Come Back Charleston Blue

Second of two underrated thrillers (the first was Cotton Comes to Harlem) inspired by Chester Himes and his ace Harlem detectives, Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson. Black Bogarts with a natty line in upstaged Chandlerisms, the pair tangle here with murders by cut-throat razor, the resurrection of a gangster who died forty years earlier, a regally crazy old lady (wonderful performance by Gentry), and the hijacking of all the heroin in Harlem. No masterpiece, but very funny and full of bizarre touches.