Tom

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.

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'.

Entertaining movie about a Vietnam veteran who gets into trouble with the African American brother of a friend of his who was killed in Vietnam. When racist cops get involved, the situation escalates...

Clark will not go down in history as a great director or actor, but at least he had the guts to address some racial issues in a low budget blaxploitation movie. He doesn't take the easy way out.

Not only the white people are racists this time. In The Bad Bunch it's a human trademark.

I've read a some negative reviews about this one. Bad acting, directing and disturbing stereotypes. Come on, it's still a B-movie. Clark is no Scorcese. But he did make a damn entertaining movie, which is more than I can say for the majority of blaxploitation movies from that era...

Tom (1973) is a movie I recently watched on Amazon Prime. The storyline focuses on two friends in the military, one black and one white, who are about to return home when the black friend is shot and killed. The white military friend comes home and goes to pay his respect to his black friend's family and finds he isn't welcome. He does his best to show he means well, but violence is bound to breakout. Can they resolve their differences and come to an understanding or does someone have to die first? This movie is directed by and stars Greydon Clark (Angels Revenge) and also stars Tom Johnigarn (The Black Bunch), Jacqulin Cole (Black Shampoo) and Bambi Allen (The Bang Bang Gang). The storyline for this picture is methodical and fun to watch unfold. There are some uneven elements in this, like the pimp who has to be the worst pimp ever, but also some fun scenes like the pool scene where the fight breaks out. The sex scenes and nudity are top notch and worthwhile for this era and the conclusion does come full circle (though the message kind of came from nowhere). Overall, this is a very average movie that is worth watching if you're a fan of blaxploitation from this era. I'd score this a 5.5-6/10.

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.