They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970)

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1. 

   DisneyStitch

   When you think of "cash grab" movies you tend to think of modern movie franchises with endless sequels and reboots. This one's just a classic example all the way from 1970. It's not a sequel in the truest sense because it has no continuity with the groundbreaking In the Heat of the Night. Really nothing flows together in the movie and it lacks some serious cohesion. Even the title of the movie is misleading. That famous line was directly tied into the racism that Tibbs' was experiencing and how things were different in Philadelphia, yet this movie jettisons that entire plot line and is a long way from Philly.
   
   I was kind of excited to see Martin Landau of Mission Impossible fame here but his talents are so incredibly wasted. Anthony Zerbe's character gets slightly more room to maneuver but is still lackluster. 2 years ago
2. 

   Siskoid

   Following the success of In the Heat of the Night, they went to franchise with They Call Me Mister Tibbs! which... well, which could have been about ANY homicide detective, it just happens to be Virgil Tibbs. It just feels like they pulled some old script from the slush pile, changed the name of the protagonist, and voila. In this alternate universe, Tibbs lives in San Francisco instead of Philly, and he has a family, which he specifically didn't in the previous film. Nor does TCMMT feel anything like ITHOTN. With its lurid murder (pretty much the only interesting piece of direction) at the beginning and funky Quincy Jones score, it feels more of a piece with the blaxploitation genre that was starting to happen, but without the racial stuff - which again is a deviation from the original film. As a murder mystery, it's a lot of red herrings before coming back to the pretty obvious solution, there's a rather uneventful but extended foot chase, and family stuff acting as padding that never really comes together with the rest of the story. Had this been made without Sidney Poitier, Martin Landau and scummy Anthony Zerbe, it would be a very forgettable film indeed. The actors, Poitier especially, make it rise just above that level, even in scenes that could easily be jettisoned like Tibbs disciplining his kid. What a disappointment. 4 years 7 months ago

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