BOSS (1975)

 Way better known under it's original title of BOSS NIGGER (the DVD I own of this not only cuts "the n-word" from the title but also from the opening theme song) this is the story of a couple of black bounty hunters(Fred "The Hammer Williamson and that bad D'Urville Martin) in the old west. The story tales a sorta similar journey as Williamson's BUCKTOWN(also from 1975) where our heroes become sheriff of a town and pretty much take over. Unlike that film though it's still the olden days so things don't go very smoothly for our dark-skinned lawmen. They also have to contend with hulking, muscular badass William Smith and his gang of unruly outlaws who are not very progressively-minded to say the least.
 Directd by Jack "CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON" Arnold and written by Williamson himself this is a pretty interesting mash-up of blaxploitation and western that works really better as a novelty than a particularly good film but if you get sick of either of those 2 genres it's worth a watch. Also it makes a great double-feature with THE LEGEND OF NIGGER CHARLEY from '72 which also featured Williamson and Martin in an old west setting.

BUCKTOWN (1975)

   

                                            "No coon looks good to a decent man"

 Most of the classic blaxploitation flicks deal with the black man overcoming the evils of the racist white man and a terrible unjust society. This was obviously the most popular plot device for the intended audience of that time. This Fred Williamson and Pam Grier-starring vehicle takes that idea one step further and deals with what happens after our oppressed group rises up and kicks whiteys ass. Spoiler alert: it's not about the skin color but the content of one's character that makes for either beneficial or debilitating leaders. 40+ years after this film was made I don't think the majority of the planet's citizens have grasped this simple concept yet.  But even if you don't care about all the pseudo-political/social-comment mumbo-jumbo this still works as a great action flick where Fred "The Hammer" gets to lay the smackdown on jackasses of many different shades including Carl "Apollo Creed" Weathers, Thalmus Rasulala and your more typical Southern racist honkeys. You get full Miss Grier breasts on show and a killer funky soundtrack.I find this one highly re-watchable every couple of years.

BLACK COBRA 3: MANILA CONNECTION (1990)

 The first BLACK COBRA flick is kind of a rip-off of Stallone's COBRA with Fred "The Hammer" Williamson in the role of a Dirty Harry-ish police lieutenant ridding the streets of deplorable criminals and punks. By the time we get to this third film it's mostly just another Filipino mercenaries-in-the-jungle, exploding huts action movie. In fact if you had told me this was one of those cheap-o Cirio H. Santiago films from the 80s I would certainly believe it. In actuality it's an Italian production filmed in the Philippines where blowing up lots of stuff is apparently cheaper to do.  "The Hammer", or Malone as he's called here, gets a male and female partner who run around the jungle, shoot many people and even do some almost Dolemite-level of bad kung fu. Maybe if they had sped-up the fight scenes like Rudy Ray Moore had it would have been slightly more exhilarating to watch.
 There is a BLACK COBRA 4 but from what I've read that one is basically a rehashing of clips from the first 2 movies so I might not need to be in any rush to view it.

THE BLACK COBRA 2 (1989)

 Fred "The Hammer" Williamson is back in the second chapter of the BLACK COBRA series. This time he's sent to The Philippines and has to protect this lady from some bad dudes. So it's basically the same as the first movie but in a new setting. Along the way Fred gets to show off some of his karate moves in addition to all the gun-fu going on and he is getting a bit up there in the age department(51?) so some of these action-packed scenes move little bit slower than might be optimal but I do still believe "The Hammer"(or just Malone as he's called here) has such a strong bad-ass persona that it sorta works. Also he gets a partner who is played by that guy(Nicholas Hammond) who played Spider-Man on that crappy live-action show back in the 70s so that's something.  The ending of this has our dynamic duo infiltrating a building through an elevator shaft which made me think of those stupid DIE HARD movies and how glad I was that I wasn't watching one of them so I think that qualifies this as a feel-good movie.
 A lot of the reviews I've seen of this make a big deal about how horribly-dubbed the little boy is in this movie but if you've watched as many shitty Italian movies as me it's not all that shocking.

BLACK COBRA (1987)

 Keeping with the long-standing tradition of Italian cinema ripping off successful American films this is their version of that Sylvester Stallone movie COBRA which I only vaguely remember enjoying when I was a kid. It also seems to want to be DIRTY HARRY because it poorly paraphrases the old "do you feel lucky punk?" bit. Our star here, who is never actually called Cobra by anyone, is Fred "The Hammer" Williamson and while I wouldn't put it up there with his more classic 70s blaxploitation films it's still cool to see Mr. Fred kicking ass into the late 1980s. His enemies are a group of bikers who dress like THE TERMINATOR and who are trying to kill a photographer lady that he gets the job of protecting. Pretty basic action movie plot follows and it's not the most exciting Eurotrash film you will see, mostly due to it's obviously low-budget, but it does have some OK scenes and it did spawn 3 sequels so I guess someone liked it way more than me.

The BLACK COBRA series:
1. BLACK COBRA(1987)
2. BLACK COBRA 2 (1989)
3. BLACK COBRA 3: THE MANILA CONNECTION (1990)
4. BLACK COBRA 4: DETECTIVE MALONE (1991)

There is a rumoured 5th movie, THE BLACK COBRA RETURNS scheduled for release in 2017, but I'm not sure how serious those rumours are.

BLIND RAGE (1978)

                                             "Get off her... sex hungry bastard."

An unlikely group of 5 blind guys, who are also conveniently really good at kung fu, gets put together to rob a bank in the Philippines. One of the gang is that bad D'Urville Martin of DOLEMITE fame who plays a bit of a rape-happy fella here. We get to see how most of these guys became blind which includes everything from acid in the face to the ol' Moe two-finger poke to eyes gouged out with an electric drill. Besides these little shock bits it's fairly standard action movie/martial-arts stuff. Once the movie is just about over and you forget his name was even in the credits Fred "The Hammer" Williamson shows up to save the day in what almost seems like another films ending tacked on to this one. There's an epic battle atop an IHOP restaurant which is obviously L.A. and not southeast Asia. Strangely, unlike just about every other exploitation film I've seen from the Philippines, this was not directed by Cirio H. Santiago.

HELL UP IN HARLEM (1973)

 This is a sequel to the classic Fred 'The Hammer' Williamson blaxploitation flick BLACK CAESAR and like many sequels it's basically just a not-as-good imitation of the original. Everything from the soundtrack(the original was by James Brown and this one kinda sounds like someone imitating James Brown) to the plot pales in comparison. There's also one strange scene where The Hammer kills a guy and cartoon blood comes out of the unfortunate fellow in a strange proto-ROGER RABBIT moment. Also, not to ruin BLACK CAESAR for anyone out there who hasn't seen it in the last 40 years, but at the end of that movie Williamson seems very dead so there shouldn't even be a sequel. There are some decent action scenes here though including one with a kung fu bikini-gal so it's probably worth checking out for that or just if you're a fan of 'The Hammer'.

THREE TOUGH GUYS (1974)

 Isaac Hayes first film role has him playing a former cop who teams up with an ass-kicking Italian priest and tries to solve a couple of murders. So there's really two tough guys, which is also the name of the title tune sung by Mr. Hayes. The poster tries to fool you into thinking Fred "The Hammer" Williamson is also part of this group but he actually plays a bad guy in this which is pretty rare to see. He's also not really in the movie all that much. The title also seems to be trying to cash in on the success of THREE THE HARD WAY which was released the same year though I'm not sure which one came out first.
 The movie itself is pretty tame thanks to it's PG-rating and it's an Italian/U.S./France co-production so I think they missed something and went for a more straight-forward action film than anything too funky. There's way more exciting blaxploitation flicks with Hayes & Williamson from this era that you should check out before this one unless you just really wanna see The Hammer beating up and gunning down women and not giving a shit. AKA TOUGH GUYS

VIGILANTE (1983)

 Director William Lustig, of MANIAC fame, basically does a remake of DEATH WISH here but it is an awesome remake with an all-star cast and bloody violence and just enough unique touches that work well. You got Robert Forster as your main victim of a street gang called The Headhunters, which are your standard 1980's racially-mixed kind of group. To aid in in his revenge he is very conveniently friends with a group of vigilantes who ride around in a van and are led by the great Fred "The Hammer" Williamson, who does a great acting job here in what is probably one of my favorite performances by the man. Maniac himself, Joe Spinell, shows up in a small part as a sleazy Jewish? lawyer. If that's not enough of a line-up Woody Strode also appears as a wise old black man who tries to impart some wisdom to Forster's vengeance-seeking self. A little boy gets shot-gunned to death amidst various gun battles, pimps get messed-up, there's a naked prison shower-room fistfights and, of course, revenge is had. Overall this one is a great little slice of 80's action/revenge goodness right up there with it's obvious Charles Bronson inspiration!

HAMMER (1972)

 Fred "The Hammer" Williamson took his nickname from this tale of a tough dock-worker who gets mixed-up in the boxing game and the mafia. That seems a little strange to me since Williamson would go on to do better, more memorable and more successful stuff(BLACK CAESAR) but I guess this is where his standard bad mother-fucker/lovable nice-guy character got started.  It has all the stuff you expect from a 70's blaxploitation flick including pimps, evil honkies, outrageous clothing, drugs and violence.  The strangest bit is probably a scene in a nightclub where a whip-weilding dominatrix-stripper does her thing.  A great supporting cast including the great William Smith as his typical monsterous musclehead character, that bad D'Urville Martin, that guy who played Goeorge Jefferson's brother on ALL IN THE FAMILY(Bernie Hamilton), Leon Isaac from PENITENTIARY(who is super young and looks like a little kid here) all do a good job.  The only downside to this is that it doesn't really ever go over the top in the action sense like some of the later black-action films and sticks to a basic boxing scam/mob plot but it's still a good watch even if just for historical reasons.

THE NEW BARBARIANS (1983)

 In a lot of these Italian post-apocalypse flicks Fred "The Hammer" Williamson plays second fiddle to a more typical white action hero.  Why couldn't they have made him the star in at least this one?  I guess Italy wasn't ready for a tough black man to star in their films yet.  In 1990 BRONX WARRIORS  at least star Mark Gregory had a sort of dorky charm but this guy here, Timothy Brent, is pretty generic as far as leading men go.  On the positive side you do get a lot more of George Eastman and that's always a good thing.  Here he's  the leader of a gang, that might be a bunch of angry homosexuals, called The Templars who are dedicated to wiping out humanity because they seem rather bitter about the whole holocaust thing.  Eastman smokes futuristic weed and almost rapes our hero in the ass in a standout scene.  Goofy cars with drills, saw-blades and bubble-domes on top of them get blown up and there's really not much of a plot to get in the way of the action.  Also there's a really strange soundtrack by Claudio Simonetti of the group Goblin.  Also for Lucio Fulci fans you get big-headed Bob from HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY as an unlikely action star and mechanic and the lady who gets a splinter in the eye from ZOMBIE as a member of some religious group of wussies.  Worth checking out for a chuckle-inducing good time.  A.K.A.- WARRIORS OF THE WASTELAND

1990 BRONX WARRIORS (1982)

 If you took THE WARRIORS and mixed in some MAD MAX and made it extra campy and Italian exploitation-like this would be what you would get. Spaghetti-sploitation master Enzo G. Castellari here takes us on a journey into the future(which is technically now the past) where the Bronx is a no man's land ruled by bikers, pimps, roller-skating hockey players who look like they just rolled out of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, some sandpeople from STAR WARS and what looks like a Broadway dance troupe. They live a great life of rumbles and dance offs until the man sends the police in to rescue the presidents daughter(so with this plot point here we also get a touch of ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK to spice things up).
 This movie is probably my favorite of the 80's Italian post-nuke extravaganzas, though this isn't technically post-nuke but more of a post-violent criminals run wild and take over film. It's also the only one of this action sub-genre that I've ever seen in a theater in front of an audience and that really elevated it a lot in my opinion. You get a great cast with Fred "The Hammer" Williamson as Ogre, the leader of our pimpalicious gang that drive around in 50's hot rods, George "ANTHROPOPHAGOUS" Eastman, who I think is supposed to be Asian here, as the giant martial arts master and leader of our roller hockey fellows, Vic Morrow who plays a cop/hitman named Hammer which makes no sense since everyone knows Williamson is "The Hammer" and as our main hero a strangely cast, skinny, slightly effeminate fellow named Mark Gregory who I guess wins fights by the force of his earnest staring abilities. Crazy over-emoting acting ensues, ridiculous fight scenes with cool weapons happen, people get burned alive with flame-throwers, die overly dramatic deaths and it all ends in an absurd body-pile of ridiculousness.
 There was a sort-of sequel to this in '83 called ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX A.K.A. BRONX WARRIORS 2 where Henry Silva takes over the Vic Morrow role and that one's equally fun for a stupid good time. There was also a planned BRONX WARRIORS 3: ESCAPE FROM THE EARTH that never happened since Gregory seems to have vanished from the public sometime around 1989.

THREE THE HARD WAY (1974)

 Similar to the classic Universal monster movies of years past the idea to team-up your biggest box-office draws was used in a few blaxploitation flicks.  This one gives us Mr. BLACK BELT JONES himself Jim Kelly, Fred "The Hammer" Williamson and Jim Brown.  While it's cool to see all three in one flick I always feel like Brown is the least interesting and unfortunately they make him the main dude that you follow.  But nevertheless you get a wacky plot about a group of neo-nazis trying to get rid of the whole black population in American by putting a chemical in drinking water that somehow only kills blacks, a crazy scene with three hot biker chicks who love torturing men and lots of cars blowing up in mid-air.  One big downside to this one is that towards the end section it all plays out like too much of a typical Hollywood action movie that you've seen a million times.  Still worth checking out even if just for the scene of Jim Kelly single-handedly taking out a whole police squadron using just his kung-fu badness with seemingly no legal repercussions.