It's interesting to note that as the general of this black power movement becomes determined to start "The Black Gestapo", his face turns bright red, almost like a devil. You certainly can understand the anger that the Watts community feels to white mobsters extorting money from them and keeping them from making success in their own community. They won't live in peace until these mobsters are taken care of, but then they turn around and become just as bad, possibly even worse than what they had before. The point of film makes is well intended. The execution of it however isn't at all well done. It's crude, tasteless, one-dimensional from both sides for the most part, and definitely agenda driven. I've seen a dozen or so of these blaxploitation films of the 1970's, and most of them had a fairness in showing a mixture of races fighting for equality and not in a way that was pandering.
The violence shows no mercy, some sequences truly repulsive to even imagine. The acting is even worse with everybody screaming, thinking that it's emoting. The filming is even worse. It looks like the most wretched of 60's drive-in movies, barely watchable with its tinny sound and blury photography. But the bottom line is it really serves no purpose other than for the filmmakers to unleash some anger and really do little to help any tensions that are out there. Watching it today is horrifying because the characters who start off simply trying to defend their hood end up being extreme hypocrites, bloodthirsty not just for revenge but for the sake of just seeing carnage wherever they can get it. All that it goes to prove is that a thug is nothing more than a stupid bully regardless of race, and the way it presents humanity in this film makes you wish we can hit a reset button. This is not entertainment.
The violence shows no mercy, some sequences truly repulsive to even imagine. The acting is even worse with everybody screaming, thinking that it's emoting. The filming is even worse. It looks like the most wretched of 60's drive-in movies, barely watchable with its tinny sound and blury photography. But the bottom line is it really serves no purpose other than for the filmmakers to unleash some anger and really do little to help any tensions that are out there. Watching it today is horrifying because the characters who start off simply trying to defend their hood end up being extreme hypocrites, bloodthirsty not just for revenge but for the sake of just seeing carnage wherever they can get it. All that it goes to prove is that a thug is nothing more than a stupid bully regardless of race, and the way it presents humanity in this film makes you wish we can hit a reset button. This is not entertainment.