As of this writing, former NFL All Pro defensive lineman Rosey Grier is still kicking at the ripe old age of 93. We’re football fans here at Missile Test, but we associate Rosey with his post-football days, when, among many other activities, he graced us with his presence on the silver screen, most notably in The Thing With Two Heads. In 1979’s The Glove, directed by Ross Hagen from a screenplay by Hugh Smith and Julian Roffman, Rosey plays Victor Hale, an ex-con who was beaten and abused by prison guards. After release, Hale seeks revenge. He suits up in prison riot gear, including a 5-pound steel glove, and hunts down his former custodians, beating them to death.
That’s a solid plot for a cheesy action flick, but despite the prominence of Hale’s glove in the title, his story is secondary. This movie really follows John Saxon as Sam Kellog, a former minor league ballplayer and cop, who now earns a living as a bounty hunter and shady fixer. Like all flawed protagonists, Kellog has demons that constantly upend his life. In Kellog’s case, he’s a gambler who can’t resist a game of poker, even when it’s rigged against him. He’s up to his eyeballs in debt, including six months worth of alimony, when he gets word from an old cop buddy of the bounty on Hale, valued at twenty-thousand bucks.
Viewers will know where this is all going long before denouement. Before protagonist and antagonist meet, we get a lesson in the difficulties of storytelling.
One of the quirks about writing is that ideas are the easy part. The next easiest part is the start. The end can be tricky, but it’s common for a strong ending to be in mind before the first words are ever written. The toughest part is all the stuff that happens in the middle, and that’s where 
Hagen and company had their troubles. The plot just sort of wanders around, curving around and back and forth, bringing Kellog and Hale together almost by accident.
Hagen also seemed to be an actor’s director. That’s to be expected, considering he had ninety appearances as an actor versus eight turns in the director’s chair. He let his cast riff, and didn’t seem to want more than a single take in every scene of dialogue. That’s fine for someone like Clint Eastwood, but whatever magic touch Eastwood has, Hagen lacked. It has the effect of giving this movie a sense of horseplay at times, rather than a serious project made by professionals.
The deadly sin of this movie is the underutilization of Grier, though. This movie would have been more watchable with a better balance between Saxon and Grier. Despite the menace of the Hale character, we only see two instances the entire film of him getting his revenge, and barely any detective work on the part of Kellog to track him down. It shouldn’t have been so hard to stay on track with such an easy plot, but Hagen managed to fumble it. Other b-movie directors had the good sense to throw the audience a bone on occasion, while with The Glove, we get John Saxon’s narrated tour of his tortured Venice Beach life, and a misplaced romantic subplot with Joanna Cassidy.
There is a more fun movie in here, but everyone involved just couldn’t make it work. The Glove takes over the #402 spot in the Watchability Index from Black Ops.