Bucktown

Duke Johnson (Fred Williamson) arrives in a small Southern city to bury his brother Ben. While waiting for the estate to go through so he can sell his brother's bar, the Alabam, Duke allows the place to stay open despite harassment from corrupt cops demanding kickbacks. Ben's former girlfriend, Aretha (Pam Grier) sees Duke as "just another big-city jive-ass spook" blowing through town, but changes her tune when he stands up to the cops and mops the floor with them. It turns out the same cops had beaten Ben and left him to die, and when they begin hassling Duke in earnest, he calls in his old friend Roy (Thalmus Rasulala) and some goons to kill the rednecks.

Afterwards, Roy slips comfortably into the role of police chief, squeezing the locals for kickbacks just like the former administration. Roy's underling, T.J. (Tony King), lusting after Aretha and wanting Duke out of the picture, foments discord between former friends Duke and Roy. The pair have a severe falling out, after which Duke steals a tank, crashes it into the police station, and shoots down all of Roy's goons. Duke and Roy put aside their guns for a final fistfight to determine which one will have to leave town. Duke wins.

The first section of the film is familiar territory, with cardboard characters and cookie-cutter situations. The story only comes alive when Roy and his team of muscle take over, becoming the very thing they came to destroy. (THE BLACK GESTAPO used a similar plot device the same year, albeit in an even more exploitative manner.) Bucktown, depicted by endless shots of the same seedy strip of Kansas City (where it was shot), apparently consists of nothing but low-rent whorehouses, strip joints, porno parlors, and gambling joints, which provides a unique and interesting setting among blaxploitation films, but raises the obvious question of why the "good" citizens would want so fervently to stay there.

But then, motivation isn't the film's strong suit. The fine cast is unfortunately saddled with lame stereotypes and one-dimensional characters. Youngster Steve (Tierre Turner) serves as unofficial greeter in Bucktown, offering a catalog of vices to newcomers and spending all his free time in the Alabam, despite being woefully underage. Oldtimer Waldo Harley (Bernie Hamilton, Williamson's co-star in 1972's HAMMER, made by some of the same production team) is a loudmouth, boastful lush given to malapropisms like "expubident" and "satisfication." Aretha is cynical and sassy, taking a swing at Duke when he insults her, but when he brushes aside the blow and forces a kiss on her, she of course melts into his bed and worships his every move thereafter. Duke himself is rather a dim bulb, not bothering to wonder exactly how it is that his healthy brother died of exposure until someone clues him in halfway through the film that he was assisted by the cops. Once T.J. begins beating and attacking Duke's friends, our hero naturally jumps to the totally illogical conclusion that Roy put him up to it, leading to the nonstop action of the final 15 minutes. Unfortunately, director Arthur Marks proves himself throughly inept at filming action, with lame fighting and zero excitement in the gratuitous tank sequence. A car is blown up and a wall knocked down, seemingly just to offer something to put in the coming attractions, then it's back to fists and guns, with the good guy thinking nothing of giving his foe a savage kick in the groin. Adding ambiance is the miserably overdubbed grunting, sounding more like someone getting sick than fighting.

Williamson was one of the hardest working actors in blaxploitation, if not exactly one of the best. In 1974, he starred in half a dozen films in Italy and the United States as well as performing in karate exhibitions at Madison Square Garden and serving as commentator on "NBC Monday Night Football" alongside Frank Gifford and Howard Cosell. Tony King, like Williamson a former pro football player, is a standout in a role strikingly similar to the scheming, evil underling he played in the Williamson vehicle HELL UP IN HARLEM (1973). Art Lund is convincing as Chief Patterson, virtually a Southern replay of the tough urban cop he pitted against Williamson in BLACK CAESAR (1973). The only vaguely interesting white character in the film, he's a religious man who honestly believes that God is on his side against the blacks (possibly the reason the Catholic church was up in arms over such a run-of-the-mill feature). Director Arthur Marks made the drab FRIDAY FOSTER (1975) the same year as BUCKTOWN, starring Grier and Rasulala and featuring Carl Weathers in a similar bit role as a murderous goon. (Graphic violence, nudity, sexual situations, extreme profanity.) leave a comment