Jake Masters (Cry Uncle!)

Created by Michael Brett
Adapted for the screen by David Odell

Michael Brett’s series eye PETE McGRATH from the 1960s is usually remembered as an enjoyable but somewhat generic character. But he probably deserved better than this…

The 1968 mystery Lie a Little, Die a Little featuring McGrath was used as the basis for a trippy, trashy soft-core comedy entitled Cry Uncle!

Allen Garfield, he of the hairy beer belly and other, er, physical attributes (and the star of such other soft-core alternative classics as Orgy Girls and Roommates) played  private eye JAKE MASTERS (in the book McGrath). In the film, he’s hired to by millionaire Jason Dominic to track down a porn actress.

Of course he was.

The well-endowed Jake is currently suspected by the cops of having murdered the actress, so he’s  wants Jake and his team (including his nephew and Jake’s bodyguard, to find the real killer.  They track down the suspects one by one, and the bodies, both living and dead, start piling up. Various bodily fluids are swapped along the way, as Jake “gets to the bottom of things.”

Still, it’s arguably a cut above most films of its ilk, boasting a few good yucks, a totally tasteless necrophilia scene, a little hardcore (including one scene involving a 65-year-old man) and a young, chain-smoking Paul Sorvino in a small role as “The Coughing Cop.” Oh, and the director, John G. Avildsen, went on to make Rocky (1976) and The Karate Kid (1984).

Weird, huh?

UNDER OATH

• “… Cry Uncle labels itself a satirical skin flick and detective story combined. Check. It also boasts an “X” rating. Just remember, that’s as far as the alphabet goes. Cheap, crude, nude and triumphantly filthy as it is, the picture also now and then happens to be extremely funny… Actually, there’s a good whodunit plot, from a Michael Brett novel, beneath all the commotion. But while the steam seldom runs out, the gas does. The pace lags. It adds up to a dirty joke.”
  — Howard Thompson (August 1971, The New York Times)
• “Truly vile, this low-budget attempt at spoofing the private-eye genre…  a gutter-level sex flick; in fact, thanks to copious amounts of nudity, a few unpleasantly realistic sex scenes, and a generally depraved atmosphere, Cry Uncle! carried an X-rating in its original release.
  —Every 70s Movie (January 2012)

FILMS

• CRY UNCLE!  | Buy this video | Buy this DVD
  (aka “American Oddballs,” “Super Dick”)
  (1971, Cambist)
  87 minutes
  Based on the novel Lie a Little, Die a Little (1968) by Michael Brett
  Screenplay by David Odell
  Additional dialogue by Allen Garfield and John G. Avildsen
  Directed by John G. Avildsen
  Produced by David Jay Disick
  Associate producer: Frank Vitale
  Starring Allen Garfield as JAKE MASTERS
  Also starring Madeleine Le Roux, Devin Goldenberg, David Kirk, Sean Walsh, Melvin Stuart, Debbi Morgan, Pamela Gruen, Maureen Byrnes, Bruce Pecheur, Nancy Salmon, Marcia Jean Kurtz, Reuben Schafer, Chuck Pfeiffer and Paul Sorvino as “The Coughing Cop.”

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

• X-Rated Eyes
  Dirty Eyes & Other Not-So-Private Dicks

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.