The Black 6

Akira Kurosawa engaged SEVEN mighty samurai for his cinematic landmark and Yul Brunner led a bunch of SEVEN notorious gunslingers, but when you're dealing with tough black guys on motorcycles, I guess you can afford yourself to go with one less. "The Black Six" suffers under the incredibly low rating of barely 2.2 out of ten around this website; which I personally find exaggeratedly harsh. Such a low rating would be justified if – and only if – a film exclusively relied on impeccable storytelling and stylishness, but it doesn't. Matt Cimber's film is definitely entitled to a couple of extra points for ingenuity, clever marketing ideas and a whole lot of spirited input from cast and crew. As briefly indicated above already, the plot is more than a little similar to "Seven Samurai" and "The Magnificent Seven", and a rudimentary concept like that is guaranteed to score. And there's more, too. Matt Cimber alertly cashes in on not one, not two, but no less than three of the most popular exploitation topics of that period: blacks, revenge and bikers! Okay, admittedly, the production itself is a bit shabby and amateurishly inept. Particularly the pacing is wildly uneven and the script randomly leaps from one main subject onto another! There are numerous other obvious defaults, but they are merely forgivable or even delightfully cheesy ones, like stereotypical character drawings, hammy acting, obligatory love & peace speeches and abruptly edited sequences. "The Black Six" opens with the romantic tableau of a black boy and a white girl falling in love on a football field. But the girl's mean brother and his gang of bikers show up and beat the kid to death with chains. Then for the next half hour, the film extendedly introduces and follows the titular 6-headed gang of black bikers. They're Vietnam buddies who're done fighting and spend their remaining days cruising through the countryside, making regular stops to either help people who don't pay attention to skin color or teach the ones that do a valuable lesson. The plot patiently takes its time to reveal that the black kid murdering during the opening scene is actually one the six' younger brother. They all return to Bubba's hometown together and face a very important decision. Overlook the white biker gang's vile act of murder and continue to live by their principals of love and peace, or … get some revenge! Well … would you have guessed the answer if you hadn't already seen the tagline? The first half hour of "The Black Six" is terrific, with the six philosophizing in an old lady's yard and wrecking an all-white truckers' bar, but the story gets incomprehensibly dull when they return to Bubba's hometown. He alone goes out looking for his former girlfriend and asking around about the murder (of course, nobody knows anything), but it's incredibly tedious and clichéd. The climax is great amusement again, though mainly for the wrong reasons. The big and relentless showdown between the six and a nearly countless number of white Viking-bikers is a highlight of pure camp. For some reason, Matt Cimber thought it would be a great (and much cheaper) idea to hire football players for the main roles. This is another very ingenious detail and I definitely appreciate it, especially since one of them – Carl Eller, the toughest of them all - looks a lot like Samuel L. Jackson and act like him, too. The opening theme is terrific and the continuously reoccurring tunes, albeit too gratuitously borrowed from "Shaft" is quite catchy. Pretty bad, maybe … but most certainly a whole lot of cheesy fun, with the exception of the dire middle-section.

This is another blaxploitation biker film hybrid which sources its main actors from a bunch of off-season American football players - is this a thing?! Anyway, with that in mind, the acting is diabolical with the least-bad actor returning to his Southern hometown to find out who killed his brother. He is accompanied by his biker gang - The Black Six! This one sure is ropey, with badly staged fight scenes and an ultra-daft sequence where the Black Six literally pull a building down for a laugh. It has a funky theme song and any scene with The Six riding around on their bikes is invariably accompanied by it. The ending is...inconclusive.

Made during director Matt Cimber's dive into the blaxploitation trend of the early 70s along with LADY COCOA and THE CANDY TANGERINE MAN, this film tries to resurrect the dead corpse of the biker film genre by using a black cast and racial conflict melodramatics and having them battle a gang of racist white bikers. This same concept was done much better a couple years earlier in THE BLACK ANGELS. Obviously intended to be enjoyed by black audiences, the Black Six gang are decent people who only become violent when provoked. The white biker gang are just one-dimensional thugs and murderers. It's all rather tame and dull throughout and only enjoyable for the outdated fashions and funky theme music.

The Black 6 (1973)

** (out of 4)

Blaxploitation flick about a black kid who is killed by a white motorcycle gang after they catch him with a white woman. Soon after his brother Bubba (Gene Washington) shows up with his five friends to get to the bottom of the crime and soon realize that they're going to have to take down quite a few honky's. THE BLACK 6 isn't a classic movie in the same field as THE DEFIANT ONES but who in their right mind is going to come into this thing expecting greatness? If you're looking for an ultra-cheap, silly and poorly made film that at least keeps you entertained then this here offers that. Again, there's no question that the film doesn't offer up anything of real quality but if that's what you're expecting then it's best to just stay away to begin with. The film's big point to get people to watch it is that the six black guys are all played by NFL players with the two biggest names being Joe Greene and Mercury Morris who most people will know from being on ESPN each year whenever the last undefeated team finally loses a game and protects his Dolphins only perfect season. None of the six NFL players can act but this really doesn't take anything away from the picture. The other motorcycle gang really can't act either so I guess you could say that everyone is on a level playing field. I really thought the story here was pretty predictable and it's certainly nothing we haven't seen before yet it kept me interested in the characters and there's no doubt that the six bikers were fun to watch. There's a very funny sequence towards the start of the picture where the six black guys are taking care of an elderly white woman, which I'm sure was meant to show that they didn't hate white people, just the ones that harmed them. This is followed up by another funny scene where a racist couple refuses to serve them so they literally tear down the building. THE BLACK 6 isn't as bad as its reputation as long as you go into it not expecting it to be something it's not.

BUT for that very reason, i highly recommend it to anyone who is sick of quality. oh sure, film can attain the poetic. yeah yeah. but then a movie like this will be made, humbling all high-flown notions about the heights film can attain. all-around horrifically bad acting (note the "cracker" jogging for his life from flora's diner), crappy background music (someone wake up the trumpeter and tell him to read the sheet music, huh?), poor film stock (but alas, it looks like the DVD releasing company color-corrected the 70s pink out of it), corny framing (note the waving American flag as Bubba gives his heartfelt soliloquy on the steps of the trailer post office.) it's high camp for those starved for poor taste. like me.

i'm giving it a '1' because it deserves it and connoisseurs of the bad would do likewise. but we LOVE crap like this, so a '1' in our books means #1!!! even though it really is awful and you'd be a sucker to watch it. but a lucky sucker indeed.