Joshua

The previous poster commented that this movie was not available in Widescreen.

There's at least 2 ways to get this in Widescreen. I've got one on the 'Quality' label - it's a 2 movie set on one disc. The other movie is some William Shatner film. I was pretty shocked to see it in widescreen considering the package was only $5.00.

The 2nd way is on the 'Legends of the West' 8 Movie Collection. I'm pretty sure that's widescreen as well.

Slow movie that drags on.

The theme song repeats all the way throughout the movie. Don't remember if there was more than one actual song played throughout it's entirety.

This movie is really only for Blaxploitation/Fred Williamson completests.

With the Civil War just ended a Union soldier by the name of "Joshua" (Fred Williamson) is looking forward to starting a new life and is on his way to meet his mother who had been staying with a young couple who are about to be married. Unfortunately, upon arriving there he learns that 5 men have killed his mother and abducted the young woman (played by Brenda Venus). Since the trail is still relatively fresh and the posse has abandoned the search Joshua decides to hunt down the murderers on his own. And none of these outlaws have ever faced anything so deadly. Now rather than reveal any more of this movie I will just say that it had a fairly interesting plot. However, the music played during several of the action scenes was rather annoying, the character development needed improvement and some of the scenarios lacked any sense of realism. To top it off, I didn't especially care for the ending either. In essence then, what should have been a pretty good Blaxploitation Western turned out to be slightly below average and I recommend it only to those who might be interested in a film of this sub-genre.

JOSHUA: THE BLACK RIDER (3 outta 5 stars) I am almost tempted to give this movie 5 out of 5 stars because it is almost perfect in its simplicity... a western movie can't get much more straight-forward than this: a man's mother is killed... and he spends the rest of the movie tracking and killing the men who did it. But, really, the acting is kind of poor and the direction is uninspired. There isn't really much dialogue so you can't say the script was well-done. Also, the movie is kind of slow... but personally I don't usually count that as a flaw... I *like* movies that take their time. Fred Williamson plays the title character... the bounty hunter bent on revenge for his mama's demise. The bad guys kidnap a woman along the way and rape her a few times but by the movie's end she has inexplicably allied herself with one of her assailants. Practically the entire soundtrack of this movie is a 90 second piece of faux-spaghetti-western music that gets repeated again and again and again... towards the end of the movie it almost becomes comical when that same old theme is repeated yet again. I think you need to *really* be a fan of westerns to like this one.. otherwise you are probably going to be bored beyond belief.

This really isn't as bad as the other review makes it sound. It does have a simple plot, and actually moves along fairly quick. Not much time is spend on any sort of character development, but we've all seen these types of characters in every other western anyhow. It's true that there is not a lot of dialog from Fred Williamson, but his character (Joshua) is a lone cowboy sneaking along quietly through the desert. What would he say? And to who? The film has a real nice gritty Italian look to it and its starkness works fairly well with the story. It's not going to be the greatest movie you've ever seen but it's interesting enough to watch once. I saw this on DVD which was made for a letter boxed version. They didn't shrink the image or pan and scan etc. So sometimes the picture is cut off a little. It was slightly annoying to watch.

Someone, even if the star of the film Williamson himself, should have never allowed this film to reach the public with the simplistic kindergarten theme song played in the opening credits as well as various times through the film. No one would be expecting the music editor to make a monumental catchy theme along the lines of the Bonanza theme or Issac Hayes' Shaft. With such a humble production, the task of the music department would be to merely stay out of the way and not detract from the overall end product. Unfortunately, the music in this film fails miserably and detracts from any momentum that the average acting gains. Williams is pretty good in the lead role and his stoic approach is in tune with the Western gunslinger theme. A prologue showing Abraham Lincoln's picture is mumbled and difficult to hear so seeing as it doesn't add to the film it should have been left out all together. Williamson appears to struggle at times on the horse, having to kick it too many times then winding up with his hat falling around his neck and sending him bobbing too harshly. The real sin here remains the theme song. With three seconds of effort my "Anty Up, Black horse, black hat, black rider...cowboy...Whew Whew" "Move along Black hat, black horse, black rider, go go " would be annoying, but less so than the instrumental that was settled for. Also it is not as if 1975 did not have a dearth of talent to make a worthy theme at a low budget price. While Quincy Jones and Stevie Wonder would be unaffordable, an even exchange of exposure for talent could have been worked out with someone like Billy Preston, Bob Grusin or Randy Crawford churning out a passable theme track.