soulexpress Start with a trite script, add a no-talent cast, mix in a white director who clearly did not understand Blaxploitation, and you have THE BLACK 6. Or as I call it, "The Anti-Shaft."Eddie Daniels is a Black high school senior with a white girlfriend. When her brother Moose (yes, Moose) and his biker pals beat Eddie to death, his brother Bubba (yes, Bubba) comes to town with his own biker pals. Bubba's there mainly to see his mother and sister but takes the law into his own hands when the police show no interest in solving the murder.The title characters were all played by NFL stars. As actors, they were great football players. Not that the rest of the cast is any better--especially the nice old lady who hires the men as temporary farm workers, and the hysterical white woman whose diner they trash when its racist clientele insults them. Then there's Bubba's humorless, militant sister with an Afro that would have embarrassed Angela Davis. Or as one of the Black 6 puts it, "Man, you got one heavy little sister." (She's not fat.) And Bubba's old girlfriend, who's now a hooker, delivers a monologue that's beyond belief.Finally, the ending doesn't make a damned bit of sense. I watched the final scene three times but still couldn't figure out what happened. At first, I thought the Black 6 had all been killed, but then a message appears on-screen: HONKY...LOOK OUT...HASSLE A BROTHER...AND THE BLACK 6 WILL RETURN!!! All I know is, the cataclysm entailed chains, flares, explosions, dozens of loud motorcycles, and a whole lot of dead bikers. And yet, the cops never show up. Must have been their night off.

Coventry 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.

MARIO GAUCI If it's at all possible, this one's even worse than THE BLACK GESTAPO (1975; see above): it concerns the revenge perpetrated by the free-spirited, peace-loving but ultimately tough brother (and his five equally brawny cronies) of a black man killed by a group of bikers for daring to go out with a white girl. The title characters are played by a variety of American Football stars but, apart from the novelty factor, this does the film no good as none of them can act - not that the rest of the cast is any better, as witness the old woman for whom they work early on in the film or the hysterical owner of the roadhouse diner they end up trashing after being insulted by their racist clientele! Even at this juncture, I can hardly remember anything about it - except for the exaggerated Afro hairstyle of the lead character's radical younger sister who rebukes him for going off on their bikes rather than joining the Black Cause - after which one of the guys tells him, "Ma-aaa-n, you have one he-aaaa-vy li'l sistah!" Also, the print I watched was so muddy and dark that, due to the characters' skin color, I could hardly distinguished one from the other, especially during the climactic fight!! There's also an eccentric white biker named Thor who, appropriately enough, dons a Viking helmet but I have no idea what he really had to do with the main plot at the end of it! Finally, the end credits show a hilarious title card which warns white "honkies" that if they "hassle a brother", they'll find the Black Six on their heels...or something! The director later made the intriguing horror film THE WITCH WHO CAME FROM THE SEA (1976) - whose R1 SE DVD from Subversive Cinema I've been eyeing for purchase for the longest time - but, after watching this piece of trash, I'll think twice before going for it as a blind buy...

garko-1 BUT for that very reason, i highly recommend it to anyone who is sick of quality. oh sure, film can attain the poetic. yeah yeah. but then a movie like this will be made, humbling all high-flown notions about the heights film can attain. all-around horrifically bad acting (note the "cracker" jogging for his life from flora's diner), crappy background music (someone wake up the trumpeter and tell him to read the sheet music, huh?), poor film stock (but alas, it looks like the DVD releasing company color-corrected the 70s pink out of it), corny framing (note the waving American flag as Bubba gives his heartfelt soliloquy on the steps of the trailer post office.) it's high camp for those starved for poor taste. like me.i'm giving it a '1' because it deserves it and connoisseurs of the bad would do likewise. but we LOVE crap like this, so a '1' in our books means #1!!! even though it really is awful and you'd be a sucker to watch it. but a lucky sucker indeed.