No Way Back (1976)

          Graded on one very specific curve, this blaxploitation joint earns a passing grade, but just barely. The curve in question reflects the sad fact that most films directed by Fred Williamson are awful. Judged by any other standard, the picture would fare poorly. In any event, No Way Back is the second flick to star Williamson as private dick Jesse Crowder, following the character’s debut in Death Journey, which was released the same year. (Sources differ as to which flick came first, but since there’s no series continuity, pinpoint accuracy doesn’t really matter.) Hired from his home base in Los Angeles to track down a missing person in San Francisco, Jesse does his usual thing, seducing babes, smacking down bad guys, and smooth-talking informants. As per the norm for Williamson’s Po’ Boy Productions, the main order of the day isn’t telling a story so much as making Williamson look cool and virile, though whether clothing the star in a series of leisure suits with matching neck scarves actually accomplishes that goal is open to question. No Way Back is standard-issue schlock, a brainless action thriller with R&B jams on the soundtrack, but it’s redeemed by fun elements.

          The story, not that it matters much, involves a bank executive named Pickens (Charles Woolf), who swindles cash from his employers, then takes off with a sexy accomplice named Candy (Tracy Reed). Complicating matters, she actually works for a gangster named Bernie (Stack Pierce). Meanwhile, Pickens’ wife, Mildred (Virginia Gregg), searches for her husband with less than noble intentions. It’s the usual drill of double crosses and twists, with the resourceful Jesse caught in the middle. Where the picture makes up ground is in the realm of vibe. Soul singers the Dells provide smooth tunes for the soundtrack, Reed complements her beauty with respectable acting, and the high-octane scenes have a measure of novelty, as when Jesse literally rides to the rescue, on horseback, during the climax. There’s also a mildly amusing subplot involving a hustler played by the iconic TV host Don Cornelius. Is anything in No Way Back original or special? Not even close. Does the film lag so badly at times that it becomes almost narcotizing? You bet. But is No Way Back infinitely better than Death Journey? Affirmative. And given the incredibly low standards one must embrace when appraising the Po’ Boy Productions filmography, that faint praise earns No Way Back a halfhearted checkmark in the “win” column.

No Way Back: FUNKY

Three Tough Guys (1974)

          Partly a blaxploitation thriller but mostly a failed attempt to give European star Lino Ventura some international crossover appeal, Three Tough Guys—sometimes known as Tough Guys—contains about two-thirds of a moderately entertaining movie. The first stretch of the picture, setting up a convoluted plot involving various parties connected to stolen loot, is murky and tedious, too many disconnected events and not enough character development. Things pick up during the second stretch, when an ex-cop allies with a rough-and-tumble priest to search for clues. And then, in a case of too little too late, things finally resolve into proper thriller mode during the last stretch, when the ex-cop and the priest square off against a swaggering criminal. Typical of the movie’s shortcomings is the number of scenes without musical scoring, because the producers hired Isaac Hayes as both composer and costar, then failed to fully utilize his talents for manufacturing industrial-strength funk. It says a lot about Three Tough Guys that the most enjoyable sequence is a nothing vignette of a car driving across town, simply because that’s when Hayes gets to unleash a thumping R&B theme without any interruptions. Costar Fred Williamson is squandered, too, since he’s barely the first hour.

          Set in Chicago, the picture revolves around the theft of $1 million, the murder of an insurance investigator, and various other narrative threads that fail to generate much interest. For reasons that are never particularly clear, Father Charlie (Ventura), an ex-con and ex-prizefighter, defies his monsignor’s directives by investigating the theft/murder/whatever. Over the course of several days, he sees a mysterious black dude watching him, and the dude, Lee (Hayes), asserts himself just in time to rescue Father Charlie from certain death. They bond, again for reasons that are never particularly clear, though it’s amusing to watch Lee iron the priest’s pants and cook him eggs by using the still-hot iron as a griddle. Caught in the middle of the intrigue is Fay (Paula Kelly), a gangland moll connected to slick crook Joe Snake (Williamson). Blah, blah, blah. Three Tough Guys has some colorful fights, the filmmakers use Chicago locations well, and Hayes and Ventura both exude the same sort of casual cool. There’s some vibe here. But will you remember a single thing about Three Tough Guys after it’s over? Not likely.

Three Tough Guys: FUNKY

The Legend of Nigger Charley (1972) & The Soul of Nigger Charley (1973)

          If you watch enough Fred Williamson movies, you begin to forget how potent he was in his prime, simply because so many of the pictures that he produced and/or directed himself are unspeakably bad. That’s the context for my experience of The Legend of Nigger Charley, a decent B-picture likely consigned to obscurity because of its title. As directed by Martin Goldman, the film has a familiar storyline and a serviceable vibe, so it neither breaks new ground nor soars with artistry. That said, it has a bit of an edge, because the protagonist is a slave who becomes a folk hero by killing the white man who callously destroyed the slave’s emancipation papers. Circumstances transform the slave into a gunslinger, and he inspires awe from frontier types who’ve never seen a black man control of his own destiny.

          The picture opens in Africa, with punchy black-and-white scenes showing a baby and his family being ripped from their ancestral home amid a flurry of bloodshed. Cut to twentysomething years later, and the baby has grown into Charley (Williamson), a muscular blacksmith working on a Southern plantation. The plantation’s dying master offers to grant his favorite slave, Theo (Gertrude Jeannette), her freedom, but she asks for the favor to be given to her son, Charley, instead. Before Charley can leave, he gets into a quarrel with the master’s heir, leading to the man’s death. That’s how Charley becomes a fugitive, and he takes his friend, house slave Toby (D’Urville Martin), with him. Eventually, their gang grows in size and stature until they’re hired by farmers to protect them from an evil preacher who runs a protection racket.

          Not only does the movie’s narrative get fuzzy soon after Charley leaves the plantation—every act has a new villain, and the story never pays off threads from the vibrant opening scenes—but the wandering-avenger theme is trite. By the end of the picture, the Charley character has become so generic he could be played by, say, Lee Van Cleef. Yet every so often, the folks behind The Legend of Nigger Charley remember what makes this material unique, so, for instance, there’s a terrific scene with an old eccentric named Shadow (Thomas Anderson), who storms into a bar where Charley’s gang is under siege just so he can say he’s seen everything.

          The Soul of Nigger Charley has a less episodic script than the first picture, and it benefits from polished elements including Don Costa’s robust orchestral score. Alas, the sequel gets bogged down in routine Western-movie tropes. Charley and Toby (again played by Williamson and Martin) stumble across a town where a slaughter was committed by vicious ex-solider Colonel Blanchard (Kevin Hagen) and his criminal gang. Later, when Charley and Toby meet survivors of Blanchard’s racially driven crime spree, Charley and Toby form an all-black militia and conspire to hit Blanchard where it hurts—by beating him to the train Blanchard plans to rob of $100,000 in gold.

          The first part of the picture, during which Charley builds a surrogate family of ex-slaves trying to get by in a white world, anticipates plot devices later used by Clint Eastwood in The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). Yet once The Soul of Nigger Charley shifts into heist mode, the lead character morphs from a righteous crusader to a run-of-the-mill outlaw. (Larry G. Spangler, who produced and co-wrote both Nigger Charley pictures but only directed the sequel, was truly gifted at squandering the franchise’s potential.) Notwithstanding its flaws, The Soul of Nigger Charley is enjoyable enough to watch because it hits all the expected notes. Williamson flexes and kills and smirks, leading lady Denise Nicholas complements her sex appeal with gravitas, and the action scenes have scope.

          Two last items worth mentioning: Williamson’s similarly titled 1975 flick Boss Nigger is unrelated to this films, and all three Williamson pictures with n-word monikers were likely among the inspirations for Quentin Tarantino’s slave-turned-gunslinger hit Django Unchained (2012).

The Legend of Nigger Charley: FUNKY

The Soul of Nigger Charley: FUNKY

Mr. Mean (1977)

Back in the day, Fred Williamson was nothing if not industrious, banging out movies at a rapid pace regardless of whether he had stories worth telling; the guiding principle of his Po’ Boy Productions seemed to be exploiting Williamson’s marginal box-office power as much as possible before the party ended. Hence junk on the order of Mr. Mean, which Williamson reportedly cobbled together during downtime while acting in the Italian-made war picture The Inglorious Bastards (1978), even enlisting that film’s crew for help. Naturally, the pastiche story is not Mr. Mean’s strongest element, although it should be said that one is hard-pressed to identify anything about Mr. Mean that could be appropriately described as “strong.” The gist is that Mr. Mean (Williamson), whom everyone in the picture actually calls by that name, is an American hit man summoned to Italy because a mobster needs another mobster killed, but for political reasons cannot task his own people with the murder. Intrigue of some sort ensues. Almost completely bereft of characterization, emotion, logic, and momentum, Mr. Mean is a sloppy compendium of chase scenes, fights, macho posturing, and shootouts. However, don’t let the preceding list create the impression Mr. Mean is exciting. A typically pointless scene features Williamson, wearing a barely-there banana hammock, jogging in slow motion down a beach alongside a generic Eurobabe. Yes, even though Mr. Mean is ostensibly a thriller about an assassin, much of the picture feels like a keepsake of Williamson’s Mediterranean vacation, or, worse, a narcissistic celebration of beholding the glory that is Fred Williamson. If you dig Fred as much as Fred does, then you might find something to enjoy here. If not, then maybe the repetitive jams that R&B act the Ohio Players composed and recorded for the soundtrack will shake your groove thang.

Mr. Mean: LAME

Mean Johnny Barrows (1976)

Yet another dud from the Fred Williamson assembly line, this somewhat nonsensical thriller features Williamson, who also produced and directed, as a Vietnam vet who drifts in and out of homelessness and jail before reluctantly accepting a gig as a hit man for the mob. One can sense that Williamson meant to make a statement about America’s failure to find useful work for its returning warriors, and there’s also an element of race, because a prologue depicts the title character getting hassled by a white commanding officer. Yet Williamson’s storytelling is so clumsy that huge pieces of the narrative seem as if they’re missing, and thematic points are delivered by vague implication instead of actual literary devices. It’s also distracting to see Roddy McDowall hilariously miscast as an Italian mobster, and to see Elliot Gould play a cameo as some kind of hyper-articulate street poet. Williamson obviously called in some favors, but the effort was wasted. Anyway, the bulk of the film concerns the relationship between ex-GI Johnny Barrows (Williamson) and mobster Mario Racconi (Stuart Whitman). When Johnny arrives at Mario’s restaurant one night looking for a free meal, Mario recognizes Johnny as a former football star and somehow knows everything about Johnny’s military service. So when Mario’s family becomes embroiled in a mob war, Mario persuades Johnny to kill for Mario’s family. Left unanswered is the question of why Mario doesn’t already have competent gunmen in his employ, and why Mario expends so much energy recruiting Johnny. No matter. Mean Johnny Barrows unfolds in a series of sludgy vignettes, most of which are boring and trite. Gould’s one scene is amusing, and R.G. Armstrong lends his signature flair to the role of a scumbag auto-shop owner, but too much of the film comprises Williamson posturing his way through macho behaviors that never coalesce into a believable character.

Mean Johnny Barrows: LAME

Death Journey (1976)

So many bad films are viable contenders for title of The Worst Thing Fred Williamson Ever Made that it’s unnecessary to describe the crime thriller Death Journey as the nadir of the prolific actor/filmmaker’s career. Suffice to say that it’s as awful as anything anyone ever made. Running a scant 74 minutes, telling a clichéd story without any fresh spin, and descending into utter monotony at regular intervals, Death Journey has the sort of script one normally encounters in student films, and the technical polish one normally encounters in bargain-basement porn. Williamson plays Jesse Crowder, a former policeman now working as some sort of generic gun-for-hire in Los Angeles. When the DA’s office in New York realizes that testimony from a former mob accountant is their only hope of getting a conviction against a mob boss, the DA’s office hires Crowder to escort the accountant from LA to New York at a fee of $25,000. Where does the DA’s office get that kind of cash? Never mind. Crowder spends the movie effortlessly defeating the various assassins tasked with killing the accountant, even though he occasionally hits the pause button on his adventures so he can sleep with compliant women. (As always, Williamson devotes much of his cinematic energy to burnishing his tough-stud persona.) Filmed with minimal competence and set to painfully repetitive music, Death Journey grinds along without generating any real excitement or surprise, essentially presenting a cheap facsimile of a thriller. Even the fact that Williamson always seems believable in badass roles is irrelevant, because Williamson spends so much time sleepwalking through pointless scenes with his shirt open that his smugness and vanity are the real stars of this vacuous drivel. FYI, Williamson played Crowder again in three subsequent films: Blind Rage and No Way Back (both of which were released, like Death Journey, in 1976), as well as The Last Fight (1983).

Death Journey: SQUARE

Joshua (1976)

Bare-bones storytelling can work wonders in the action genre, because it's exciting to see narratives stripped down to the essentials of characterization, circumstance, and motivation. However, excluding even one of those elements creates insurmountable problems. Sometimes, less is less. That's certainly true of the interminable Western Joshua, a revenge saga starring blaxploitation stalwart Fred Williamson. Eschewing characterization altogether, the movie begins with a group of frontier thugs invading a farmer's homestead, murdering the farmer's black maid, and kidnapping the farmer's sexy mail-order bride (Brenda Venus). Shortly afterward, the maid's adult son, Joshua (Williamson), arrives at the homestead because his tenure as a conscripted soldier in the Civil War has ended. Upon learning what happened, Joshua heads into the wilderness to hunt down the outlaws who killed his mother. Excepting distasteful scenes in which the thugs repeatedly rape the mail-order bride and a bland interlude during which Joshua has an adventure with a woman (Isela Vega) who’s just as circumspect as he is, the preceding description reflects everything that happens in Joshua. Padded with endless riding sequences and set to a plodding, shapeless score that comprises a handful of uninspired cues repeated and repurposed ad nauseam, the movie advances with a herky-jerky rhythm, gaining a modicum of energy whenever gunfire erupts and then slipping back into tedium once the violence ends. Williamson is the only name-brand actor in the picture, but his work is as perfunctory as the contributions of the forgettable supporting cast. Even the film's picturesque Utah locations fail to impress, simply because director Larry Spangler's imagery is so unimaginative.

Joshua: LAME

Black Eye (1974)

          Fusing blaxploitation and film noir but suffering from a weak storyline that makes the whole picture feel enervated, Black Eye is a tolerable mystery/thriller featuring a characteristically confident leading performance by Fred Williamson. The movie isn’t a misfire, per se, and it’s got a fair amount of sleaze, so there’s a certain lurid appeal. Nonetheless, nearly everything about Black Eye is second-rate. The characters are all overly familiar archetypes, the central mystery feels murky and unimportant, and the general vibe is that of a disposable TV episode. That said, Black Eye runs a gamut of tonalities. At one extreme, a frothy romantic montage features Williamson’s character and his girlfriend riding a bicycle built for two. At the other extreme, Williamson visits the set of a porno movie to question someone who has valuable information. Oh, and that aforementioned girlfriend? She’s bisexual. So it’s not as if Black Eye is completely bereft of provocative elements.

          The problem is that the filmmakers never commit wholeheartedly to a particular style. The movie is tame one minute, tough the next, and turgid all the way through. The wheezy story begins with the death of an aging screen star in Los Angeles. Someone steals the star’s distinctive walking stick from the star’s casket, setting a Maltese Falcon-type mystery in motion. Who stole the stick? Why is the stick so valuable? And what secrets will the investigation uncover? Also thrown into the mix is a subplot about a desperate father (Richard Anderson) employing Williamson’s character, Stone, to find his missing daughter. And then there’s the whole business of Stone’s relationship with Cynthia (Teresa Graves), who splits her time between romps with Stone and trysts with female lovers. Cynthia’s sexual identity is a source of much consternation for the decidedly heterosexual Stone.

          Complaining that the plot of Black Eye is hard to follow is beside the point, since mystery narratives thrive on confusion and obfuscation, but it’s hard to care much about what happens. Stone has very little personal connection to the case, and the plot threads tethering the missing girl to the walking stick are flimsy. Therefore, Black Eye unfolds as a series of somewhat disconnected scenes, including a chase or two, some fistfights, the occasional sexual encounter, and lots of drab vignettes in which Stone pumps people for uninteresting information. Calling it anything more than passable would require exaggeration.

Black Eye: FUNKY

Blind Rage (1978)

A dumb heist/martial-arts thriller that also represents a huge bait-and-switch, seeing as how top-billed star Fred Williamson literally doesn’t appear onscreen until the last 10 minutes of the movie, Blind Rage tells the bizarre story of a criminal scheme to rob a bank using five blind men who happen to possess martial-arts skills. Among countless other logical problems, what’s the point of hiring the blind men, since they wear sunglasses throughout the heist? Couldn’t sighted men pretending to be blind have accomplished the same goal without all the hassle? Trying to answer these and other questions is pointless, because the movie is so unremittingly boring, shoddy, and stupid. Additionally, since Blind Rage was made in the Philippines, much of the dialogue was re-voiced during postproduction, so the whole enterprise has the bad-dubbing feel of a grade-Z chop-socky flick. After some goofy exposition about how the movie’s villains wish to keep the Domino Theory from becoming reality, the blind would-be criminals are recruited. Each has some dark backstory, such as the fellow who was blinded after crossing the Chinese Triads, so all of the men are susceptible to the promise of a big payoff. This occasions dreary training sequences,  punctuated by a warbling ballad about how the men are “falling into the system.” (Because, y’see, breaking the law is the ultimate expression of sociopolitical frustration—heavy, man.) The climactic robbery sequence is methodical and violent, raising the pulse of the movie somewhat, and then Williamson shows up as a government agent who, naturally, uses martial arts when facing off with the bad guys. Whatever. (Technically, Williamson plays the same character did in two 1976 pictures, Death Journey and No Way Back, though only the character name provides continuity between the three films.) Blind Rage comprises 80 very long minutes of numbing foolishness, but it does contain at least one sublime line of dialogue: “Unit Two to Unit One—it’s going down at the International House of Pancakes!”

Blind Rage: LAME

Crazy Joe (1974)

          Highly watchable but also underdeveloped and unoriginal, Crazy Joe is one of myriad ultraviolent gangster films released in the wake of The Godfather (1971). Starring the powerful actor Peter Boyle as real-life New York City mobster Joey Gallo, the picture was produced by trash titan Dino De Laurentiis, and it boasts not only an eclectic cast of familiar ’70s faces but also a fast-moving storyline filled with betrayals, murders, robbery, and even a spectacular suicide. Furthermore, thanks to the lively script by Lewis John Carlino, the picture has flashes of intellectualism and style. The picture doesn’t go anywhere surprising, but there’s some vivid scenery along the way.

          Viewers first meet Joe (Boyle) leading his gang of thugs through an afternoon of hanging out and an evening of committing a brazen hit in the middle of a crowded restaurant. Together, these two sequences effectively situate Joe as a character for whom death is as normal as grabbing a quick bite. Upon reporting the hit to his boss, Falco (Luther Adler), Joe is incensed to discover he won’t earn a bonus. Joe’s older brother, Richie (Rip Torn), intervenes before the argument escalates, but the seeds of a war have been planted. Thus, over the course of many years, Joe splits from Falco and later has an even bloodier battle with Falco’s successor, Vittorio (Eli Wallach). Joe’s ambition, as well as his appetite for danger, cause friction with Richie and with Joe’s wife, Anne (Paula Prentiss), even as Joe expands his operation by hiring African-American thugs controlled by Willy (Fred Williamson), whom Joe meets during a prison stint.

          Excepting the material with Prentiss’ character, which is so anemic that it should have been jettisoned entirely, most of what happens in Crazy Joe is entertaining and lurid. Joe grandstands in front of powerful men. Joe leads his crew on daring criminal adventures. Joe studies philosophy in prison, thereby arriving at high-minded justifications (“The criminal is really just another existentialist expression”). Joe reveals hidden layers of civic-mindedness and decency by saving kids from a burning building. Boyle sinks his teeth into all of this material, portraying Joe as a being of pure id, relying on bravery and instinct even though restraint and strategy would ensure a longer life.

          Yet Boyle’s performance is strangely one-dimensional, as if he can’t figure out how to decelerate for intimate scenes, and that gives the picture a certain degree of monotony. That’s why it helps to have such capable actors as Torn, Wallach, and Williamson bolstering the storytelling. Additionally, it’s fun to spot players including Charles Cioffi, Michael V. Gazzo, Hervé Villechaize, and Henry Winkler in secondary roles. As for the technical execution of the piece, which was handled by an international crew under the helm of director Carlo Lizzani, Crazy Joe is competently shot and effectively paced, allowing the focus to remain on the lively acting and the turbulent storyline.

Crazy Joe: FUNKY

That Man Bolt (1973)

          Although he’s most closely associated with blaxploitation flicks, swaggering ex-NFL player Fred Williamson began his acting career in mainstream pictures, and he also tried expanding his blaxploitation-era stardom with movies that weren’t aimed solely at urban audiences. Williamson’s biggest such play was almost certainly That Man Bolt, an international crime/espionage thriller that features the actor as a professional courier who comports himself like James Bond. Excepting a brief appearance by Teresa Graves, Williamson is the only black performer with a major role, so That Man Bolt is about as close to a mass-appeal movie as Williamson got during his cinematic heyday. Seeing as how the film didn’t generate a sequel—or trigger the production of further non-blaxploitation projects starring Williamson—it’s safe to say That Man Bolt didn’t set the world on fire during its original release. Nonetheless, this is one of Williamson’s better vehicles simply because the storyline is passable and the 007-esque milieu allows Williamson to flex his charm as well as his formidable physical abilities.

          When the picture begins, ultra-confident tough guy Jefferson Bolt (Williamson) gets bailed out of a Hong Kong prison by a client seeking his services as a courier. The proposed job involves transporting $1 million in U.S. currency from the Far East to Mexico via Los Angeles. Complications ensue because people start trying to kill Bolt—and because Bolt discovers the money he’s transporting is counterfeit. Eventually, the story returns to Hong Kong for a martial-arts showdown between Bolt and an Asian crime lord.
          Since two directors are credited with helming That Man Bolt (Henry Levin and David Lowell Rich), it’s likely that either separate units handled photography on different continents, or that one director replaced the other partway through production. In any event, the look of the piece is generic but relatively slick, with an abundance of extras and location scenes. Some of the martial-arts flourishes are weaker than others (That Man Bolt is yet another ’70s movie featuring a secret school for karate-chopping assassins), but in general the Far East stuff is colorful. In one scene, acupuncture needles are used as torture instruments, and in another, Bolt has fun with his British employer (Byron Webster) by enlisting a heavyset female masseuse to give the man a thorough going-over. However, the energy level of the picture is never quite high enough, even though composter Charles Bernstein juices his orchestral score with occasional funk flourishes. Despite the erratic execution, Williamson keeps things light with his singularly self-assured screen presence.

That Man Bolt: FUNKY

Three the Hard Way (1974)

One of three features costarring blaxploitation luminaries Jim Brown, Jim Kelly, and Fred Williamson—the others are Take a Hard Ride (1975) and One Down, Two to Go (1982)—this muddled conspiracy thriller represents a missed opportunity on many levels. Not only does director Gordon Parks Jr. fail to exploit the action-hero possibilities created by the participation of his three stars, but the picture includes what should be the ultimate campy blaxploitation premise, only to botch the notion’s potential via confusing storytelling, dull pacing, and flat characterization. Bad guy Monroe Feather (Jay Robinson) creates a serum that, when introduced into the water supply of major cities, will kill every black person who consumes the serum. Yet instead of introducing this outlandish concept right at the beginning, thereby positioning the titular trio as African-American crusaders, the filmmakers take a good half-hour to get to the point. Worse, the characters played by Brown, Kelly, and Williamson don’t join forces until fairly late in the story, so Three the Hard Way feels less like a men-on-a-mission picture and more like a hodgepodge of scenes from three separate movies. The filmmakers also waste lots of time on nonsense, such as the very long sequence of Brown’s character producing a recording session for an R&B vocal group. And whenever Three the Hard Way tries to deliver the blaxploitation goods, the material feels half-hearted. For instance, the scene of martial artist Kelly fighting off something like a dozen armed assailants with his bare hands (and feet) is ridiculous, especially because Parks can’t muster camera angles that properly accentuate the action. (The haphazard shooting style makes the encounter feel like a run-through instead of a fully realized scene.) And then there’s the one truly bizarre sequence in the picture—at one point, the heroes recruit three motorcycle-riding babes to doff their tops and then interrogate a prisoner using some sort of sex torture. Like most everything else in Three the Hard Way, the scene is lurid but nonsensical.

Three the Hard Way: LAME

Bucktown (1975)

          One of my favorite ’70s drive-in flicks is the violent oddity Vigilante Force (1976), starring Jan-Michael Vincent as a redneck who recruits his Vietnam-vet brother, played by Kris Kristofferson, to clean up a town that’s become infested by unruly newcomers. Alas, the cure is worse than the disease, because Kristofferson’s character and his hired guns seize control of the town, forcing a showdown with Vincent’s character. Anyway, go figure there’s a blaxploitation movie with virtually the same plot. Released more than a year before Vigilante Force, the far less satisfying Bucktown stars Fred Williamson as a tough guy named Duke Johnson. When the story begins, Duke returns to his Southern hometown, which is nicknamed “Bucktown” by racist white authorities because of the municipality’s large concentration of black citizens, in order to attend his brother’s funeral. Duke quickly learns that his brother, who owned a nightclub catering to black customers, was murdered, and that cops under the supervision of Chief Patterson (Art Lund) mercilessly squeeze African-American business owners for protection money. Determined to set things right, Duke reopens his brother’s club and summons his badass buddy Roy (Thalmus Rasulala) from Chicago with a request to “bring muscle.” Together, Duke, Roy, and Roy’s hired guns topple Chief Patterson’s operation, but then Roy decides to establish himself as the new underworld king of Bucktown.

          Naturally, even though Duke spendt the first half of the movie proclaiming his intention to leave Bucktown after defeating Chief Patterson, Duke decides to stay and fight Roy. Part of Duke’s motivation, of course, is a burgeoning romance with local beauty Aretha, played by the va-va-voom Queen of Blaxploitation herself, Pam Grier.

          As written by Bob Ellison and directed by the perpetually disappointing Arthur Marks, Bucktown is a compendium of missed opportunities. The characterizations are paper-thin, the possibilities of defining a community by illustrating the vibe at Duke’s nightclub are never exploited, and the logic problems created by open warfare in the streets of an American city are ignored. As a result, the vibrant actors populating the cast are left to flounder while trying to energize lifeless material. Williamson’s at his best, focusing on righteous indignation and suppressing his tendency toward megalomaniacal strutting, but every single thing he does is a cliché. Rasulala fares slightly better, since his character gets to arc from noble to nefarious, but it says a lot that the climax of his performance involves taking a brutal kick to the groin. Grier is almost completely wasted, since she’s relegated to showing off her astonishing body and watching the main action from the sidelines. Making a story this colorful boring required considerable effort, but Marks and his team somehow managed that dubious accomplishment.

Bucktown: FUNKY

Hammer (1972)

          After making a tentative transition from his pro football career to acting, via small parts in M*A*S*H and Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (both 1970), Fred Williamson played his first starring role in this clichéd boxing/crime saga, which had the good fortune of being released during the first wave of blaxploitation flicks. Williamson seized on the genre’s popularity and used the middling success of this picture as the launching pad for a prolific career in B-movies, eventually morphing into a writer-producer-director as well as an actor. And if Williamson’s screen persona was almost always more interesting than his actual movies, there’s a reason he earned the nickname “The Hammer” as a gridiron hero before he repurposed the moniker for his first star vehicle. Williamson cuts a hell of a figure—cool and handsome and muscular—while his cheerful narcissism reads on camera as a special kind of charisma. One gets the sense no one loves Fred Williamson quite as much as Fred Williamson, and superhuman confidence is an effective tool for playing cocksure protagonists.

          In this picture, Williamson plays B.J. Hammer, a faded boxer who gets another chance at pugilistic glory when gangsters agree to promote his comeback. Unfortunately, the gangsters expect Hammer to throw an important fight, which he refuses to do, thus endangering both Hammer and his sexy girlfriend (Vonetta McGee). Meanwhile, a hard-driving police detective (Bernie Hamilton) leans on Hammer to help gather incriminating evidence on the gangsters. There’s not a single original thought in Hammer, which is so meager from a narrative perspective that much of the movie feels dull and pointless; even the chases and fight scenes are enervated. Per the norm for blaxploitation pictures, a revered soul musician provides the soundtrack, but Solomon Burke’s grooves for Hammer lack the vitality of, say, Curtis Mayfield’s wicked tunes for Super Fly (1972). Still, Hammer is watchable thanks to decent production values, a forceful star, and vivid supporting performances. Hamilton has a great put-upon quality as the cop, McGee lends elegance and poise to her underwritten role, and industrial-strength B-movie stalwart William Smith injects his small part as a henchman with gleeful malice.

Hammer: FUNKY

Take a Hard Ride (1975)

          Despite featuring several interesting B-movie personalities and despite having a solid story premise, the European-made Western Take a Hard Ride never realizes its potential. Part of the problem has to do with audience expectations. Since the movie features blaxploitation stars Jim Brown, Jim Kelly, and Fred Williamson—as well as spaghetti-Western stalwart Lee Van Cleef—the obvious approach would have been to combine the actors into a fighting unit for a Magnificent Seven-style flick. Alas, Take a Hard Ride is essentially a Brown-Williamson buddy picture in which Kelly and Van Cleef, among others, play supporting roles. Worse, director Antonio Margheriti employs a hacky visual style that makes every scene feel haphazard and rushed. The picture is watchable, but it gets awfully dull after a while, especially because Brown and Williamson end up playing repetitive variations on the exact same scene for most of the film’s middle hour.

          The story hook is simple enough. Black gunslinger Pike (Brown) accompanies his white boss, rancher Bob Morgan (Dana Andrews), to the end of a cattle drive, where Morgan gets paid $86,000 in cash. After Morgan has a fatal heart attack, the sterling Pike vows to return the money to Morgan’s widow. Unfortunately, once Pike sets off on his journey, various criminals get wind of his cargo and conspire to ambush him. One such outlaw, slick gambler Tyree (Williamson), saves Pike from an attacker and subsequently accompanies Pike on the trail—even though Tyree says outright that he plans to rob Pike once they reach the Mexican border. Another pursuer is Kiefer (Van Cleef), a bounty hunter who eventually gathers a small army of money-hungry varmints to chase after Pike. There’s also a subplot involving an ex-hooker, Catherine (Catherine Spaak), whom Pike and Tyree rescue from rapists—she joins Pike’s group, as does her mute Indian sidekick, Kashtok (Kelly).

          Considering that Take a Hard Ride is basically a chase movie, it’s amazing how little excitement the narrative generates. The script is filled with dull scenes of Pike and Tyree challenging each other, and the supporting characters are under-utilized; for instance, Kiefer spends most of the picture standing on ridges and squinting while other people get into fights. And speaking of the movie’s numerous battles, none is novel or surprising—think standard fire-and-duck shootouts, with the minor exception of quick bits during which Kelly takes down attackers with karate and throwing knives. If one struggles for a compliment, it could be noted that Take a Hard Ride has better production values that most movies starring Van Cleef or Williamson—but that’s not saying much.

Take a Hard Ride: FUNKY

Boss Nigger (1975)

Blaxploitation stalwart Fred Williamson was well on the way to becoming a bad-movie auteur by the time he wrote, produced, and starred in this brazenly titled Western, so Boss Nigger features his signature elements of a take-no-guff protagonist and substandard storytelling—in Williamson’s cinematic world, attitude is everything and quality is a needless luxury. Presumably conceived as a dramatic riff on the previous year’s comedy blockbuster Blazing Saddles, this blaxploitation joint employs the same narrative contrivance as the earlier film—a black man becomes sheriff of a frontier town, much to the chagrin of the white locals. However, instead of being installed in the job through political chicanery, as in Blazing Saddles, Boss (Williamson) seizes the vacant sheriff’s position in order to hunt down a rival—and also to tilt the race-relations scales in favor of African-Americans. “Sorry, we can’t stay for supper,” Boss says in a moment indicative of the film’s obviousness, “but we got us mo’ whiteys to catch.” Much of the picture comprises uninspired scenes of Boss and his comic-relief sidekick, Amos (D’Urville Martin), humiliating white people while they pursue a criminal named Jed Clayton (William Smith), a standard-issue Western villain who kills for fun and profit. All of this should be diverting in a trashy sort of way, but the movie is too enervated to enjoy. Director Jack Arnold, a veteran whose career stretches back to sci-fi classics including The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1955), seems utterly disinterested in his work (Can you blame him?), and the generic funk score clashes with Arnold’s old-fashioned visuals. Plus, Williamson’s script lacks both restraint and taste—during the climax, for instance, Williamson features Boss getting crucified by the bad guys.

Boss Nigger: LAME

Adios, Amigo (1976)

Adios, Amigo represented a new pinnacle of behind-the-scenes power for football player-turned-action star Fred Williamson, because it was his first effort as a star-producer-writer-director (he had played these roles on previous films, but never all at once). Gratifying though it might be to indicate that Williamson rose to the occasion of becoming a fully realized auteur, Adios, Amigo is a cheap, dull, and sloppy Western boasting virtually nothing of interest except for the presence of Williamson and costar Richard Pryor. The action-comedy plot features Pryor as a fast-talking bandit who roams from town to town stirring up trouble, usually leaving fugitive Williamson to take the blame. Adding some pseudo-structure to the picture is a recurring device of the action freezing into paintings while the funky title song plays, which evokes the ’60s TV show The Wild, Wild, West. Williamson obviously intended to make a farce about one dude making life difficult for another dude, but instead, all he does is make life difficult for viewers. Pryor has a few fleeting moments of wiseass charm as a hustler trying to work every angle he can imagine, but he’s dragged down by the meandering, repetitive script. (One example of the witless writing: Pryor’s character is named “Sam Spade.”) As for Williamson’s acting, when he’s not being overshadowed by Pryor (which happens in most of their shared scenes), the star swaggers through one interchangeable vignette after another, beating the crap out of thugs, showing off his six-shooter skills, and (of course) driving white women wild. Playing yet another in his litany of super-cool characters, Williamson was well on the way to self-parody when he made Adios, Amigo.

Adios Amigo: LAME

Black Caesar (1973) & Hell Up in Harlem (1973)

          Some of the most entertaining blaxploitation flicks inserted predominantly African-American casts into classic Hollywood genres, resulting in exciting cross-cultural friction. Black Caesar is one such picture, because pulp auteur Larry Cohen’s quickie crime drama offers a downtown spin on the classic Warner Bros. gangster flick. Fred Williamson, the cocky ex-football player who became one of blaxploitation’s most charismatic stars, plays Tommy Gibbs, a Harlem kid with good reasons for questioning authority: When he was young, Tommy was beaten half to death by a corrupt cop, McKinney (Art Lund). So after completing a long stretch in juvie, Tommy gets right to work building his underworld résumé.

          He whacks a mobster who’s been targeted for assassination, then uses that credential to muscle his way into the closed shop of the New York mafia. The movie’s stereotypical greasy Italian types are wary of getting in business with a black man, and sure enough Tommy ruthlessly squeezes out his local godfather in order to become a big boss. Then Tommy nabs incriminating ledgers detailing years of bribes to city officials, thus ensuring police won’t touch his burgeoning operation. In the classic gangster-movie tradition, everything Tommy does to improve his stature puts him in greater danger, and he also runs into domestic trouble when his wife, Helen (Gloria Hendry), starts fooling around with his best friend, Joe (Philip Roye).

          Though everything that happens in Black Caesar is clichéd and predictable, the movie works because it’s so energetic. Cohen’s run-and-gun style creates gritty excitement, since it’s clear he “stole” most of his shots while onlookers tried to figure out what the hell was happening. Furthermore, Williamson has so much swagger that it’s easy to buy him climbing the gangland ladder, and the score by R&B legend James Brown is fantastic, featuring standout cuts like “The Boss” and “Down and Out in New York City.” The filmmaking isn’t pretty, but the style suits the material.

          The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for the rushed sequel, Hell Up in Harlem, which hit screens just 11 months after Black Caesar was released. Though Hell Up in Harlem has an interesting central idea—after Tommy’s estranged father helps his son out of the jam Tommy was in at the end of the first picture, Papa Gibbs gets delusions of grandeur and tries to squeeze Tommy out of his own operation—the storytelling is disjointed and repetitive. Filled with endless montages of people getting whacked in gory detail, the movie feels incomplete, as if huge swaths of important footage are missing, and sloppily dubbed off-screen dialogue is used (ineffectively) to bridge narrative gaps. Some of the murders are entertaining from a camp perspective, like the scene of Tommy impaling a gangster with a beach umbrella, but a lengthy subplot about Tommy’s children being taken away from their mother is confusing and grim. Kudos to Cohen for striking while the iron was hot, but in rushing to meet marketplace demand, he killed any appetite for future Tommy Gibbs adventures.

Black Caesar: FUNKY

Hell Up in Harlem: LAME