User reviews

70s action and a blaxploitation classic with Fred Williamson (The Inglorious Bastards - 1978, MASH) as Black Caesar leading the way backed up by the luscious Gloria Hendry.

Lots of shoot-em-up action as the black gangsters take on the Mafia and the crooked cops that support them.

Things settle down, Black Caesar moves to LA, and comes back with a vengeance when his pops is killed. Cute scene where Mafia in park dies with hot dogs in their mouths.

The dialog and story wasn't the greatest, but if you are looking for righteous action, you've come to the right place.

Fun sequel takes off where Black Caesar took off...lots of violence...soul soundtrack not as good as James Brown's work on Black Caesar, but passable. Overall this movie has an even more fantastic plot than the first but is still basically enjoyable...particularly the island ambush scene and the chase in which Williamson runs after his opponent, who boards an airplane to L.A. from New York...Fred doesn't sweat it and gets a flight that just happens to leave a few minutes after the first gets off. We see scenes of the two men in planes...upon landing, at the same time, Williamson finds his quarry in a crowded airport and picks up where he left off in New York. As I said, ridiculous, but fun.

This sequel to the popular blaxploitation hit "Black Caesar" was cheaply and hastily shot, and it shows. It is pretty obvious at times that star Fred Williamson wasn't always available, meaning that he's either doubled or his character simply doesn't appear at all in a scene. The low budget and speedy production also shows in other aspects, one being the screenplay. There isn't too much of a story here. Indeed, it seems at times writer/director Larry Cohen was making things up during the shoot. But despite the crude nature, the movie all the same kind of works. It is fast paced, and never boring. And Fred Williamson does manage to make his character magnetic enough that you keep watching him. Apparently audiences agreed, since this sequel was successful enough at the box office that the studio planned a third movie concerning the adventures of character Tommy Gibbs, but those plans were eventually cancelled.

Hell up in Harlem (2013) is a movie I recently rewatched for the first time in a long time on Tubi. The storyline follows Tommy Gibbs recovering from gang warfare allowing his father to take over the streets on his behalf. When his best friend is mad he wasn't chosen to lead the gang he joins Gibbs biggest rival, the district attorney, to try and bring down Gibbs and his father.

This movie is directed by Larry Cohen (Black Caesar) and stars Fred Williamson (Dusk till Dawn), Julius Harris (Live and Let Die), Gloria Hendry (Black Belt Jones), Margaret Avery (The Color Purple), D'Urville Martin (Dolemite) and Mindi Miller (Caged Fury).

There are some magnificent action scenes in this. There's a rooftop shootout and fight sequence that is legendary. They do a good job of selecting unique locations for their fight scenes (hospitals, beaches, mafia members houses, etc). They also did a great job incorporating various weapons into the fights. The karate fighting girls in this are an A+.

Overall, there's enough good action scenes in this to make it enjoyable despite an average primary plot. I would consider this a must see for fans of Blaxploitation films and score it a 6.5-7/10.

(There are spoilers) Rushed sequel to "Black Caesar" that was released the same year that it's predecessor premiered in 1973. "Hell up in Harlem" takes up where "Black Caesar" ended with Black Godfather Tommy Gibbs,Fred Williamson, staggering through the streets of New York with a bullet in his gut courtesy of the NYPD and corrupt New York City District Attorney DiAngelo, Gerald Gordon. Saved by his dad Big Papa Gibbs, Julius Harris, and a group of local homeboys Tommy, no longer limping like he did in "Black Caesar", is nursed back to health and before you can say Jackie Robinson is back in action to take out those, gangsters and law men, who tried to do him in.

Extremely violent and far more rousing then "Black Caesar" the film "Hell up in Harlem" has a WWII-like commando sequence with Tommy and friends storming ashore a Mafia held island, like US Marines or Navy Seals. After taking out what looked like an entire battalion of Mafia soldiers Tommies commandos force the remaining head Mafioso's to eat a full plate of "Soul Food" and make a peace settlement with Tommy's gang. There's also a graphically sick and nauseating lynching scene in the movie and what has to be the longest chase sequence in motion picture history; 3,000 miles from NYC to L.A.

Tommy back in the saddle again as Harlem mob kingpin expands his gangster empire to Philidelphia Detroit and L.A. What turns out to be the biggest threat to his power is, like in almost all Godfather-like films, are those close to him. Having the goods on DiAngelo and the corrupt politicians and big wigs in NYC, with the secret ledgers that he stole in "Black Caesar", the local power brokers in and out of the city's government don't prosecute or kill Tommy. Instead try to get to him through his top enforcer Zack, Tony King. Zack murders Tommy's ex Helen, Gloria Hendry, and makes it look like it was sanctioned by his dad Big Papa Gibbs.

Tommy in a fit of fury quits as mob boss and throws the organization that he founded into the hands of Big Papa who ends up doing a better job running it then Tommy did. Going legit and moving to L.A Tommy later gets the bad news that his dad was killed by Zack, who took over the Gibbs Harlem rackets. In a fit of rage Tommy goes back home to NYC to get even but it's not only Zack that he has to deal with but D.A DiAngelo and the entire NYPD as well.

Too vicious and violent even for a gangster film "Hell up in Harlem" has really no one in it to cheer on or feel sympathy for with the exception of Helen and Tommy's wife the Bible reading and church going Sister Jennifer, Mrgaret Avery, and Tommy and Helen's young son Jason.

"Hell up in Harlem" starts off with the last ten minutes or so of the movie "Black Caesar" which makes you think, if you already saw "Black Caesar", that you've already seen it before and turn the film off. Were told at the end of the movie that Tommy disappeared, together with his young son, and was never seen or heard from again but he did re-appear, of sorts, as Willie a Tommy Gibbs-type mobster a year later in the movie "Crazy Joe".

You know how people say "don't quit your day job" when you want to do something very much, but haven't got the talent, skills or resources? Cult/exploitation masters Larry Cohen and Fred Williamson definitely turned this expression upside-down! They owned all the required skills to make a great sequel to the massively successful "Black Caesar", and yet they still opted NOT to abandon their regular day jobs in order to do so! Around the time of filming, not even half a year after the release of "Black Caesar", Williamson was working hard on "That Man Bolt", whereas Cohen was making his beloved horror-oddity "It's Alive". The studio persisted to have the sequel ready asap, and so Cohen and his crew just filmed "Hell Up in Harlem" during the weekends. Now, that's what I call dedication!

Much later, Larry Cohen admitted in an interview that "Hell Up in Harlem" was a largely unprepared effort. Well, that must be the understatement of the (previous) century! From the opening sequences, and until the end-credits start rolling, the script of "Hell Up in Harlem" appears to be improved on the spot, and the dialogues/monologues ad-libbed. This resulted in a film with a minimalistic plot and an incredibly hectic narrative structure, but with also a lot of awesome and ingenious action sequences. Numerous pieces of action footage are downright unforgettable, contrary to thin storyline of Tommy Gibbs introducing his father to the criminal world and his warfare against the corrupt NY district attorney. The fantastic opening scene, for instance, in which Tommy's friends take an entire hospital hostage at gunpoint in order to prevent him from getting arrested immediately after his treatment to remove a bullet. There's also the violent invasion of a Florida Keys' island, complete with trigger-happy black maids and Kung-Fu bikini babes. And so many more highlight, including a chase on the airport luggage transporter, a "he-died-with-a-hotdog-in-his-mouth" moment, and - my ultimate favorite - Gibbs impaling a sunbathing gangster (during broad daylight at a crowded Coney Island) with a sharp beach umbrella.

Fred Williamson reprises his role in the sequel to one of the more well-known flicks of the blaxploitation genre. I found this to be a more entertaining film than it's predecessor because it could concentrate more on the action as the characters and their back stories were developed in Black Caesar. This time the focus is on both Tommy and his father (Julius Harris) and how they take their territory back after the events of the first movie. The beginning was a little awkward as it rewrote the final few minutes of Black Ceasar but from there, the film evolved into a revenge story as Tommy tracked down the people who did him wrong. There were a number of great action scenes including Tommy and his mini-army storming a mob hangout on an island and a cross-country chase scene that would make the contenders on "The Amazing Race" envious.

I found that director Larry Cohen was a lot more comfortable with the characters this time around and I enjoyed seeing Harris with an expanded role. Still, I think that it would have been extremely challenging being a white director such as Cohen or Jack Hill with a predominantly black cast in that particular era. The score was by Edwin Starr (who is most known for the song "War") and was pretty good even though I would have preferred another score from James Brown. Brown was initially involved but his score ended up being scrapped but thankfully was still released as one of my favorite albums from the Godfather of Soul entitled "The Payback".

This is not the best of the blaxploitation films, but it is entertaining. This is the sequel to Black Ceaser, but they completely ignore the ending to its predecessor. The sound is not to great, and the story is kind of weak and forced, but come on, what did you expect.

Tommy Gibbs (Fred Williamson) is also known as Black Caesar, he finds himself shot by a corrupted police officer in the middle of the street in New York City. Since Gibbs is an well-known gangster, he has the ledger with the name of every bad cop and government officials on the mob's payroll. Gibbs is now public enemy number one in the city. He brings his father (Julius W. Harris) to the mob, Gibbs teaches his father every he knows. But someone in the gang is double-crossing Gibbs and he knows, there will be hell to pay. Revenge looks sweet for Black Caesar.

Written, Produced and Directed by Larry Cohen (It's Alive Trilogy, A Return to Salem's Lot, Q:The Winged Serpent) made an amusing, violent, if sometimes unintentionally funny sequel to "Black Caesar". Cohen is at his best, during some of the action sequences, the quick-paced editing and hand-held camera work. Williamson and Harris are fun to watch in this movie. Although the movie looks rushed, the story isn't as clear as its supposed to be and the film is quite sloppy at times.

DVD has an sharp anamorphic Widescreen (1.85:1) transfer and an decent Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono Sound. The DVD's best feature is the humorous and informative commentary track by Cohen. At times, his commentary track seems to be more entertaining than the movie! DVD also includes the original theatrical trailer and an teaser trailer. "Hell Up in Harlem" is a lot of fun, despite some real flaws. Some of Edwin Starr's songs are quite good. If you are an fan of Soul Cinema in the 1970's. Don't miss it. (*** ½/*****).

After the success of Black Caesar earlier in the year, this sequel was rushed into production to hopefully cash in on the clamour for Blaxploitation shenanigans. Sadly it's a rush job that is all too evidently half baked.

Plot has Fred Wiliamson return as Tommy Gibbs (resurrected from the dead apparently!), who takes on corrupt D.A. Diangelo (Gerald Gordon) whilst dealing with matters of the heart. Directed by Larry Cohen, it's with Cohen's frank honest views on the film that critique should start. He would say that Hell Up In Harlem is a 90 minutes montage movie, and he is absolutely right.

This is jerkily episodic as it runs a course of people talking then cutting to boisterous action, then some talking and cut again to some more boisterous action, and on it goes for the complete run time. That the action is so gripping - and some choice dialogue zingers in the mix as well - keeps this from being an unwatchable mess. You also have to have respect for this type of guerrilla film making, it literally is filmed on the fly.

Regardless of the unbelievable aspects of it all, the oodles of bright red fake blood, and poorly executed stunt work, the rawness of the violence keeps things above average. In fact there's a bit of bad taste simmering away in the violent dynamics, with no legal consequences of lead character's actions, which of course is a blaxploitation trait.

It's messy, but it's entertaining mess within the genre it sits in. 6/10

Sequel to Black Caesar, written and directed by Larry Cohen, has the Harlem gangster (Fred Williamson) taking on the mafia, the cops, and a traitor within his own organization. It's an enjoyable enough blaxploitation flick but not as good as Black Caesar. There's a lot of action and some of it is pretty chuckleworthy. The scene where the black gangsters attack the mob and make two of their bosses eat soul food is particularly amusing.

It was obviously a rushed production. If you're looking for tight continuity, look elsewhere. They change the ending to the last film entirely, as well as other plot elements. Still, Williamson is good. Sexy Gloria Hendry returns and there's some new eye candy from Margaret Avery. It's missing a great soundtrack like the best blaxploitation films had. Edwin Starr's songs aren't that hot. Apparently James Brown's music was rejected by Cohen. The same music that would go on to be the great Brown record "The Payback." Bad move, Larry.

I loved Larry Cohen and Fred Williamson's previous collaboration 'Black Caesar', one of the toughest and most enjoyable movies of the early 70s blaxploitation boom. That movie was a great success and in the rush to cash in with a sequel something was lost. Cohen was shooting his killer baby classic 'It's Alive' at the same time Williamson was making 'That Man Bolt', yet they still attempted to make 'Hell Up In Harlem' simultaneously! Cohen's script is weaker this time around and the emphasis is on fights (fists and guns) over character development and story. The movie is more of an action film than a crime drama and therefore much less interesting to me. Williamson is still a powerhouse, but the movie as a whole fails to satisfy. Gloria Hendry ('Black Belt Jones') and D'Urville Martin ('Dolemite') both return from the first movie but aren't required to do all that much. You could even call their roles cameos and not be far wrong. Julius Harris ('Superfly') also returns as Williamson's father, but this time round he has a much larger role, and almost carries the first third of the movie all by himself. The film directly follows on from 'Black Caesar' with Tommy Gibbs (Williamson) recovering from a near fatal gunshot wound. He relies upon his Pop to keep things together, and this enables Harris to blossom from a middle aged straight citizen into a cool dressing killing machine almost overnight! This is one of the most entertaining things about the whole movie, but not enough to stop it from being a disappointment. Even the score this time round is inferior, with no James Brown content. I think this movie was too rushed and suffers for it. It has its moments but isn't a patch on 'Black Caesar'. I've noticed that quite a few blaxploitation classics fail to deliver with their sequels (I'm especially thinking of 'Foxy Brown', Jack Hill's weak follow up to his sensational 'Coffy'). I wonder why that was? Greed perhaps, or lack of faith in the material, I don't know. Anyway, 'Hell Up In Harlem' is okay, but it could have been, SHOULD have been a lot better! 'Black Caesar' is still brilliant though, don't miss that one.

This sequel to "Black Caesar" produced later in the same year essentially starts where its predecessor left off with "Tommy Gibbs" (Fred Williamson) having been seriously wounded and in dire need of medical attention. However, unlike the original film, Tommy lives and from that point on makes it his mission to get even with everyone who set him up to be murdered. To that extent, he reunites with his father "Papa Gibbs" (Julius Harris) and along with his chief enforcer "Zach" (Tony King) go on a killing spree against those involved in the illegal drug trade which has the effect of greatly reducing the revenues going to the corrupt District Attorney "Mr. DiAngelo" (Gerald Gordon). What he doesn't count on, however, is Mr. DiAngelo secretly joining forces with Zach who then kills Tommy's ex-wife "Helen Bradley" (Gloria Hendry) and subsequently casts the blame on Papa Gibbs to create an internal conflict between the two--and that is when all hell breaks out in Harlem. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that not only was the first film better than this one but the flaws within the original picture were even more pronounced in the sequel. To be more specific, there were some adequate scenes here and there but they weren't connected very well. Everything seemed rather haphazard and poorly thought out. In addition to that, the script, acting and special effects were all in need of serious improvement as well. In short, although I am probably not a member of the target audience, I don't consider this to be a good "blaxploitation film" and I have rated it accordingly. Below average.

A Samuel Z. Arkoff exploitation special from the 1970's feature the worst acting you will ever see on the silver screen.

You cannot imagine how totally bad this movie is. But it doesn't stop with the acting. The sound effects are laughable. The guns are absurdly loud and the slap and fights sound like this is out of a Three Stooges short.

The storyline is ridiculous. A lot of the dialog seems like it's dubbed. When guns are fied sparks fly out like it's the fourth of July.

I was completely mortified at how bad this movie was. And frankly, a lot of it looked like it was filmed without proper permits on the streets of NYC.

No, this is not one of the greatest blaxploitation movie ever made; and yes, it has its flaws. But man, is this one a fun ride or what? It's an hour and a half of pure action with one of the greatest action hero of all time. It's ass kicking after ass kicking, as Tommy Gibbs takes revenge on everybody that have ever been dumb enough to mess with him. The fight scenes are great, inventive and plentiful. The cinematography is quite decent too and the story fun enough to keep you interested in it. Larry Cohen once more delivers the goods in this one. It's actually much better then most action stink fest that Hollywood produce this days. So sit tight and enjoy the roller coaster ride while it last.

Go Fred Williamson!

Hell Up in Harlem (1973)

** (out of 4)

Sequel to Black Caesar has Fred Williamson surviving his assassination attempt and slowly moving up the ranks. How does he do this? By killing any Italian person he can get his eyes on. This film has a somewhat legendary making of since both the star and director were busy doing other things and they just got together on the weekends to shoot this film. I think it's easy to tell that the movie was rushed because there isn't any evidence of a screenplay having been written. The movie is nothing but non-stop, bloody violence from the opening to the closing. There's nothing wrong with this as it adds a lot of fun to the movie but if you're expecting anything deep then you can forget it as this thing is weak, story wise, even when compared to the poorest written blaxploitation film. Williamson is once again good in his role and he has the perfect attitude for this type of film. There are all sorts of shoot outs, explosions and even some kung fu thrown in for some good laughs.

(1973) Hell Up in Harlem ACTION

Produced, written and directed by Larry Cohen which is almost a direct sequel to "Black Caesar" released on the same year. Also consider, the time the film was made when New York City was one of the most dangerous cities to live, with a lot of corruption happening around, law enforcement's and elected mayors were doing unethical things they weren't supposed to do. Up comes Fred Williamson as Tommy Gibbs who has all the names and records of all the corrupted officials who're involved, using this information to take control of all the drug trafficking and the dealings happening around the streets of Harlem, an area dominated by African Americans with a lot of illegal activity going on, usually unsupervised by the city! Gibbs lets his dad handle part of the sections around NYC with his son Tommy handling the rest and the real heat doesn't happen until an hour later! Directed by low budget director Larry Cohen, this film could've been better, but with low production values, fake action sequences, and plenty of second rate acting, can make ones experience to be quite bad and could've been decent had Larry Cohen gotten more money for this film, but made the most of what the studio can give him! The funky soundtrack is pretty good too, but can only carry a film so far.

Hell Up In Harlem (1973) was a follow up to the classic Black Caesar. Do to the box office success of the former film, the producers wanted another sequel to cash in on the popularity of the first film. So Larry Cohen quickly completed a script that was going to follow the revenge of Tommy Gibbs. This time he's out to get rid of the clowns that he forgot to finish off in the first film. Papa Gibbs has taken control of his son's empire and Rev. Rufus is back as well.

Not bad for a movie that was hastily put together. A fitting end for Tommy Gibbs as he tries to turn his life around in the process of seeking vengeance. One of the better black "exploitiation" films to come out of the seventies. If you enjoyed Black Caesar, you'll love Hell Up In Harlem.

Highly recommended.

This film might not be as popular as its predecessor "Black Caesar," but "Hell Up in Harlem" is far more explosive. This movie was my introduction to Fred "the Hammer" Williamson, and it's one of his best movies. Not much of a story, but the action level is awesome. Plus, this movie is far less preachy and depressing than "Black Caesar." Great supporting roles played by Durville Martin and Julius Harris, and a cool theme song by Edwin "War" Starr. Action highlights include the opening chase scene (which pretty much disregards the first film's bleak conclusion), the island shootout and of course the hard to believe NYC to L.A. chase! If you're new to the Hammer, start with this movie. It's definitely his best.