Black Eye

(1974) Black Eye THRILLER

The first of two movies Fred Williamson made with director and producer Jack Arnold, adapted from the novel "Murder on the Wild Side" by Jeff Jacks, he stars as ex-cop turned private eye, Shep Stone employed by Mr. Dole (Richard Anderson) to look for his daughter, Amy (Susan Arnold). And by the time he tracks her down, it turns out she may be part of a cult ring that involves drugs and prostitution. And like the movie "The Maltese Falcon" he also finds out several people are interested in an unique walking cane that used to belong to silent movie star. This is the African American equivalent of a Philip Marlowe movie.

A woman steals the walking cane of a Hollywood olden days star during his funeral. LA private eye Shep Stone (Fred Williamson) is soon entangled in the case leading to murders, a religious cult, and a drug ring.

This is in the hard-boiled private eye genre and a blaxploitation film. It's blaxploitation due to the times and its targeting of the black audience. In the modern sense, this would just be another movie with above average black content. The story meanders around with some violence and limited action. It is more a sense of its times that is fascinating. For a side note, I kept waiting for someone to get a black eye when I realized that he's black and he's a private eye. The title should probably be Big Black Private D. This movie is generally fine. It has nothing exceptional and nothing terribly wrong. It's fine.

So it's now years after previously watching the other movie director Jack Arnold and star Fred Williamson did together which was Boss N!gger which they actually made after this one. That one I found a lot of fun. This one is also pretty exciting but it may disappoint anyone who expect some nudity or really intense action for a '70s Blaxploitation picture. Fred is a private detective who gets mixed up in a porno ring and religious cult because of some cane from a late movie star. All I'll mention now is that I mostly enjoyed this one especially when Williamson encounters such familiar faces like Richard "Oscar Goldman" Anderson, Teresa "Laugh-In" Graves before then starring in "Get Christie Love", and Teddy "Sweet Daddy" Wilson which he would play on "Good Times" a little later in the decade. So that's a recommendation for Black Eye.

Jack Arnold is principally remembered for directing THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN in 1957, a science fiction movie done with imagination, well pulled off special effects, a gripping script and Grant Williams in the best form of his career.

From Williams to Fred Williamson in 1974, and BLACK EYE. Willimson does perform creditably, but then that cannot have been that difficult, seeing that he is surrounded by by uniformly dumb members of the white community, beginning with a prostitute who steals a cane with a metallic wolf's head from the top of a coffin, a crazed criminal who atatcks her with a knife and makes off with the cane, but not before beating up and insulting Williamson with the worst adjectives for a black person, followed by a string of third and fourth rate white actors who must have been badly overdrawn or downright bankrupt to have agreed to play such dumbsters, junkies, sinful preachers and diabolical felons.

BLACK EYE is worth watching because of Williamson (especially while destroying valuables belonging to an antique collector enjoying "good vibes from the dead"), his Ford Mustang, his gorgeous Whitney Houston lookalike girlfriend, and the inevitably gay white guys and bombastically beautiful white birds who keep throwing themselves at him. The action ain't bad, either. 6/10.

Fred Williamson ('Black Caesar', 'Vigilante', 'From Dusk Til Dawn') was one of the coolest and most charismatic blaxploitation stars of the 1970s, but 'Black Eye' is by no means one of his best movies. Williamson himself is pretty good as always, but the pedestrian script and lacklustre direction (by Jack Arnold, who later worked with Williamson on the lame Western comedy 'Boss N*igger') don't do him any favours. Arnold directed 1950s classic 'Creature From The Black Lagoon' and 'The Incredible Shrinking Man', but had been mainly working in TV, and I think it really shows. 'Black Eye' feels like a TV pilot. It's like blaxploitation-lite. Williamson plays an ex-cop investigating the murder of a call girl and the theft of a walking stick she had stolen from a recently deceased Hollywood movie star. The trail leads him to a drug ring, porno movies and a religious cult, which sounds very Dashiell Hammett and interesting, but it isn't. It's very dull and never picks up steam. The supporting cast includes two actors familiar to 70s TV viewers, Richard Anderson ('The Six Million Dollar Man's Oscar Goldman), and the foxy Teresa Graves ('Get Christie Love'). Graves had previously co-starred with Fred Williamson in 'That Man Bolt', which may not be my favourite Williamson vehicle, but it was a damn site more entertaining than this! I say give 'Black Eye' a miss unless you're an obsessive fan of "The Hammer". If you haven't seen it, you really aren't missing much. Newcomers to Williamson are advised to go directly to Larry Cohen's brilliant 'Black Caesar' which features a dynamite Williamson performance, and a super cool score from The Godfather Of Soul James Brown.