Leofwine_draca THE GUY FROM HARLEM is an extremely low rent blaxploitation film of the late 1970s which is so cheap that the whole thing has been filmed in just a couple of locations. The story is about a black private investigator, who desperately wants to be Shaft, who is tasked with bodyguarding an African princess for 24 hours. He contends with various goons along the way, and after that storyline is finished, he randomly goes off to rescue a kidnapped girl. The whole thing is stately and slow, with poor production values and an entire lack of incident to make it the least bit interesting. They throw in a lot of skin to try to keep the attention of their viewers, but it's a waste of a film overall.

bensonmum2 I'm quite positive that a number of people who have seen The Guy from Harlem will look at my rating and conclude that I need to be committed. A 5/10 isn't a great rating, but it is for a movie as bad as The Guy from Harlem. There's a reason it has a 2.4 IMDb rating. I've always said that I rate films based on entertainment and The Guy from Harlem entertained me. Admittedly, I enjoyed a lot of the movie for the wrong reasons. Still, as I said, I was entertained.The movie tells two stories of a private detective named Al Connors (Loye Hawkins). In the first, the CIA enlists Connors to guard a visiting African princess. In the second, Connors is hired to rescue a drug kingpin's kidnapped daughter. While the plot is nothing to write home about, given how bad the rest of the movies is, the plot is actually fairly coherent. Beyond the plot, the rest of The Guy from Harlem is about as poorly presented as I've ever seen. It's easy to tell that for almost the entire cast, this is either their only or one of their only screen credits. The acting is abysmal, with unnatural delivery and flubbed lines. The fact that a lot of the actors' mistakes were not edited out goes to show the quality of the direction, editing, and the film's budget. Speaking of editing, The Guy from Harlem has one of the most glaring editing mistakes I've ever seen in a movie. There is a fairly routine scene with a few seconds of dialogue. Immediately after this scene is over, it is repeated a second time. How is it possible that no one noticed this? It would be like me typing a sentence and then typing it again. It would be like me typing a sentence and then typing it again. See what I mean? Next, the action set-pieces are a disaster. My five year-old could choreograph more realistic looking fight scenes. The sets look as cheap as the rest of the film. Connor's office consists of a couple of poorly furnished rooms in someone's house. It looks pathetic. Despite these and other flaws in The Guy from Harlem, there has to be something that worked on me, right? First, these that issues many people would have with the movie, I found hysterical. The whole movie has that "so bad it's good" quality to it. Second, the music is actually quite good. I was pleasantly surprised with the funky 70s feel of the soundtrack. Third, there's a character named Harry De Bauld played by Steve Gallon that I found incredibly enjoyable. All of his lines were delivered at a volume several decibels greater than everyone else. He had a flow and style to his speech that worked on me. It reminded me a bit of WWE wrestling manager Teddy Long. What a hoot!

Rainey Dawn I got this movie in the Drive-in 50-pack collection. It's a filler film that is complete garbage. It's a blaxploitation film about a kidnapping but more like soft-core porn-garbage. I agree with another reviewer that the film should have been left for the porn-racket instead of trying to pass this off as an action crime-drama.Z-rating all the way. Bad acting, pitiful story, and nudity. A crappy excuse to put boobs and soft-core porn in to a blaxploitation film.This is worse than the bottom of the barrel, the film is buried deep under where the barrel is sitting.THIS is the world's worst film, if it isn't then it's in the top 10 ten list. Why Mill Creek decided to put this rubbish in the Drive-in 50-pack is beyond me. This is not the kind of film that should be circulated but should be burned the garbage pile.1/10

dmanyc There's great Blaxploitation films (Shaft, Coffy, Blacula) and then you have The Guy From Harlem. There's so much wrong with this film, where does one begin? 1) The title alone. The guy is supposedly from Harlem but the movie is filmed in Miami. So what was the point of calling him the guy from Harlem when he's not even IN Harlem? 2) Names of detectives are usually memorable (Shaft, Baretta, Kojak). Al Conners has to be the blandest detective name I've ever heard.3) He has two assignments. Assignment 1 is being babysitter to a foreign dignitaries' wife. Assignment 2 is rescuing a gambler's daughter kidnapped by some dude named Big Daddy. Both women he rescues, both are taken to a blonde woman's apartment to hide out (Blondie gets sent to a hotel), both end up wearing the unsexiest lingerie ever, and both get sexytime with Al Conners. So the clients get some and the poor secretary and Blondie are denied some sugar? 4) Gambler apparently has a problem with his indoor voice. "GOOD MORNIN', GOOD LOOKIN'!" Good Lord, I had to turn down the volume.5) The descriptions of Big Daddy goes like this: "Very few people ever see Big Daddy. The only thing I can tell you though, he's about six feet two inches tall, has blond, curly hair and, man, you talking about some muscles... he got some muscles on him, and he always wears bands around his muscles. That's the only thing we can tell you about Big Daddy. Nobody ever sees him. " Funny, when they cut away to the gym scene, I spotted Big Daddy in two seconds. How is this dude hard to find? 6) Fight scenes are suppose to be exciting. These fight scenes were anything BUT exciting.7) The music sounds like it's borrowed from video games.8) Is that an actual office or did they borrow a church basement? 9)Has anyone ever smelled a New York strip steak? Do they even exist? 10)"You tell Big Daddy nobody fools with The Guy From Harlem, you dig?" doesn't have the same oomph as "Cut the crap man, this is Shaft."11)Aside from the hideous lingerie, the fashions are cool. The flowery wallpaper, however, is headache-educing.12) For a detective with a calm, eloquent voice his acting is awful. I take that back; everyone's acting is awful. And the dialog: "Sweetie, I got an answer for both of those questions. You got two questions, I got one answer: NONE O' YO' DAMN BIDNESS!!" 'Nuff said.This film probably would've worked better as a porno film because it doesn't work as a Blaxploitation film.