Bucktown (1975)

Director: Arthur Marks
Writer: Bob Ellison
Stars: Fred Williamson, Pam Grier, Thalmus Rasulala, Tony King, Bernie Hamilton, Art Lund and Tierre Turner

Index: Make It a Double.

I’ve reviewed Bucktown for Pam Grier’s First Thirty but it was also one of Fred Williamson’s two Make It a Double picks. While it came at a crucial time for her, it’s definitely a better film for him, giving him a good introduction then building him far more than I expected.

It initially feels like an episode of a TV show. Everything kicks right in: the opening credits, the funky music and the action. The very first scene is cops lusting after a hooker, but they rush off to beat up a black guy at the station as a train pulls in.

Getting off that train is Duke Johnson, who’s in Bucktown to bury his brother. And that’s the Hammer, who sees the cops but doesn’t do anything, just gets a cab to the Club Alabama. “Do you believe in God?” the cabbie asks him. “Then you’re in the wrong place.”

The club’s been closed since Ben died. Duke just wants to sell it and get out of there, but he has sixty days for the estate to close, so others start feeding him ideas. Stay. Reopen the club. What he wasn’t expecting to do was stand up to the cops, who are all white and working the local protection racket. But, because he’s the Hammer, that’s precisely what he does and we settle back for a traditional blaxploitation flick with a good cast.

Thus far, it’s all been Williamson’s show, but we meet Pam Grier at Ben’s funeral. She’s his ex, we assume, Aretha by name, and she sees Duke as “just another big city jive ass spook.” She’s the one who tells him that, while Ben did indeed get found beaten and left for dead, the cops are the ones who did it, thus affecting his decision to hang around. Of course, after she gets angry and he kisses her quiet, it’s the cops who interrupt the fun by shooting at his house and telling him to get out of town, so it wasn’t ever going to be hard to figure out.

More names promptly arrive after Duke gets on the phone. There’s Thalmus Rasulala who owes Duke one; Duke says “bring muscle” so Roy does and that means Josh, Hambone and TJ, all suited up and ready to be action heroes. Hambone is notable, because that’s a certain Carl Weathers, earning his first credit after a brief spot as a demonstrator in Magnum Force. So they’re one side of this war, with the boys in blue on the other. “We’re the law,” says the chief. “God is on our side.”

Even at this point, it’s pretty clear what this movie is. It’s obviously blaxploitation and it’s obviously about a bunch of big bad black men doing what they must to take Bucktown back from a force of corrupt honky pigs. Right?

Well, right for a while, and we have a heck of a lot of fun watching how it goes down, but what brings this picture real validity is that it isn’t content to just tell that story. It also has a second story to tell that follows naturally on from the first.

You see, once Roy and his men do their job and pay off whatever debt he owed Duke, they don’t leave. That’s how it’s always supposed to end, right, as a neat twist on the always white Hollywood western where these black for once saviours of Bucktown ride off into the sunset on the train, full of satisfaction and ready for the next town that needs saving?

Well, not this time. They stay and they don’t just open up a club. They take over every one of the rackets the cops were running and milk the town just as efficiently. They just happen to be black instead of white. In fact, the black mayor tells Duke that it’s ten times worse than before. So what’s he going to do about it?

I can totally see why Fred chose this for his Make It a Double. It’s not remotely subtle but it has a lot to say and it does more than just flip the formula. Just as we sit back, secure in the knowledge of what this is, it then becomes something else again, something that we’re not expecting. And, from initially wanting to simply get out of town, Duke has to choose his path carefully and decide whether he wants to be a real hero or not.

What else is important is that it’s all about him. Pam Grier was second on the bill and she was on a serious high in 1975, with Coffy and Foxy Brown under her belt in the previous two years. However, even though she was playing leads and doing the job really well, this is very much a support role.

Some of the time she’s strong, even though it’s mostly through being confident and angry and pushing for change. However, she doesn’t take part in the actual change herself, unlike a string of her recent lead characters. She does have the balls to talk to some very bad dudes the way they deserve to be talked to and that’s a lot more than anyone else was doing before Duke arrived, but that’s it.

Much of the time she’s weak, cowering back when the violence happens, like she’s a damsel in distress. That’s weird to see after a run of The Arena, Foxy Brown and Sheba, Baby, in which she didn’t cower back from anything.

It always feels like she’s just a girl and this is a man’s picture, right down to the cigar that never leaves Duke’s mouth, though he never actually lights it.

So it's all about the Hammer, with the help of that borrowed muscle. They study the cops to reveal their routines and weaknesses, they isolate them and then they take them down in vicious fashion, with baseball bats, bombs and guns. They even torture the chief to find out where the money is. And then, once they’re in charge of Bucktown, they form factions and a whole new power struggle begins, one that’s a gift for a few character actors.

Bernie Hamilton, not Capt. Harold Dobey in Starsky and Hutch yet, gets an excellent part as Harley, a tough guy who’s got old but still has some moves left. Tierre Turner gets a strong opportunity as a street hustler of a kid by the name of Stevie. And there’s Art Lund, police chief as this begins, who brings some gravitas to a seriously slack collection of boys in blue.

Fred Williamson is excellent. This is his film, he knows that it’s his film and that’s the way he likes it. He also clearly has his own morals that he’s happy with. Sometimes that renders him a hero and sometimes a villain, but it fits him both ways and, rather crucially, the two don’t particularly clash.

I liked this a lot more than I expected, but I’m interested to see if I’ll like it as much next time through when I know what’s coming.