Deadbeat dad John Saxon plays a bounty hunter in Los Angeles — and not a cool bounty hunter like Boba Fett, but a bounty hunter like … well, like John Saxon. The first loser we see him bust is a large guy with a gay lover who plays the flute while in a Jacuzzi! Later, he accosts another target — a guy named Cookie — in a slaughterhouse, leading to an extended fight using slabs of meat!
But The Glove is really all about Saxon being offered 20 grand to bring in Rosie Grier, who has a penchant for killing prison guards who wronged him, using a riot-gear glove that pounds clean through cement, steel and metal (yet leaves a wicker laundry hamper amazingly unharmed). Despite Grier’s warnings to “step off my set, hound dog,” Saxon needs the dough, vowing to go “sniffing and licking as long as it takes.” Ewww.
It’s hard to like Saxon in many movies beyond Enter the Dragon, because he relies on overplaying the slimy, ain’t-I-smooth-with-the-ladies shtick. And although the teddy-bearish Grier is quite likable, once you’ve seen him sharing an upper torso with Ray Milland, everything else is just scraps.
The directorial debut of Sidehackers actor Ross Hagen (the Saxon of his day), The Glove could use some more glove-on-redneck action, and gets fairly meandering. But it takes itself so seriously — beginning with the opening-credit ode to the glove — it’s occasionally a laugh riot. Like the ending when Saxon’s colleague gets beaten to death with mops, kitchen pans and fists of black vengeance. —Rod Lott
Gotta say I disagree with you on this one, Rod. I loved THE GLOVE, especially because of it’s strange shifts in tone. By taking its characters more seriously, I found it become unusually moving.
“Fists of Black Vengeance” is a movie I would pay to see.Starring Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, Rosie Grier, and Tony Cox.
All things being fair, I think it’s safe to say Ross Hagen, star-wise, was never even close to John Saxon. Sure, Saxon was never A-list, but he was always a solid B-list leading man in his prime not to mention all the episodic guest star bits and supporting feature film roles he did. He’s at least Christopher George in the star power department and that’s pretty darn good.