I fucking love Roy Scheider. Whether it be his freak out moments, his L-shaped nose or the fact that he’s also a New Jersey native, he was one of cinema’s greatest actors. He’s best known for his work as Chief Martin Brody in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, but there’s some gems that Scheider has worked on before and after the greatest blockbuster of all-time, and one of those gems is The Seven-Ups.
The Seven-Ups is a cop story, and one of the finest the 70s had to offer. Directed by Philip D’Antoni, best known for producing Bullitt and The French Connection, the film is about an undercover, almost rogue, crime unit for the NYPD that bust the bad guys in unorthodox ways, and sentencing them to seven or more years in prison (hence their name, the Seven-Ups). Alongside D’Antoni, several other people tied to The French Connection are involved, including actor Tony Lo Bianco, screenwriter Sonny Grosso and composer Don Ellis. But the real draw to this film is not for its storyline, but the greatest chase sequence brought forth by Bill Hickman. You might be thinking, nothing will ever beat those chase sequences that I saw in Bullitt or The French Connection. Well Bill Hickman is no stranger to chase sequences, because he’s the same guy who did the chase sequences for both Bullitt and The French Connection. He definitely outdoes himself in the following chase sequence:
So right now, you should be doing one of two things:
1) Looking up on eBay the prices of a Pontiac Ventura
2) Adding The Seven-Ups to your DVD queue.
The Seven-Ups, definitely a film that deserves more credit than it ever gets and definitely one of the 70s forgotten classics.
