Stepping on Mines
Six years before Sylvester Stallone, as a Vietnam War veteran, shot up a Pacific Northwest town and its aggressively mean law enforcement personnel in First Blood, Fred Williamson directed and acted in Mean Johnny Barrows (1976). The film's refrain, "Peace is Hell," points to how, for the veteran, turmoil continues in a country where racism and exploitation are constant factors in African-American lives, just as they're a crushing reality for the people of Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War era and the earlier First Indochina War.
Johnny Barrows was awarded the Silver Star but was dishonorably discharged from the Army for punching a white superior officer. His discharge, something he tries to keep to himself as a way of retaining pride, even as he accepts a janitorial job at a garage run by a sour and stingy asshole who, after a month, pays him just twenty-five dollars, prompting a scuffle witnessed by passing cops.
The White cops in the film are dense racist pieces of shit, but one of them, a Lieutenant, recognizes Barrows from when Johnny was a college football star. From this cop, Johnny gets a small measure of respect. Johnny also gains the attention of two rival families of mobsters. After one of the families guns down several of the other, Stuart Whitman, as the son of the slain patriarch, hires Johnny to eliminate his enemies, offering a hundred grand and the "piece of land" Johnny dreams of owning, forty acres and a mule-style, I guess.
The film follows the idea of the African-American experience; of Black men fighting White men's wars, of wage slavery, of a chronic schism between law enforcement and ordinary Black lives. Well-made, Williamson as a director does a good job at allowing his scenes to play out without making unnecessary cuts or robbing his performers of their own chances to stand out. Roddy McDowall plays the flashily dressed flower shop operating son of Anthony Caruso's character, the father who murders his rival, setting off the revenge drama. Caruso is a bruiser of an actor. He played a funny role as Bela Oxmyx in the mob-oriented Star Trek episode, "A Piece of the Action." In Mean Johnny Barrows Caruso runs a heroin distribution operation out of his son's flower shop. It's a somewhat weird premise that gives Barrows some incentive to take on the assignment of murdering Caruso's family. Once he becomes "mean," Johnny Barrows wears trim and dynamic suits, the gentleman hit man on the move.
Fred Williamson is pretty good in the lead role, but the film has a fine feel to it due to his first time direction, a solid beginning for a new filmmaker who has, to date, directed twenty-three films.
Vic Neptune
Six years before Sylvester Stallone, as a Vietnam War veteran, shot up a Pacific Northwest town and its aggressively mean law enforcement personnel in First Blood, Fred Williamson directed and acted in Mean Johnny Barrows (1976). The film's refrain, "Peace is Hell," points to how, for the veteran, turmoil continues in a country where racism and exploitation are constant factors in African-American lives, just as they're a crushing reality for the people of Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War era and the earlier First Indochina War.
Johnny Barrows was awarded the Silver Star but was dishonorably discharged from the Army for punching a white superior officer. His discharge, something he tries to keep to himself as a way of retaining pride, even as he accepts a janitorial job at a garage run by a sour and stingy asshole who, after a month, pays him just twenty-five dollars, prompting a scuffle witnessed by passing cops.
The White cops in the film are dense racist pieces of shit, but one of them, a Lieutenant, recognizes Barrows from when Johnny was a college football star. From this cop, Johnny gets a small measure of respect. Johnny also gains the attention of two rival families of mobsters. After one of the families guns down several of the other, Stuart Whitman, as the son of the slain patriarch, hires Johnny to eliminate his enemies, offering a hundred grand and the "piece of land" Johnny dreams of owning, forty acres and a mule-style, I guess.
The film follows the idea of the African-American experience; of Black men fighting White men's wars, of wage slavery, of a chronic schism between law enforcement and ordinary Black lives. Well-made, Williamson as a director does a good job at allowing his scenes to play out without making unnecessary cuts or robbing his performers of their own chances to stand out. Roddy McDowall plays the flashily dressed flower shop operating son of Anthony Caruso's character, the father who murders his rival, setting off the revenge drama. Caruso is a bruiser of an actor. He played a funny role as Bela Oxmyx in the mob-oriented Star Trek episode, "A Piece of the Action." In Mean Johnny Barrows Caruso runs a heroin distribution operation out of his son's flower shop. It's a somewhat weird premise that gives Barrows some incentive to take on the assignment of murdering Caruso's family. Once he becomes "mean," Johnny Barrows wears trim and dynamic suits, the gentleman hit man on the move.
Fred Williamson is pretty good in the lead role, but the film has a fine feel to it due to his first time direction, a solid beginning for a new filmmaker who has, to date, directed twenty-three films.
Vic Neptune
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