Aubrey Hackett While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Candida It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

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!

nzibari-42-383922 First things first, I have to acknowledge that this movie was a very modest production, even in comparison to other blaxploitation movies. Watching this movie might make you appreciate how much effort goes into shooting and editing them into a watchable movie since so much goes wrong in this one. Really bad sets, lighting problems, audio going between too loud and too soft, and much more are all over this movie. One thing working in its favor is that unlike some other low-budget blaxploitation movies, you don't see the boom mic slip into shots as much. Though that may be because that the crew didn't use one for many shots. Anyways, the story is pretty straight forward. Al Connors/The Guy (played by Loye Hawkins) is a private detective in Miami whose only distinguishing feature is being from Harlem. In the movie we really don't see anything extraordinary he does, and even the fights he gets into aren't anything to show his prowess. There are two different cases The Guy handles in the movie. The cases don't seem to relate to each other and it almost appears as if we got two different plots merged into one. The movie starts with a woman being harassed by a mook or something. Then it abruptly cuts to The Guy driving around town with a really funky intro as he drives to his office. Unfortunately the rest of the movie doesn't hold up to the intro's funk. The first case has The Guy get requested by some G-Men to run protection for a visiting African princess, which I suppose is to establish that The Guy is so badass that even the government goes to him for help. Anyways, he foils a kidnapping attempt (or was it assassination?) while she was getting a massage, and scores with the princess. Unfortunately it's no where near as exciting as that may sound and their intimate scene comes off as bizarre more than anything.The second case has The Guy receive a crime boss who informs The Guy that his daughter has been kidnapped (the one who was shown at the beginning), and he needs The Guy to rescue her. So I guess half-way through the movie they decided to go full Shaft here. Also, the crime boss actor is yelling his lines the whole time which adds some unintentional humor.Anyways, without getting too bogged down on details The Guy uses his sleuth powers in a gym to find out some hick gang is holding the mob boss's daughter in a cabin. There are some sequences leading up to this involving The Guy using his martial arts skills to defeat the mooks as he gets to the cabin. The fights are done so poorly but I can't do it justice with words, it's something you need to see. After some more nonsense after rescuing the crime boss's daughter (who like the princess he manages to seduce as well), The Guy has a meeting with the mook gang, which includes the man he met in the gym. After their ambush on The Guy goes bad thanks to help from the crime boss's men, The Guy and Gym guy have a lame duel which the crime boss's men and the one of the remaining hicks watch. The Guy demonstrates his martial arts prowess again by knocking the Gym Guy down and then choking him to death. The remaining hick tries to make a run for it then and kicks one of the crime boss's men, and he's rewarded by being shot down in the back as he runs away. So I guess all's well that ends well for The Guy.Some honorary mentions... -The Guy's secretary, who somehow managed to have more character than The Guy with her sass when getting hit on by the crime boss's mooks -The Guy's (former?) girlfriend whose apartment he crashes in to seduce the princess and the crime boss's daughter I've rated this movie low but don't think that there's nothing worth watching here. This is one of those that's great to watch with friends to make fun of and just go with the flow of crappiness here. There are some dull stretches in the movie but not enough to completely ruin things.

jerryjamie The Guy From Harlem has systematically landed the genre of the African-American Detective as a violent confederation of bruising action, lethal dialogue, and a soundtrack that sends the ladies into a frenzy of ecstasy.After graduating with honors from the school of hard knocks, Al (the guy...from Harlem) sets out to educate the underworld with the Truth! His vigilante justice is borderline pornographic, and his swagger is a language of catastrophic eroticism.He always knows what time it is...Al Connors can go from slow dancing under the pale moonlight, to dodging bullets from transvestite assassins posing as hotel employees. He will not be misled, misinformed, or misunderstood. His only real agenda is to seek truth and justice for the oppressed. And to get his groove on, whenever possible.after all, what else is there in life?

Scott_Mercer WARNING: The following review contains abuse of exclamation points.Groooooch! THE WORST MOVIE EVER MADE. Let me repeat this to make sure you get it. THE. WORST. MOVIE. EVER. MADE.Wait. I don't think I got it quite right yet.THE!! WORST!! MOVIE!! EVER!! MADE!!Worse than anything made by Ed Wood (including his "adult" movies)! Worse than anything by Bill Rebane, or Coleman Francis, or Richard Cunha, or Jerry Warren! Worse than MANOS! Worse than THE CREEPING TERROR! Worse than MONSTER-A-GO-GO (okay, maybe not)! Worse than BATTLEFIELD EARTH! Worse than FREDDY GOT FINGERED! Worse than PACIFIC HEIGHTS! Worse than Eddie Murphy's BOOMERANG! Worse than BABY GENIUSES 2! Wow! Stunning! Bad film-making at its worst! An all time low! Almost impossible for it to fail more than it did! Hilarious!Teeth-grindingly awful! Everything about this movie is substandard! The lowest possible budget! Must have been written by a 12-year-old! Worse than amateurish acting! Everyone in this movie is a terrible actor! Leaden pacing! Abysmal shot composition! Poor staging! Terrible sound! (You can hear the camera rolling throughout the movie...) The worst stunts I've ever seen! Most fake fight scene ever filmed! Awful dialog! The least amount of romantic chemistry ever seen between a male and female lead! Lousy music! (Actually the music is the least horrible thing about this movie, but it's still pretty bad.) Ridiculously unlikely plot! Stilted exposition! A woman supposedly from Africa with an American accent! I still have not used enough exclamation points to convince you just HOW BAD this movie truly is!!!! All budding MST3K trainees, attention: this is boot camp for the cynical movie critic. You will be LITERALLY BLOWN AWAY (hyperbole there: you will only be METAPHORICALLY blown away, not literally) by how truly awful, laughably bad and bargain basement this movie really is. Your jaw will hit the floor, your hair will curl, and your eyes will not believe what they are seeing.If you read this comment and all the others regarding this movie, and still take a chance, don't come running back to any of us. You will either be rolling on the floor laughing the uncontrollable laughter of the truly insane or clawing your eyes out if you stick with this bloated cinematic pustule till the end.YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.