Joshua

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.

Joshua (Fred Williamson) tracks the band of cutthroats who shot down his defenseless mother (not a good thing to do to a strong black man) through the desert and into an implicitly racist town where things really heat up.

Great location photography makes this low-budget blaxploitation/western look better than it's dollar figure would suggest.

This is a minimalist viewing experience where the story (like a silent picture) is told primarily in pictures with most of the sparse dialog inconsequential, which I think explains the mixed reviews.

Personally, I thought it was an okay movie but I'd wish that the filmmakers would have beefed up the script with more dramatics and emotions, playing up the racism in the town and forcing Williamson to fight to extract the despicable villains.

Also, It would have been nice to see a recognizable character actor (Aldo Ray or Cameron Mitchell anyone? Slim Pickens maybe?) as the heavy.

The repetitive score was a minus.

I remember seeing this movie years ago, and my memories of it were that it was a pretty decent western. So when I got the chance to see it again I took the opportunity. Sadly, time had faded the negative things about this movie.

To be sure, there are a few positive things I can say. Williamson is an imposing figure, dressed in black. The scenery, often covered in packs of snow, is impressive. Combining the scenery with the musical score makes for some haunting sequences.

But most of the movie doesn't work. To begin with, the characters. Williamson's character isn't well developed; he doesn't have that many chances to speak, or have an opportunity to make a character. The bad guys are even thinner characters, all of them seemingly alike.

There is also a lot of poor direction. Take the scene with the rattlesnake, for instance. There should be some tension and suspense with such a deadly animal, but there is NO feeling at all! It's presented in the dullest way possible, a feeling that keeps coming up in the rest of the movie.

Although some of the music is haunting, the low budget of the movie means that the same bars of music are played over and over, which becomes annoying. But a bigger problem (and the main problem I had with the movie) is that this movie is VERY slow and padded. Although it runs only about 82 minutes, a good chunk of this could easily been taken out with a snappier pace and some wise editing. Though this would probably resulted in a running time not qualifying for a feature-length movie.

One last thing I would like to bring up: The pan-and-scanning of this widescreen movie is TERRIBLE. You can't properly read the opening and closing credits, and when there is more than one character on screen, one of them is often cut off (sometimes ALL of the characters are chopped offscreen!) This movie needs to be seen in its full widescreen glory, but since the movie is now in the public domain, it seems very unlikely anyone would spend the expense to release this movie on DVD restored.

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.

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.