ianlouisiana Far and away the best of the Joseph Wambaugh adaptations,"The Black Marble" is full of schadenfreunde,compassion,humour,love and all the emotions that make it worthwhile being alive. Mr R.Foxworth,Miss P.Prentiss and Mr H.D. Stanton are hardly "A" - List Hollywood celebrities,but they keep this movie punching far above its weight at all levels. Burn - out L.A. cop of Russian extraction Mr Foxworth is in a cycle of drinking and despair after a particularly distressing case.In the last chance saloon he is buddied up with equally screwed up Miss P.Prentiss.He becomes involved in a blackmail case set in the bizarre world of Dog Shows where embittered trainer Mr Stanton kidnaps one of his charges and attempts to ransom it. The dog's owner - Miss B.Babstock(spelling?) - is as bruised and abused as the two cops and she and Mr Foxworth soon enter a physical relationship based entirely on mutual need. Mr Stanton has the hots for one of his teenage dog walkers and is thus not thinking straight when he evolves his plan to demand big bucks for the return of Miss Babstock's beloved schnauzer. From this rather slight storyline "The Black Marble" somehow evolves into a serio - comic masterpiece with its dual centres of L.A.'s Russian Emigree community and the American Dog Show circuit. In a reversal of roles Mr Foxworth is the sentimental and sensitive partner,Miss Prentiss the knowing and pragmatic. It doesn't matter that you can guess the ending,this is a movie where the pleasure is in the minutiae and the performances.You can watch it again and again with no diminution of pleasure. Undoubtedly along with "Mad Max 2" one of the great neglected movies of the 1980s.

Jim_McKendrick IMO, this is one of the most underrated films ever. I love most of Joseph Wambaugh's cop stories and this one was sheer delight. From the opening scenes, when the drunken Robert Foxworth is shown swaying back and forth at a religious ceremony, until Harry Dean Stanton ends up in a Mexican hospital with his genitalia mutilated by a Doberman Pinscher, it's just one long belly laugh after another. The only jarring note in this otherwise splendid comedy is Foxworth's mental flashbacks to murdered children. I think this is one of the few movies I've seen where the screen version of a story surpasses the original book.

G-Man-25 It's hard to figure out what went wrong with this adaptation of Joseph Wambaugh's fine romantic comedy/cop drama. Wambaugh himself wrote the script from his novel. Harold Becker, who previously directed another Wambaugh book, "The Onion Field," is back at the helm. The cast, including leads Robert Foxworth and Paula Prentiss (not to mention the outstanding Harry Dean Stanton)are all very good. But for some reason, the movie seems muted and unexciting, missing much of the book's humor and attention to detail. Not a terrible film, but definitely a case where the book was better.

Chezo In 1980 Paula Prentiss returned to good form after a five-year absence from the screen, with this affectionate version of Joseph Wambaugh's novel. Less concerned with physical action, this is a romantic comedy that deals with the inner world of police detectives. In a way, The Black Marble is the second installment of a trilogy about people in uniform, started with The Onion Field and finished with Taps, all three films directed by Harold Becker, photographed by Owen Roizman and edited by Maury Winetrobe. Roizman used splendidly the Panavision format, while Maurice Jarre contributed a beautiful score. Robert Foxworth, Harry Dean Stanton, Barbara Babcock and John Hancock all gave very good performances. A nice cameo by James Woods.