The Black 6

I'm so glad this was brought to my attention. While watching a documentary about the Minnesota Vikings, I learned about the interesting life of Carl Eller, and this movie came up. Needless to say, I had to watch it. From a genre viewpoint, it was a pretty standard Blaxploitation movie, but dang was it kinda funny.

The story is basically the saga of a peace loving biker club, who all happen to be comprised of some of the best football players in the NFL during this era of the early 70s. It was a nice time capsule so to speak, as there was strife in the NFL during this time and the players felt they were not being properly compensated. Only the best could live off the earnings of their NFL paychecks in those days, for many of those men had to get second jobs during the offseason. It only made sense to bring in some well built, hungry football players to portray a tough motorcycle club that was seeking answers for a mysterious death. The fact they got Mercury Morris, Willie Lanier, Eller, Gene Washington, Lem Barney and Mean Joe Green is quite amazing, considering the profile these players had during their time.

All of the tropes are there. Black man gets killed for dating a white woman, the brother of the man searches for answers in a nearly all white town, no one talks, some casual racism is spouted out, good guys battle racism, etc. There is nothing different about this film than from any others beyond the fact the good guys hilariously destroy a racist cafe owner's establishment. Trust me, that scene is gold.

My main critique is the end. Boy oh boy what the heck happened. It's clear they ran out of money, because even though it looked like our boys were going to get burnt and killed by the racist motorcycle gang, the movie just stops and basically tells us they won. How? Anyway, weird ending aside, it's a fun movie and worth checking out.

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."

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.

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.

After his younger brother is beaten to death "Eddie Daniels" (Robert Howard) decides to return to his hometown and find out who was responsible for it. With him are 5 friends who served in Vietnam with him. Although none of them want trouble they believe they can handle whatever comes. What they don't realize is just how bad things really are where they're headed. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this movie is a combination of a biker film and a blaxploitation picture rolled into one. It also had the distinction of casting quite a few NFL players in prominent supporting roles. Unfortunately, the script was weak and the acting was pretty basic as well which resulted in a pretty tame effort all things considered. In any case, the fact of the matter is that regardless of the effort to combine two notable sub-genres, the effort was a dismal failure as this wasn't a good movie by any measurement. Accordingly, I have to rate it as below average.