Dark Sunday

Running, out of his church, a rehabilitation center for homeless anddrug-addicted youths Reverend Lowery gets the local drug pushers mad athim by taking away their costumers. Lowery goes out on the mean streetsand shows the drug addicts a way out of their addictions by turning toand believing in God and the good that's in themselves.

Setting Lowery up for elimination the mob gets him and his wife andkids alone at a picnic by the river and blast them all away with onlyLowery and his son Jody surviving. Recovering from four gun-shots withhis voice gone, due to a bullet shattering his voice-box, Lowery is sodespondent that he slips into a drunken stupor not even wanting to seehis crippled son Jody at the hospital.

Getting to know at the local watering hole that he spends, drinkingaway his troubles, almost all his free or non-sleeping time Lowery getsfriendly with a hooker, with a heart of gold, who calls herself Julie.Lowery ends up staying at Julie's place for days on end without as muchas even thinking of having sex with her even though Julie is veryaccommodating to him, she doesn't know that he was happily married withtwo children and a man of God to boot. For some strange reason Juliethinks that Lowey is either a cop or soldier who due to his gunshotwounds is unable to preform in bed.

Lowery gets a new lease on life when he spots this local drug pusherthe Candyman and follows him into the town bus terminal. Getting theCandyman alone in the mens room Lowery clobbers him with his cane andthen stuffs his head, together with his drugs, down the toilet boweldrowning him. After dispatching the Candyman Lowery begins a one manwar against the drug pushers who were responsible for the death of hiswife and other son Eric, as well as destroying his life, until he justabout cleaned up the entire city.

With the new found friendship of the town religious blind man Loweryalso found peace and quite at the blind mans place so that the hoodslooking for him would find it twice as hard, with him spending half histime at Julie's pad, to locate and kill him. The movie "Dark Sunday"get a bit strange with Lowery who at first could barely walk, havingfour slugs in him, is later able to outrun the cops and hoods, who mostof the cops in town are In the pay of, even when they were chasing himin cars!

Lowery finally gets to the top man of local mobs drug operationsHurbert Dexter, who ordered the hit on him and his family, as he wasplanning to leave town. With his entire organization taken out by thecrippled Lowery Dexter together with a suitcase full of dirty money iscaught flat footed and by surprise by Lowery in his office. Loweryafter debating with himself how to finish Dexter off, with a drugoverdose of just a bullet to the head, empties out his gun out on thehoodlum; a gun looking more like a 155mm howitzer that would make evenDirty Harry envious.

Instead of ending right there, with the blowing away of drug and mobkingpin Dexter,the movie goes on for some ten more minutes with Loweryhaving what seems to be a change of heart. Were forced to sufferthrough this ridicules transformation where Lowery not only turnshimself in but serves himself up to be killed by crooked cop Let. Untzthe only survivor of Dexters drug cartel. In front of his son Jody andJulie and the the towns police chief, one of the few cop not on thetake, Lowery allows himself to be blown away by the corrupt Let. Untzas some kind of penance on Lowery's part.

Trying to figure out the ending it then dawned on me that Loweryactually had nothing on Untz even though he had dozens of chances tokill him, like he did a score of other hoodlums, throughout the movie.Lowery used Untz's bottomless and utter stupidity by getting the jerkto shoot and kills him in front of more then a dozen witnessesincluding fellow cops! in order to get enough evidence on Untz to puthim away for life.

2) Delightfully gritty revenge- drama from director/editor Jimmy Huston andstar/ producer Earl Owensby.

Owensby plays a skid row reverend who helps young junkies to a betterlife.This is not to the liking of the local drug dealer (who looks like BuffaloBill in old photos)who sends his goons after the good minister.

What’s good in this one is the general atmosphere, which is close to theEuropean (Italian) crime films of the mid seventies; everyone’s corrupt orat least corruptible, the police probably more than anyone else. Nicestreetscenes, decent acting and lots of bloody shootings earn this one arecommendation.

In addition, the scene in which the mute Owensby meets with the blindpreacher must be a tribute to the scene in James Whale’s The Bride ofFrankenstein where the monster meets the blind hermit.

Released on video in Finland in the early eighties.