Yeah, I'm not sure "Ebony and Ivory" will go over so well here: "In the Heat of the Night"

Like many of my esteemed generation, "In the Heat of the Night" was a TV show that was on TNT or TBS 83 times a day. Hey, did you know that the guy who played Bubba ended up being mayor of Fresno, California? No kidding. Forget Arnold, Eastwood or Sonny Bono ... "Mayor Bubba" is true evidence of the power of Hollywood in politics.

But yes, I knew there was a movie well before the TV show, and that Carroll O'Connor had been preceded by Rod Steiger as the redneck, racist police chief of Sparta, Mississippi. And let me tell you, kids, he's something else. This tale of the chief's uneasy alliance with a black homicide detective from Philadelphia, perfectly played by Sidney Poitier, while they try to solve a murder still packs a punch nearly 40 years later, and it's worth a viewing by pretty much anyone.

It's probably a product of my generation vs. that of my elders, but Poitier always seemed a bit overrated to me. Hey, that's what happens when the first movie you see him in is "Little Nikita." The rap on Sid is that he played the perfect black man among white fools, and that certainly seemed the case in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" But here he's pretty cool, especially in one scene where he talks down a punk in a jail cell, stopping him cold just by slightly raising his hand and whispering, "Be cool, Harvey. I'm on your side." Between that and his refusal to suffer racist fools throughout the movie, you can't help but root for Poitier in his crusade to solve the crime.

That said, Steiger really is the most complex and engrossing character here: a bigot with a badge who somehow tries to do the right thing even if it makes things harder for him. In a former life, I saw Steiger among the celebrities at the Kentucky Derby one year, and he was far from intimidating as a tired old man slouched in his wheelchair. He's no physical specimen in this movie, either, but you can feel the anger oozing from his pores along with those beads of sweat ... this is Mississippi, remember?

Like I said, these two performances are amazing, and how Poitier and Steiger survive each other is much more riveting than finding out who killed whom. Also consider that "In the Heat of the Night" won Best Picture in 1968, beating out "The Graduate" and "Bonnie and Clyde" -- no small achievement. And that's without "Mayor Bubba," too.