Adiós Amigo

Written, directed, and starring... Fred Williamson. That's never a good sign, when the same person does everything! He's Big Ben. Co-stars Richard Pryor as Sam Spade. This one also has veteran western actor James Brown. The white guy... not the singer. Ben and Spade get into various, crazy, adventures. Robbing the stagecoaches, starting trouble. It's a much later western, from 1975, filmed in new mexico, according to imdb. It's just silly. Almost blaxploitation, about the same time as all the foxy Cleopatra Jones films were being made. Entertaining. It's showing on (free) roku channel. No biggie. I usually like Pryor, but this one is just long. And boring. Should have hired someone to juice up the script. Skip it.

Adios Amigo is one of Fred Williamson 's greatest misses. He is credited for writing, directing, producing and starring in this, so I would hold him most responsible for this abomination. This is a rare opportunity for him to team up with comedic genius Richard Pryor. I know this was low budget, but I fail to see if any of the money spent ended up on the screen. The film is a technical mess and was shot so poorly, it's hard to tell at times what is going on. There is zero chemistry between Fred Williamson and Richard Pryor. Basically, Richard Pryor is a con man and when his schemes go awry , Williamson has to step up to the plate and beat up a bunch of dudes in Pryor 's behalf. The film plays out in the same predictable fashion, until it ends. Nothing Pryor does here is funny and nothing Fred does on screen helps matters. The screenplay is 12 pages long and it shows. Fred's direction is atrocious and really fails to make much sense. Had I been entertained, I would not have minded. The film as a whole falls apart and falls flat. This has been on several dump bin cheapie DVD boxsets( The 50 movies for $5 variety). But don't be deceived, Adios Amigo is basically unwatchable and one of the stinkiest of cinematic turds that is out there.

...but I'm not sure it was supposed to be anything else but bad? Suffice it to say it held my interest. I wonder if this film was made in the wake of the enormous success of "Blazing Saddles?" Not that it has a similar script but it was supposed to be a comedy Western.

This is basically a series of vignettes with escaped prisoner Fred Williamson following conman/bandit Richard Pryor across the old west (Why?) and becoming the foil of Pryor's comedic schemes, after which he always takes off, leaving Williamson holding the bag.

Though not really funny in a laugh-out-loud kind of way, it's all pretty laid back and easygoing, with Williamson and Pryor fairly likable, making this entertaining for awhile.

About halfway through though, it starts to get a bit tedious, with a "plot" that's way too fluid and a budget that's too low to make this something I'd recommend to people who aren't already huge fans of the two stars.

The worse things about this are the repetitive use of the corny funk theme song and the fact that the legendary vocal group The Ink Spots make an appearance but aren't given a chance to sing.

Having previously wrote and produced Boss N!gger-which I highly enjoyed-here Fred Williamson adds director to his resume. Unfortunately, unlike the work I just mentioned, Adios Amigo is more of a mess narratively with Fred a frequent fall guy for Richard Pryor's con games that aren't very funny with Richard's lines mostly improvised. I half thought when Pryor's character would encounter an old man named Noah (Thalmus Rasulala in convincing aging makeup) and his nubile young women that there might be some raunchy humor but results there and pretty much the rest of the picture was tepid at best. Another disappointment was the mention in the credits of The Ink Spots making an appearance but they don't sing here just do some steps and finger snappin' or that's what it looked like to me. Really, I just can't recommend Adios Amigo.