The Black Six*
823 min. / B&W / 1.33:1, 1.85:1, 200:1 / HD Master Audio English 2.0 / SDH
Universal Blu-ray $29.98
Available from Movie Zyng
Producer/Director/Writer Matt Cimber – one of Jayne Mansfield’s husbands – was renowned, if that’s the right word, for softcore sex films when he got the idea to mix biker flicks, Blaxploitation, and current NFL stars for a low-budget drive-in movie. Using his charm and promises of meeting Hollywood celebrities (and probably softcore sex stars), Cimber corralled six NFL pros for a pretty good action picture that could’ve used a better director, but hey, we have what we have.
Six Black Vietnam veterans are touring the American Southwest on their choppers, staying out of trouble and doing good deeds for single farmer ladies when one of them gets a letter from home advising him that his younger brother has been murdered. Kid Brother had been dating a white woman, and her brother and his motorcycle gang decided they didn’t like that idea, it seems. The Black Six ride into town and have to put up with the usual racism, unhelpful cops, and badass Honky bikers, leading to a massive rumble between the Six and a whole-lot-more-than-six white supremacist biker gang.
The big attraction here, of course, are the NFL stars (seven Super Bowl rings and countless All Pro designations between ‘em), led by 49ers Wide Receiver Gene Washington as the brother, in the family sense of the word, who’s the only one of the Six that can actually act, although we don’t much care, they’re there to look good, ride bikes, and bust heads, and they do that REALLY well. Our other stars are Lem Barney of the Lions, Carl Eller of the Vikings, Mean Joe Greene of the Steelers, Willie Lanier of the Chiefs, and Mercury Morris of the Dolphins. We got a kick out of seeing that the names of their teams were listed as part of the opening credits.
The Six are heroes and good guys in every sense of the word, overly patient with racist crackers and hicks until backed into a corner, and that is probably to the film’s detriment: we’d like to see them a little more prone to violence, frankly. The best scene in the first half of the movie is actually a lengthy bit with just the half-dozen of them loading bales of hay into a barn for a nice farmer lady, cracking wise and having fun. I’d watch a weekly TV series of THAT.
Film Masters includes a helpful booklet with the film’s background (including news that the six NFL stars were disgusted at the low budget and lack of promised enmities, including the suggestion that three of them didn’t stick around for the finale, which would explain why much of it is shot in the dark) and affable, chatty commentary with Robert Kelly and Daniel Budnik, who have a tendency to get off-subject but hey, how much you can say about this film without going into football stats for an hour and a half? is uncut. The Film Masters release is top-notch, it looks like a low-budget 1970s drive-in movie, just the right amount of grain, and the biker sequences are a highlight. I didn’t time them, but a great deal of those 84 min. are our heroes just tooling around the countryside on their vehicles.
Plans for a sequel? Doubtful, but the closing credits tell us “Honky…Look Out… Hassle a brother… and THE BLACK 6 will return!!!” Apparently, nobody ever hassled a brother since the series ended there; too bad, we would’ve liked to spend more time with these guys. And say, wouldn’t this make a lovely triple drive-in feature with The Dirty Dozen with Jim Brown and C.C. and Company with Joe Namath!
Let’s get right on that.
