Death Journey (1976)
* 1/2 (out of 4)
Former cop Jesse Crowder (Fred Williamson) is hired to transport a witness (Bernard Kirby) from the West Coast to the East Coast so that he can testify. The only problem is that a lot of people want the witness dead.
I'm really not sure what the hell DEATH JOURNEY is or is supposed to be. I started watching the movie and thought it was something made that went straight-to-VHS but then I was shocked to see that it was an actual theatrical movie from 1976. For the life of me I can't imagine how small the budget must have been and how few drive-in screens would actually play it. The film was directed by Williamson and you can honestly tell that wasn't his strongest field.
There are all sorts of problems with this film but the biggest is the actual screenplay, which is just downright silly at times. There's not a single second where you actually care about anything that is going on and to be quite honest you don't care if the witness lives or dies. With that in mind, there's really no suspense to anything that you're watching as you simply don't care what happens. It certainly doesn't help that the film manages to contain some of the lamest action scenes that you'll ever witness.
Williamson is at least mildly entertaining in his role, which of course requires him to bed several women, kill a few bad guys and deliver some one-liners. It seems they were trying to make him a DIRTY HARRY like character but it just doesn't work. The film is poorly made and just doesn't really have anything good going for it.
