Joe Don Baker is Mitchell!
Hard-hitting police action came to the theaters in
1975's
Mitchell, an
Allied Pictures release.
Joe Don Baker is Mitchell, a hard-drinking sloppy-loving always-eating cop who doesn't play by the rules. When he stumbles upon a
homicide he begins to connect the murder with the
heroin trade and decides to hound and pester a local successful businessman (played by
Martin Balsam). People are shot, Mitchell
drinks heavily, and it all ends with a stunning confrontation at sea. You'll come for the action, but stay for the
steamy love scene (think "
baby oil") between Mitchell and the
prostitute played by
Linda Evans. Please do not give away the surprise ending of
Mitchell.
Mitchell is available on VHS for around $2 in the bargain bin or on DVD and VHS as part of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 experiment (#512 of the series) for around $15. The Mitchell episode of MST3K is also the episode where man-in-space Joel Robinson finally escapes from the Satellite of Love with the aid of Gypsy and Mike Nelson. The grapevine says that after this episode of MST3K aired, Joe Don Baker became enraged at the cast of the show and vowed to take revenge on all of them some day. Apparently this didn't phase the cast, as they went on to skewer another Joe Don Baker film years later in Final Justice.