Shamus McCoy
Created by Barry Beckerman

Cheese Alert! (Just check out that poster over there!)

Burt Reynolds plays Burt Reynolds playing a former pool hustler-turned Brooklyn private eye and barfly SHAMUS McCOY in 1973's Burtsploitation flick Shamus, a confused film that can't decide if it's a send-up or a continuation of the whole gumshoe tradition. A lot of smirky, wink-wink humour, and more than a few shots of Burt in all his hairy-chested glory, just in case a few moviegoers had missed his then-recent centerfold spread.

Down on his luck, reduced to living and working out of his sparsely furnished apartment (he sleeps on a pool table), McCoy can no longer afford his three weaknesses: women,, drink and gambling, So when an eccentric millionaire offers him $10,000 to track down some diamonds stolen in a daring robbery (that involved a flame-thrower, no less!) McCoy jumps at the chance.

Along the way, he manages a sly wink at the opening credits of Harper, does a dead-on spoof of the bookstore scene from Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep, updated fot the seventies, and gets the crap beat out of him several times. Joe Santos gets to do a rehearsal as a decent but P.I.-plagued cop and family man, a role he would soon be milking for much of the rest of his career, most notably as Sgt. Dennis Becker on The Rockford Files. Oh, and along the way, Reynolds gets to chat up Dyan Cannon, so the film does have its bright moments. Dated, and some of the sexual repartee will make you cringe (for a variety of reasons) but fun.

No, really.

It was enough fun, in fact, for television to take a crack a few years later at spinning off the character into a series. They even filmed a pilot, entitled Shamus: A Matter of Wife ... and Death (left), casting Rod Taylor as McCoy, with a pre-Wonder Woman Lynda Carter in a small role as McCoy's long-suffering' girlfriend and Anne Archer in an early role, while Joe Santos reprised his role in the film as Lt. Vince Promuto.

Alas, if the film was strictly Grade B, the TV pilot was at best Grade C, still intermittently fun, but nobody fell for it, and a series was never developed.

Evidently, Rod Taylor, no matter how often he strutted around in all his hairy-chested glory, was not Burt Reynolds.

Then again, who is?

FILM

• SHAMUS...Buy the video ...Buy the DVD
  (AKA Passion for Danger)
  (1973, Columbia)
  106 minutes
  Written by Barry Beckerman
  Directed by Buzz Kulik
  Music by Jerry Goldsmith
  A Robert M. Weitman Production
  Starring Burt Reynolds as SHAMUS McCOY
  Also starring Dyan Cannon, John P. Ryan, Joe Santos, Georgio Tozzi, Ronald Weyland, Larry Block, Beeson Carroll, Kevin Conway, Kay Frye, John Glover, Merwin Goldsmith, Melody Santangello, Irving Selbst, Alex Wilson and Morris the Cat from the 9-Lives TV commercials.

NOVELIZATION

• Shamus (1973; by Raymond Giles)

TELEVISION

• SHAMUS: A MATTER OF WIFE... AND DEATH
  (1976, NBC)
  TV pilot
  73 minutes
  Original airdate: April 10, 1976
  Based on characters created by Barry Beckerman
  Teleplay by Don Ingalls
  Directed by Marvin J. Chomsky
  Produced by Robert Weitman
  Original music by Richard Shores
  Starring Rod Taylor as SHAMUS McCOY
  Also starring Lynda Carter, Anne Archer, Joe Santos, Luke Askew, Larry Block, Dick Butkus, John Colicos, Cesare Danova, Tom Drake, Eddie Firestone, Anita Gillette, Charlie Picerni

Report respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith, with a special thanks to Richard Archer for the tip.

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