John Collins
Created by Zale R. Dalen

JOHN COLLINS is the low-key, taciturn debt collector "hero" of Skip Tracer, a bleak, decidedly non-glamourous, low-budget Canadian character study released in 1977.

Make no mistake -- Collins is no goody two-shoes. In fact, he's something of a son of a bitch.

But that's a skill that made him the top skip tracer for GSC, a Vancouver loan company. In the course of the film, Collins must deal with an ambitious young associate, viscious death threats, and a suicidal debtor, not to mention severe job burnout. All this while vying for GSC's coveted "Man of the Year" award for an unprecedented fourth year in a row.

Yeah, it sounds like a downer, and it is. But what a downer.

It's too bad it's not available on DVD.

UNDER OATH

• "A remarkable study of a debt collector's lonely life in vancouver and how he comes to hate himself and his work."
  (Gerald Pratley, director of the Ontario Film Institute, who counted Skip Tracer among the ten best Canadian films ever made in The First Original Unexpurgated Canadian Book of Lists.)

FILM

• SKIP TRACER
  (1977, Highlight Productions)
  Written by Zale R. Dalen
  Directed by Zale R. Dalen
  Produced by Laura Dalen
  Musical Director: J. Douglas Dodd
  Starring David Peterson as JOHN COLLINS
  Also starring John Lazurus, Rudy Szabo, Mike Grigg, Al Rose, Sue Astley, Jack Leaf, Steve Miller, John Scott

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.