More Than Murder

I recently have watched three Mike Hammer films starring Stacy Keach. I enjoyed the first one I saw (the third one they made)...but the previous two turned out to be pretty shabby. Most of the problem is that the mysteries in these two films took a back seat to large-bosomed women...including a ridiculous cop with nearly all her shirt buttons undone, Officer Bigboobs. And, every one of these women is mega-hot for a middle aged Stacy Keach! After a while, it just seems ridiculous and stupid.

In this story, there is a huge-stakes poker game with coke and money as the stakes. Two masked men with machine guns enter the place and rob everyone...and end up killing one of the players in the process. The Captain was working on this case, but how he handled it makes him look like he's involved with the crime and the stereotypical Assistant DA is out to get him...so Mike Hammer is working to prove his innocenece.

Apart from an average but cliched story we have what I mentioned above...hot and vacuous women throwing themselves at Mike Hammer at every turn.

Additionally, you have two robbers that parachute off a skyscraper and are not caught!! As a result, the story is shallow...and a bit silly.

This full length Mike Hammer mystery has Stacy Keach at his tough guy best saving a friend who happens to be a detective who from what I could tell was there quite coincidentally at the scene of a high stakes poker game that is robbed and two men killed. Nevertheless Don Stroud who is also shot in the back gets himself indicted. It throws the film off kilter.

Still Keach is great in the part and other performances to watch for are Verna Bloom as Hammer's secretary, Robyn Douglass as an undercover fed, Tim McIntire as a country singer and Richard Romanus as a federal witness who's not quite kosher.

Still the script could have used some fine tuning.