| Good Guys Wear Black | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Ted Post |
| Produced by | Allan F. Bodoh Mitchell Cannold Michael Leone |
| Written by | Bruce Cohn (Screenplay) Mark Medoff (Screenplay) Joseph Fraley (Story) |
| Starring | Chuck Norris Anne Archer Soon-Tek Oh Dana Andrews James Franciscus Lloyd Haynes Jim Backus |
| Music by | Craig Safan |
| Cinematography | Robert Steadman |
| Editing by | Millie Moore William Moore |
| Studio | Action One Film Partners, LTD Mar Vista Productions |
| Distributed by | American Cinema Releasing |
| Release date(s) | June 21, 1978 March 21, 1979 September 19, 1980 August 7, 1981 September 24, 1981 October 28, 1983 February 28, 1984 |
| Running time | 96 minutes approx. |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $1,000,000 |
| Box office | $18,300,000 (US)[1] |
Good Guys Wear Black is a 1978 action film starring Chuck Norris.[2] This was the third film to feature Norris as the star.[3]
Contents |
Chuck Norris plays John T. Booker, a former Vietnam Green Beret and a member of a group known as the Black Tigers. He is drawn into a web when members of the group start getting killed. Booker quits his school-teaching job, and then sets out to warn surviving members around the country. The killer turns out to be a former Black Tiger team member, Major Mhin Van Thieu (Soon-Tek Oh) who was silencing the surviving members of the group before their agent, a politician named Conrad Morgan (James Franciscus), gets appointed to office. Too late to save the last victim in Denver, Booker kills the assassin at the airport with a spectacular flying side kick through the windshield as the car bears down on him. He goes on to Washington, D.C., and tries to stop the politician by taking the place of his driver. Just as he finishes telling the politician, "It's not that you deserve to die, but you don't deserve to live," Booker is now struck in the head with a wine preserver from behind while driving. The limousine plunges into the Port of Baltimore now killing Morgan, but Booker emerges as the only survivor now swimming to shore.
Back in 1973, one Senator Conrad Morgan (James Franciscus), the chief delegate diplomat in negotiating the terms of the end of Vietnam war, made a deal in Paris, France with Kuong Yen, the North Vietnamese negotiator. The deal called for Yen to release certain key CIA POWs in exchange for Morgan setting-up a death-trap for an elite group of CIA assassins, known as the Black Tigers. The treaty signed, the Black Tigers were sent into the jungles of ‘Nam to their unknowing demise, under guise that they were on mission to liberate American POWs.
Five years after returning from Vietnam, Booker, now living in Los Angeles, California, works as a [political science]] professor at UCLA. Booker lectures to a bunch of kids on the failures of America’s part in the Vietnam war and jokes about singing patriotic songs the following week to atone. Booker is suddenly thrown back into his past when the election of Morgan to Secretary of State spurs Yen to blackmail his ex-negotiations buddy into making good on his un-finished deal: The extermination of the Black Tigers.
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Chuck Norris | Mjr. John T. Booker (The Black Tigers) |
| Anne Archer | Margaret |
| James Franciscus | Conrad Morgan |
| Lloyd Haynes | Murray Saunders |
| Dana Andrews | Edgar Harolds |
| Jim Backus | Albert (The Apartment Doorman) |
| Lawrence P. Casey | Mike Potter (The Black Tigers) |
| Anthony Mannino | Gordie Jones (The Black Tigers) |
| Soon-Tek Oh | Mjr. Mhin Van Thieu (The Black Tigers) |
| Joe Bennett | Lou Goldberg (The Black Tigers) |
| Jerry Douglas | Joe Walker (The Black Tigers) |
| Stack Pierce | Holly Washington (The Black Tigers) |
| Michael Payne | Mitch (The Black Tigers) |
| David Starwalt | Steagle (The Black Tigers) |
| Aaron Norris | Al (The Black Tigers) |
The movie grossed $18 million dollars at the box office.
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