This is an entertaining enough blaxploitation flick from the golden era of these types of films. It's a kinda weird tale of a black preacher/scam-artist(Calvin Lockhart) who is raising money to build a boat to send poor black folks back to Africa. While this seems to me to be some kinda white-racist aryan dream scenario that is strangely never brought up in the movie itself. The film plays out rather oddly going from scenes of people being graphically gunned down by bullets one second and then being tossed around Three Stooges-style the next. It also flipflops from kinda having a political message(about the disadvantaged getting swindled, commentary on the black-power movement and racism in general) and being a comedy(see a dumb white cop get tricked into stripping down naked in public and we even get a pie in the face!). While this does seem a bit disjointed the main draw here for me is seeing Fred Sandford himself(Mr. Redd Foxx playing a junkman a couple of years before his big TV series started) in his only appearance in a blaxploitation flick. While the movie could have used more Redd to push it into classic status it's still an enjoyable enough ride.
Two years after this there was a sequel, COME BACK, CHARLESTON BLUE, which I have yet to check out.
Japanese style!:
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