Tom

One of the worst collections of tired cliches I've seen assembled into a feature film. Every scene is entirely predictable, and squeezed hard to wring some sort of meaning or intensity out of it. Which is kind of a lost cause, since most of the flat, one dimensional "acting" is about what you'd expect from a local car dealer TV commercial.

With that in mind, it's not without its (unintentional) charms. There are enough "so bad it's good" moments to make this stinking old pile of leftover glop worth watching strictly for laughs. And the shockingly bad theme song is so ridiculously inappropriate and racist that it's hard to believe that anyone ever thought that it was a good idea.

One star as a serious movie, but six stars as an unintentional comedy. I'll split the difference and give it four stars out of ten.

I saw this film under the title THE BAD BUNCH. It was directed by and stars Greydon Clark, the low budget film-maker best known for making the effective alien movie THE WARNING (aka WITHOUT WARNING). This is his attempt to jump on the blaxploitation bandwagon and sees Clark playing an army veteran who loses his black buddy to a shell in Vietnam. Back home, he tries to visit the dead man's family, only to run afoul of a gang of white-hating black guys who wish him violence.

There's not much going on in this cheap and cheerful slice of exploitation. There's a lot of bad attitude and a script which delivers some effectively 'hard man' lines. The whole thing was shot in two weeks so you can't really expect much quality at that speed. I did enjoy the way the film explores race relations in Los Angeles in the early 1970s and the way in which both whites and blacks are racist in equal measure. Clark isn't much of an actor but he does get a couple of old timers (Aldo Ray and Jock Mahoney) to play some racist cops. For much of the running time THE BAD BUNCH plays out as a skin flick more than anything else, with silicon-enhanced starlet Bambi Allen particularly 'standing out'.

The movie shows it age, but the whole movie does show the tension. You look at today and you see that it is all still there, but covered up better. White man who has a black buddy in 'Nam who gets killed. He goes to the ghetto to inform the father and runs into the brother's gang. Like I stated before, the movie shows its age, but i do think it helps the younger generation realize the way it was....and still is.

One of your more unusual black action films in that the protagonist is a white man (the title was originally "n*gger lover", but no theaters would book it) -- the director, Greydon Clark! Never has the director of the film taken so much abuse! He plays a guy who returns home from Vietnam and tries to befriend the family of his friend from the war (who was black), only to meet scorn and the vengeance of the gang headed by his dead friend's brother. Aldo Ray appears as a racist cop. Clark does all right in the role, but it's hard to believe that he could be juggling 2 women as fine as these actresses. There is good exploitation value in the pool party scene, which also humorously juxtaposes the black gang and a bunch of stoned hippies.

By going for the DVD of Hi-Riders (1978) this was but on as an extra. There's not that much action going on and it contains a lot of blah blah but still it's worth watching only to see how America was back then just after the Vietnam war. This flick is all about racism that is written here as Jim (Greydon Clark) loses his best friend, a black American, in the war. He want to go to the black ghetto's to tell the father that his son died but he isn't welcome in the ghetto.

From here on we do see how racism worked and how corrupt the cops were always going for the white people and beating up the black ones. The acting isn't all that good and it really looks outdated but it's worth watching as I said before due Aldo Ray being in it as the corrupt sergeant.

It was completely shot in the Watts era in Los Angeles. Also that is worth seeing. Guess everyone knows about the Watts riots in 1965. Another thing I was rather surprised of was the amount of gratuitous nudity and that coming from white and black people. And a lot is full frontal, of course it's early seventies so that means full bushes! For those common with sexploitations could recognise Bambi Allen as Bobbi very active in the sixties and seventies. She to be seen in a lot of biker movies and maybe you remember her with her trademark, voluptuous silicone juggs and pigtails. Sadly she dies shortly after this flick aged 34 due cancer caused by the silicons.

It also shows what free love meant to be. Jim for example had a lot of lovers. And the skinny dipping pool party is so seventies. Only for blaxploitation lovers with a message. But as a freebie it was great to see this.

Gore 0/5 Nudity 2/5 Effects 0/5 Story 3/5 Comedy 0/5