The Black 6

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.

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 It's all rather tame and dull throughout and only enjoyable for the outdated fashions and funky theme music.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 six is a standard blacksploitation movie enhanced by the cast of all star football players. The black six mentioned in the title are a rough gang of bikers just back from vietnam looking for nothing but a good time and brotherly love. Yet, they are met with strife and problems. It seems that everywhere they go they are judged because of the color of their skin. The leader of the groups brother is killed and they have finally had enough of the oppression so they finally fight back. The black six are succesful in defeating their foes and the oppression ends. Mysteriously, the movie ends with them fighting and the screen sends an ominous message out to all of those that are thinking about bullying around others in the future "look out honky, hassle a brother and the black six will return."

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.

If it's at all possible, this one's even worse than THE BLACK GESTAPO (1975; see above): it concerns the revenge perpetrated by the free-spirited, peace-loving but ultimately tough brother (and his five equally brawny cronies) of a black man killed by a group of bikers for daring to go out with a white girl. The title characters are played by a variety of American Football stars but, apart from the novelty factor, this does the film no good as none of them can act - not that the rest of the cast is any better, as witness the old woman for whom they work early on in the film or the hysterical owner of the roadhouse diner they end up trashing after being insulted by their racist clientele! Even at this juncture, I can hardly remember anything about it - except for the exaggerated Afro hairstyle of the lead character's radical younger sister who rebukes him for going off on their bikes rather than joining the Black Cause - after which one of the guys tells him, "Ma-aaa-n, you have one he-aaaa-vy li'l sistah!" Also, the print I watched was so muddy and dark that, due to the characters' skin color, I could hardly distinguished one from the other, especially during the climactic fight!! There's also an eccentric white biker named Thor who, appropriately enough, dons a Viking helmet but I have no idea what he really had to do with the main plot at the end of it! Finally, the end credits show a hilarious title card which warns white "honkies" that if they "hassle a brother", they'll find the Black Six on their heels...or something! The director later made the intriguing horror film THE WITCH WHO CAME FROM THE SEA (1976) - whose R1 SE DVD from Subversive Cinema I've been eyeing for purchase for the longest time - but, after watching this piece of trash, I'll think twice before going for it as a blind buy...