
      • Don't Look Back
      • Bonnie and Clyde
      • Cool Hand Luke
      • The Graduate
      • Up Tight!
      • Cycle Savages
      • Wild in the Streets
      • Never a Dull Moment
      • Yellow Submarine
      • Night of the Living Dead
      • Faces
      • The Love Bug
      • Midnight Cowboy
      • Easy Rider
      • Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
      • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
      • They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
      • The Magic Christian
      • Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
      • The Landlord
      • The Ballad of Cable Hogue
      • Getting Straight
      • The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
      • Five Easy Pieces
      • Godard in America
      • Gimme Shelter
      • Little Big Man
      • The Boys in the Band
      • Joe
      • The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
      • The Big Boss
      • There's a Girl in my Soup
      • The Liberation of L B Jones
      • Klute
      • The French Connection
      • Willie Dynamite
      • Helter Skelter
      • King: A Filmed Record
      • Get Carter
      • Harold and Maude
      • Panic in Needle Park
      • Across 110th Street
      • And Soon the Darkness
      • Deliverance
      • Rolling Thunder
      • Super Fly
      • Busting
      • The Ruling Class
      • The Harder They Come
      • Day of the Jackal
      • Play Misty For Me
      • The Jezebels
      • Sacco & Vanzetti
      • Badlands
      • Cold Turkey
      • Soldier Blue
      • American Graffiti
      • The Falcon and the Snowman
      • Watership Down
      • Scarecrow
      • Walking Tall
      • Frances
      • The Coca-Cola Kid
      • Bob Roberts
      • Bad Company
      • We Are Marshall
      • Patton
      • The Natural
      • The Crossing Guard
      • Reds
      • The Spook Who Sat by the Door
      • Mud
      • Who is Harry Nilsson
      • Ornette: Made in America
      • Six Degrees of Separation
      • This Film is Not Yet Rated
      • Incident at Oglala
      • That Championship Season
      • The Pope of Greenwich Village
      • Little Murders
      • Assault on Precinct 13
      • Capote
      • Inglourious Basterds
      • The Friends of Eddie Coyle
      • Scorpio
      • The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
      • A New Leaf
      • Seven Psychopaths
      • The Last House on the Left
      • The Deer Hunter
      • Let the Right One In
      • Colour Me Kubrick
      • A Time to Kill
      • A Scanner Darkly
      • Salem's Lot
      • Roman Polanksi: Wanted and Desired
      • The Seven-Ups
      • The Contender
      • Hoffa
      • The Pledge
      • American: The Bill Hicks Story
      • Donnie Brasco
      • Bugsy
      • Milk
      • Reservoir Dogs
      • Glengarry Glen Ross
      • V for Vendetta
      • Trumbo
      • Two in the Wave
      • South of the Border
      • Into the Abyss
      • God Bless America
  • Before the Deluge
    • The Bicycle Thief
    • Judgment at Nuremberg
    • Five Minutes to Live
    • The Manchurian Candidate
    • Hud
    • Pressure Point
    • Blow Up
    • Requiem for a Heavyweight
    • Hurry Sundown
  • Human Flood
    • Jean-Luc Godard >
      • Breathless
      • Masculine Feminine
      • Film Socialisme
    • Brian De Palma >
      • Sisters
      • The Fury
    • Stanley Kubrick >
      • Lolita
      • 2001: A Space Odyssey
      • A Clockwork Orange
      • The Shining
      • Full Metal Jacket
    • Francis Coppola >
      • The Conversation
      • Apocalypse Now
    • Woody Allen >
      • Take the Money and Run
      • Bananas
      • Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But were Afraid to Ask
      • Sleeper
      • Love and Death
      • Annie Hall
      • Interiors
      • Manhattan
      • Stardust Memories
      • Zelig
      • Broadway Danny Rose
      • The Purple Rose of Cairo
      • Hannah and Her Sisters
      • Radio Days
    • Robert Altman >
      • M*A*S*H
      • Brewster McCloud
      • 3 Women
      • Nashville
      • The Gingerbread Man
      • Ready to Wear
      • Gosford Park
      • The Player
    • Luis Bunuel >
      • The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
    • Roman Polanski >
      • Cul-de-Sac
      • Rosemary's Baby
      • MacBeth
      • The Tenant
    • Martin Scorsese >
      • Boxcar Bertha
    • Steven Spielberg >
      • Duel
    • Oliver Stone >
      • Talk Radio
    • Orson Welles >
      • F For Fake
    • Akira Kurosawa >
      • DODES'KA-DEN
    • Max Ophuls
    • John Ford >
      • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
    • John Huston
    • Frank Capra
    • Billy Wilder
    • Roger Corman
    • Bernardo Bertolucci
    • Elia Kazan
    • William Wyler
    • Spike Lee
    • Francois Truffaut >
      • 400 Blows
      • Jules and Jim
      • Bed and Board
    • Jean Renoir
    • Federico Fellini
    • Charlie Chaplin
    • John Cassavetes
    • Agnes Vargas
    • Alain Resnais
    • Eric Rohmer >
      • Claire's Knee
    • Ida Lupino
    • Leni Riefenstahl
    • Penny Marshall
    • Costa-Gavras >
      • The Confession
      • Missing
    • Alfred Hitchcock >
      • Spellbound
      • Shadow of a Doubt
      • The Birds
      • I Confess
      • Dial M for Murder
      • Rear Window
      • To Catch a Thief
      • The Wrong Man
      • Suspicion
      • Saboteur
      • Lifeboat
      • Notorious
      • Rope
      • North by Northwest
      • Psycho
      • The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
  • No Particular Place to Go
  • The Pits
    • The Big Chill
    • W. C. Fields and Me
    • Zabriskie Point
    • Eat The Document
    • Hitler: The Last Ten Days
    • A Boy and His Dog
    • A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
    • The Executioner's Song
    • The Visitors
    • Paul McCartney Really is Dead
    • Going Places
    • Pi
    • Erik the Viking
    • Sometimes They Come Back
    • Thinner
    • Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
    • A Bullet for Pretty Boy
  • Links