After being wrongfully dismissed from the army at the hands of ‘the man,’ ex-football star Johnny Barrows returns to a world that has no apparent need for heroes. The urban jungle has no sympathy or respect for veterans and even less for black veterans. And so begins his downward spiral. He’s mugged, arrested, homeless and jobless. One door after another is closed in his face as he pursues earning a simple, honest living. The only door open to him is to go to work for the mob, but he won’t have it. We find ourselves in old film noir territory; down on his luck man, the world crashing down around him, and a good looking woman who promises with every tilt of her hips to fuck him within an inch of his life-- lures him into a world of trouble.

In short, the noble, honest-days work Barrows is duped into being a hitman for the mob when the girl stringing him along plays him like a fiddle. The mob scenes-- nothing special. Cardboard caricatures, poorly acted. Even Roddy McDowell, this crime families Fredo, doesn't bring much to the film. We’re not in Castellari or Di Leo territory. The problem with any Fred Williamson movie is simple; the only problem is when Fred is not on screen. Williamson is pure sex and bravado that most leading men desperately try for, and Williamson achieves effortlessly. Instead of the cover-boy of the Hollywood scene, he is a God of the people, emerging from the detritus of 1970’s urban gutters.

In his directorial debut Williamson doesn’t reinvent the wheel. His style is for the most part bland medium master shots. Its not simple and clean in the way Hawks’ films were in their efficiency in storytelling, they are more or less filmed plays. Camera set up at one end of a room and two guys shot from the waist up talk, and sometimes fight. Few cuts, fewer close-ups and almost no coverage. So when Williamson is not on screen, these shots become tedious because they lack the electricity of his performance to keep us engaged in the film for something more than mere verbal exposition. But like his contemporary Rudy Ray Moore that is all that is needed as the element important in the mis-en-scene is that we can see and hear the star because they carry the film on their back. He literally lights the screen on fire by stepping into frame.

A notable cameo comes in the form of Elliot Gould who plays a bum who saves Williamson from the humiliation of eating food from a trash can and teaches him basic street skills. On screen Gould gives Williamson a run for his money but like a good acting partner he raises Williamson's performance and adds a new dimension and charm to his character. Keep in mind this is 1976, this is when the world still gave a shit about Elliot Gould so to have him show up in a shoe-string budget film says a lot about Williamson. Or, perhaps Trapper Jon just lost a bet to Spearchucker on the set of MASH...

That’s not to say that the film is not without more than a few notable visual elements that prove Williamson has an interesting story telling sense. The film opens and ends on feet. Army boots to be specific. They tell us where we are, who we are dealing with, give us direction, screen geography and visually show us conflict as a boot triggers a mine. It’s not Bresson, but it is an interesting way of conveying story to an audience.

I’ll admit my bias that I am a sucker for match cuts and Williamson delivers two beauties. The first takes us from the only job Barrows can get, mopping the floor of a garage, where we go from a mop dripping into a bucket right to melted ice dripping off a champagne bottle into an ice bucket belonging to the high on the hog mob family. Williamson starves and has to scrape the bottom of the barrel for his convictions while the evils of crime are rewarded. The second takes us from a gun in the hands of a mobster right to a blow dryer in the hands of the femme fatale who is as ruthless and diabolic as the pistol wielding mobster. One could try and express that these are both sociological cuts to bring conflicting classes crashing together-- I just think they look cool as shit.

While Blaxploitation stars helped define ‘cool’ in the 1970’s, Fred Williamson helped define what it meant to be a God on Olympus. Few actors convey the raw presence and power of Williamson. But being a black actor in early 70’s meant you were little more than fodder for white heroes to blast holes into on their way to save the girl. Knowing he had potential to be a major draw Williamson left big-budget Hollywood to form Po’ Boy Productions. His company had (and still has) its own rules for filmmaking with regards to Williamson’s roles:

-I’m the hero.
-I win at the end.
-I get the girl.

While being a key player in the blaxploitation movement, his films really transcend the genre into one of its own-- Fredsploitation. His films are never limited to urban crime. Fredsploitation has westerns, combat films and spy flicks. They all obeyed conventions this specific genre demanded; Fred’s the star, Fred’s always sexy, Fred gets a good looking girl, Fred is a Judo expert by flashing his hands in quick bursts and striking a pose, and above all else-- Fred is always bad ass.

If any of that sounds condescending, it’s not. I love it. I love this man and I eat it all up with a smile of an evening well spent. At the end of his films I have the same vacant, peaceful look women have when they lay next to Williamson post-coitus with a bed sheet tucked up over their breasts and under their armpits. We look damn fortunate.

8 out of 10 stars.

Chris Sacks.
Los Angeles, Ca