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The Black Six
[Brentwood Home Video]
1974; color
Directed by Matt Cimber
Starring: "Mean" Joe Greene, Willie Lanier, Gene Washington, Carl Eller, Mercury Morris, Lem Barney, Robert Howard & Cindy Daly
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In keeping with our unofficial quest to see every exploitation movie that the Kommandant has a poster for, we picked up this aptly titled Black Vengeance budget DVD set at a flea market recently. Out of the four films featured over the two discs el K only has posters for two of them, The Black Six and Black Gestapo, but of course we won't let that stop us from eventually watching the other two, Black Fist and Black Cobra II. (I guess we'll have to track down a copy of Black Cobra first; otherwise how will we follow the plotline of the sequel?) To get back to today's subject though, we decided to start with The Black Six because it also fits into my unofficial quest to see every biker movie ever made, pre-1980. Up until this point the only "black" biker movie I've seen was Black Angels but I'm not sure if that really falls under the umbrella of blaxploitation. There were no real heroes in that one, black or white, and having one or more clear cut good guy or girl seems to be a requirement of the genre. The Black Six has no less than six heroes, a very standard revenge plotline and a gimmick so ridiculous it could have spawned it's own genre tag (I was thinking professional-athlete-sploitation but feel free to make up your own); but, alas, it didn't. Although this is hardly the only movie to feature a pro-athlete in a leading role, the genre as a whole never really took off. And it's just as well because, you know, a person can't be good at everything. It stands to reason that a man who is very proficient in the art of throwing a football, running across a field and / or slapping another man on the ass might not be as proficient in the art of memorizing lines, reading off a cue card and / or balancing themselves on a stationary motorcycle. This film lends quite a bit of credence to that theory. Anywhoo, as mentioned above, this film stars six pro football players, namely: "Mean" Joe Greene (Pittsburgh Steelers), Lem Barney (Detroit Lions), Carl Eller (Minnesota Vikings), Mercury Morris (Miami Dolphins), Willie Lanier (Kansas City Chiefs) and Gene Washington (San Francisco 49ers). I have to admit I've never heard of any of these guys, with the exception of the first person on the list, but I don't really know anything about football. The Kommandant has assured me that all of these dudes were well known in their time and I'm sure he's right about that. Either way, familiarity with the actors previous careers is not a requirement to understand or appreciate the subtle irony of six buff black men on British motorcycles roaming the roads of this great land of ours, picking up odd jobs from assorted old honky women along the way, and that's just what this "gang" does until one of them - Gene Washington I think - learns of the untimely death of his younger brother, coincidentally an aspiring football player. We know he was killed by a white biker gang after he was found making out at the 40 yard line with the younger sister of one of the bikers—because that was the first thing that happened in the movie—but due to the standard and expected amounts of racism and bigotry afoot in the small town in California where all of this takes place, it takes forever for Washington and co. to get to the bottom of the story and exact their standard and expected bloody violent revenge on those who wronged his family. A bunch of other stuff goes on in between all of that but I wouldn't want to give too much away. I will tell you this much though, the ending is one of the most non-sensical, non-climactic final scenes in the history of the B-Movie Buffet (to date at least) and that is saying something.
—Bunny
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