The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

Cosmo Vittelli runs a low-rent Hollywood cabaret, a shabby establishment whose dancers and staff he genuinely cares for. He also has a serious gambling habit, and after paying off the club's debts he celebrates at a private game where he loses a large sum he cannot cover. The men behind the game offer him a way out: settle what he owes by killing a bookkeeper who has become inconvenient to them. Cosmo goes through with the job, but carrying it out does not free him from the people who arranged it, and his situation grows more dangerous.

John Cassavetes directed and wrote the film, with Al Ruban producing. It followed Faces, A Woman Under the Influence and A Woman Under the Influence's predecessor in a run of six features he directed between 1968 and 1974, and it arrived between that film and Opening Night in the sequence of films he directed. Ben Gazzara plays Cosmo, heading a credited cast of 38 that also includes Timothy Carey, Seymour Cassel, Robert Phillips, Morgan Woodward and Al Ruban.

Released in February 1976, the film runs 135 minutes. On IMDb it holds a rating of 7.2/10 from around 16,000 votes, and on TMDB a rating of 7/10 from a few hundred votes. A critics' rating of 6.3/10 from 28 reviews places it below both audience scores, indicating that general viewers have responded to it more warmly than reviewers did.