Black Fist-1975 **1/2
The star is a nobody, but has Philip Michael Thomas from Miami Vice and Dabney Coleman in supporting roles. Gets off to a good start about a guy who fights bare knuckle in mob-sponsored fights ala Charlie Bronson's Hard Times, but it changes gears to a revenge picture midway through, and the story becomes muddled and uninteresting. Best of the bunch.
The Black Six-1974 **
Has football player Mean Joe Greene, who did a famous soda pop commercial in the late 70s, and five other pro-footballers famous at the time composing the title group. A brother is offed by a bunch of nogoodnik whitey bikers, the black six mope around for an hour and then kill them all in a poorly lit 10-minute fight scene. Two stars for lots of wah-wah guitar and a little sister with mondo afro.
Black Gestapo-1975 **
Didn't recognize a face in the movie. Story of ultra-militant black group formed to rid the ghetto of drugs and crime. Group ends up falling into same bad behavior as the criminals they chased out of town. Interspliced with WWII Nazi footage to let you know what the filmmaker thinks of group's politics. Slow moving and shoddily made, it should have been better than it was.
Black Cobra II-1988 *1/2
Ten years after the blaxploitation boom died, genre legend Fred Williamson stars in the second part of a three-part series (I hesitate to say trilogy) that no one has ever heard of. Fred Williamson is a no-nonsense Chicago cop (yawn) who botches a hostage situation so his boss ships him off to work with Interpol in the Philippines and to save money on filming costs. Music sounds like Wang Chung knockoff. Williamson is arrogant and incompetent in his host country (think Michael Douglas in Black Rain except without the cool cinematography). Williamson was pretty old in this one and is so slow it's embarrassing to watch the stuntmen waiting for his clumsy, leadfooted kicks to make it to their bellies in those warehouse fistfights (where's Jackie when you need him?).
This is a Brentwood production, so savvy consumers will know this means the prints are bad but watchable. While none of these movies are great, I gave this package three stars for assembling some pretty hard to find stuff at a reasonable price.
