When one thinks of the great New York City movies of the ’70s and ’80s, a handful of titles immediately come to mind: “Taxi Driver,” “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three,” “The Warriors” and “Death Wish” all captured, with sleazy authenticity and on-the-ground vérité, the grime and desperation of a city in a free-fall of financial ruin and moral rot. But there’s another film that deserves inclusion in that pantheon — one that, through no fault of your own, you probably haven’t seen.
“Night of the Juggler,” based on the 1975 novel by William P. McGivern, was something of a troubled production. Shooting began on location in New York in the summer of 1978, with Sidney J. Furie (“Lady Sings the Blues”) in the director’s chair. But production was halted after its star, James Brolin, broke his foot while shooting the picture’s opening chase scene, and during that weekslong break, Furie departed; he was replaced by Robert Butler.
One could say that “Juggler” was an orphan from birth. It was an independent production, primarily financed by the theater chain General Cinema Corporation (GCC), and picked up for theatrical distribution by Columbia Pictures. But when Norman Levy, Columbia’s president of distribution who acquired the picture, left the studio before its release, there was no one to champion it. Mixed-negative reviews didn’t help (The Times’s Janet Maslin dismissed it as “breathless and overplotted”), and it disappeared quickly from theaters. It was never released on any home video format beyond VHS — no DVD, no Blu-ray, no streaming — a lost film, save for occasional rep screenings and bootlegs ripped from vintage cable airings.
“It was kind of like a holy grail,” Frank Tarzi, senior vice president of acquisitions and business development for Kino Lorber, said in a video interview. He first encountered “Night of the Juggler” as a young action movie fanatic; when it premiered on HBO, “I knew my parents would not allow me to watch it,” he recalled, “so I woke up in the middle of the night, 3:45 a.m., and put a tape in the machine and recorded it. Then I watched it over the weekend when they went to Long Island.” From that first, surreptitious viewing, “I fell in love with it.”
It’s easy to see why. The story of a former New York Police Department officer-turned-truck driver (James Brolin) whose daughter, mistaken for the child of a wealthy real estate developer, is kidnapped by a dangerous psychotic (Cliff Gorman), “Juggler” is a crackerjack thriller, capturing the desperation of both its hero and his city with grit and verve. (The cinematographer is Victor J. Kemper, who shot “Dog Day Afternoon.”) Its best sequence comes early, upon the teen’s abduction, which kicks off an exhilarating 10-minute car, foot and subway chase from Central Park to Times Square. Throwing crashes, stunts and punches at you like fastballs, it deserves consideration among the great New York chase scenes, alongside “The French Connection” and “The Seven-Ups.”
But there’s more to “Night of the Juggler” than cheap thrills; its narrative is informed by real events of the city’s most tumultuous era. Brolin’s character made enemies in the N.Y.P.D. by testifying against his fellow cops, a la Frank Serpico’s testimony to the Knapp Commission. “So when the city went broke and they laid off all those cops, that gave ‘em a chance to get rid of you,” notes a former colleague, referencing the 1976 layoffs caused by the city’s fiscal crisis.
The story’s villain is a South Bronx resident who is motivated in part by the borough’s ’70s epidemic of crime and arson. And his intended target for the kidnapping-and-ransom scheme is a smugly entitled New York real estate magnate. Yet for all this time, the only way to see “Night of the Juggler” was a YouTube rip from a long-ago airing on ActionMax. “For years, I’ve been looking for the rights of this film, seeing who owned it,” Tarzi said, explaining that those rights were difficult to ascertain, after decades of expired licenses and muddy chains of ownership. “I’ve picked up every rock possible,” he said.
Tarzi eventually tracked down the current owner, “but I think the person was not willing to do any kind of deals.” And so it stagnated for years, until a third-party intermediary bought the rights to “Juggler” and started gauging interest. “Out of nowhere, I got an email saying, ‘Hey, are you guys interested?’” Tarzi said. “I almost fell out of my chair.” They were unable to locate the original camera negative, but a duplicate negative proved more than adequate for their 4K restoration, which premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival and will begin a nationwide rerelease on Aug. 1 at IFC Center (with a 4K UHD release following in September). It’s a welcome opportunity for “Night of the Juggler” to finally take its place among the great Gotham movies of its era.
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