. . . In which the notorious Orange Juice runs through an airport, ditching ensanguined gloves, blades and ugly-a-- shoes as he trots along, eager to drag his ailing geezer limbs back to the borrowed vehicle. Surely Bigger Thomas is the template for Juice, whose mom probably read about to her son every night of his prep and collegiate grid iron career. How else could his wrongful death exploits come in such a natural, effortless manner?

" . . . Is the world's hog butcher," but the poet's rhyme about cats, fog and "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" may be a more apt summary of NATIVE SON. Adapted from THE CONFESSIONS OF NAT TURNER, this revised SON centers on Bigger, whose father was executed for a Capital Crime. After smothering Mary in her bed, this chip off the old beheading block viciously stuffs his own bed mate Bessie down an elevator shaft. Since Bigger's lame defense attorney Max can up with no better dream team slogan than "If she's dust, it can't be lust," the doomed client gets sentenced to a hot squat. However, NATIVE SON soon gave rise to "jury nullification"--or the "They can't help themselves" defense--in which a certain demographic of criminal trial becomes a poetry slam and most defendants are cleared to hunt for elusive or nonexistent "Real Killers" on the Back Nine.

A flawed but ultimately important 1951 adaptation of the seminal Richard Wright classic which he co-scripted & inexplicably starred in (?). Wright plays Bigger Thomas, a spiteful & angry black man living in the slums in Chicago (actually filmed in South America) w/his mother & younger brother & sister. Hoping to derail him from his path to infamy, a confidante of the family recommends him to become a chauffeur for a rich white family where he'll live & work from. There he meets the family's dangerous daughter who is more than willing to corrupt poor Bigger as she has him drive her & her boyfriend, an unabashed lefty w/revolutionary leanings, around as they drink winding up at a black club where Bigger's singer/girlfriend is debuting. Wrapping up the night, Bigger has to navigate the clearly overly intoxicated daughter to her room stirring the attention of her blind grandmother which sends Bigger into a panic whereby he accidentally kills her when he smothers her w/a pillow (to prevent her from exposing him). To make matters worse he chooses to dispose of the body in the home's incinerator & blames her apparent disappearance on the boyfriend. As tensions mount & a flurry of reporters descend on the manse to stay on top of the kidnapping angle Bigger has concocted, one journalist in particular continues to prod Bigger until the remains of the dead woman are found sending him fleeing w/his girl into the inner city slums to evade capture where things only get worse. If you can overcome the bad acting, obvious un-American locations, & colossally miscast Wright (who was in his 40's playing a someone in his 20's) then the social issues & inherent racism of the time makes sense why this wretched character, who is devoid of getting our sympathies, still does anyway making this black film noir (it was presented last week on TCM's Noir Alley w/Eddie Muller) a must for all to see.