General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Fuzz

Fuzz is a 1972 American comedy-drama crime film directed by Richard A. Colla, written by Evan Hunter from his own 87th Precinct novel published under the pseudonym Ed McBain, and starring Burt Reynolds, Raquel Welch, Jack Weston, Tom Skerritt, and Yul Brynner. It follows Boston police detectives hunting an extortionist bomber known as "the Deaf Man" while juggling a rapist case, teenage arsonists, and a station house being repainted.¹

Key fact	Detail
Source	Adapted by Evan Hunter from his 1968 novel Fuzz, written as Ed McBain; rights bought by Lee Rich for $125,000 (other sources reported $100,000), a high price for crime-novel film rights at the time¹
Cast	Burt Reynolds (Det. Steve Carella), Jack Weston (Det. Meyer Meyer), Tom Skerritt (Det. Bert Kling), Raquel Welch (Det. Eileen McHenry), Yul Brynner (the Deaf Man)¹
Production	Shot early November to late December 1971 in Boston and at General Service Studios, Los Angeles¹
Release	Los Angeles opening 24 May 1972; New York City release 14 July 1972; distributed by United Artists¹^•²
Technical	92 to 93 minutes, color (DeLuxe), Panavision, mono sound, MPAA rating PG; score by Dave Grusin¹
Reception	Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer 16% from 4 reviews; IMDb rating 5.5/10 from about 2,600 votes; US and Canada gross $566,628³^•⁴

Spoilers

Plot

The film is set at Boston's 87th Precinct on a cold November day. Det. Eileen McHenry (Raquel Welch) arrives undercover to catch a rapist attacking women in the park, while Det. Steve Carella (Burt Reynolds) poses as a hobo to trap teenagers who set vagrants on fire; two of them, Jimmy and Baby, set his coat alight and burn his hands.¹

The main plot concerns phone calls demanding $5,000 or the parks commissioner will be killed. After a bogus drop in a cemetery lunch pail fails, the commissioner is shot by a sniper, and a note made of pasted newspaper letters demands $50,000 near a bench on Boston Common or the deputy mayor will die. The boy delivering it reports that the man who handed it over wears a hearing aid, so the detectives name the culprit "the Deaf Man."¹ Brynner's character is an old foe of Carella from several of the 87th Precinct novels, and critics have likened him to Professor Moriarty of the Sherlock Holmes stories.¹

Comic set pieces include detectives disguised as nuns on park benches and Welch and Skerritt posing as a couple in a double sleeping bag, which they cannot unzip when the suspect moves. The climax brings the bomber and a pair of holdup men into the same liquor store, where they shoot it out with each other while the cops hide under the counter; Weston's detective calls the coincidence "skillful police work."⁵

Production history

The property moved through several hands before filming. In November 1968 Lee Rich bought the novel's rights; he and partner Merv Adelson planned it as an early Lorimar Productions venture with S. L. "Sid" Stebel as screenwriter, for a New York shoot in spring 1970. By October 1970 Filmways and Javelin had taken over the picture.¹

A change of city and director. News items through 1971 reported the film would be shot entirely in New York City, and by summer 1971 Brian De Palma was set to direct. He left in mid-September 1971 when filming was delayed by stalled negotiations with the New York Local 52 branch of the stage employees' union; United Artists president David Picker regretted the impasse, and production shifted to Los Angeles. The setting then moved to Boston, with at least two weeks of location work there, including Boston Common and the Public Garden, Trinity Church Square, and Faneuil Hall, before the unit returned to General Service Studios in Los Angeles.¹ The trade press reported the New York locations were abandoned because shooting there had become too expensive.⁶

Only Evan Hunter, the novelist's real name, is credited with the screenplay; IMDb notes he is credited under his own name for the script and as McBain for "based on the novel by."¹^•⁴ The adaptation loosely follows the book, with one notable addition: Det. Eileen McHenry does not appear in the novel.¹

Cast and credits

The end credits divide the cast into three categories, "The Fuzz," "The Bad Guys," and "The Other Players." In the opening credits Brynner is the fourth listed actor and the only one identified with a character name, "The Deaf Man"; Welch's credit reads "and Raquel Welch."¹ The supporting cast includes character actors Steve Ihnat, Dan Frazer, Peter Bonerz, Charles Martin Smith, Brian Doyle-Murray, and Bert Remsen.⁷

Two performers made their motion picture debuts in the film: Tamara Dobson, billed onscreen as "Tamara," who became famous as Cleopatra Jones in 1973, and Dominic Chianese, seen briefly as a panhandler and later known for The Godfather Part II and The Sopranos.¹ Over the end credits Dinah Shore sings "I'll Be Seeing You"; at the time of release she and Reynolds had a well-known romantic relationship.¹ During the scene in which his character is set on fire, Reynolds did his own stunt and almost suffered serious burns to his face.⁴

Release and reception

Fuzz reached American theaters in the summer of 1972, shortly after Reynolds' nude centerfold in the April 1972 issue of Cosmopolitan made him a media sensation, and the film was timed to capitalize on his popularity.⁷^•¹ The Los Angeles opening was on 24 May 1972 and the New York release followed on 14 July.¹^•²

Critical response was divided. Roger Ebert, film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, gave the film three of four stars, calling it "an offbeat, funny, quietly cheerful movie in which Ed McBain's 87th Precinct is finally brought to life" and praising the ensemble acting of Reynolds, Weston, and Skerritt.⁵ Jay Cocks in TIME took the opposite view, writing that the cops were "the Keystone variety: louts and lovable fumblers who succeed at their work mostly out of dumb luck" and calling screenwriter Hunter "the real culprit."⁶ On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 16% Tomatometer from four reviews; later critics have read it as a document of the law-and-order concerns of 1972.³

Aftermath

The ending, in which the Deaf Man's hand rises from the water to grab his hearing aid, seemed to reviewers to set up a sequel, but none was made; other 87th Precinct novels were later adapted for film and television.¹ For Reynolds, the film and Deliverance, also released in 1972, were considered contributing factors in his rise, and in 1973 he became one of the top ten box office stars in the world, remaining on that list through the decade.¹ The film's initial American television screenings were popular enough that they prompted a change of policy regarding violence on television, according to a retrospective review.⁸

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Crime, thriller, and mystery films (individual works) › 1970s films

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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