Three years after the success of Norman Jewison’s 1967 Academy Award-winning cinematic adaptation of John Ball’s novel In the Heat of the Night, American filmmaker Gordon Douglas directed They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!, the second movie of a trilogy that centers around detective Virgil Tibbs, masterfully portrayed by Sidney Poitier. And while In the Heat of the Night saw the protagonist team up with a racist police chief on a murder case, its sequel follows Tibbs, now a married man facing problems at home, as he investigates the killing of a prostitute, with his friend Reverend Logan Sharpe (Martin Landau) becoming the prime suspect.
The film’s title is actually a line from In the Heat of the Night i.e., Tibbs’ answer to the police chief’s sarcastic question about what people call him in Philadelphia, where he works. And even though Douglas’ crime drama does not provide us with the kind of social commentary that the first installment had in store for us, They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! is nonetheless an intriguing, suspenseful, action-packed picture set to an amazing score by Quincy Jones, who also did the music for the film’s predecessor. As a side note, the picture was Puerto Rican actor Juano Hernández’s last acting credit, seeing as how he died shortly after the movie’s premiere.
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