The Black 6

Made during director Matt Cimber's dive into the blaxploitation trend of the early 70s along with LADY COCOA and THE CANDY TANGERINE MAN, this film tries to resurrect the dead corpse of the biker film genre by using a black cast and racial conflict melodramatics and having them battle a gang of racist white bikers. This same concept was done much better a couple years earlier in THE BLACK ANGELS. Obviously intended to be enjoyed by black audiences, the Black Six gang are decent people who only become violent when provoked. The white biker gang are just one-dimensional thugs and murderers. It's all rather tame and dull throughout and only enjoyable for the outdated fashions and funky theme music.

This is another blaxploitation biker film hybrid which sources its main actors from a bunch of off-season American football players - is this a thing?! Anyway, with that in mind, the acting is diabolical with the least-bad actor returning to his Southern hometown to find out who killed his brother. He is accompanied by his biker gang - The Black Six! This one sure is ropey, with badly staged fight scenes and an ultra-daft sequence where the Black Six literally pull a building down for a laugh. It has a funky theme song and any scene with The Six riding around on their bikes is invariably accompanied by it. The ending is...inconclusive.

The black six is a standard blacksploitation movie enhanced by the cast of all star football players. The black six mentioned in the title are a rough gang of bikers just back from vietnam looking for nothing but a good time and brotherly love. Yet, they are met with strife and problems. It seems that everywhere they go they are judged because of the color of their skin. The leader of the groups brother is killed and they have finally had enough of the oppression so they finally fight back. The black six are succesful in defeating their foes and the oppression ends. Mysteriously, the movie ends with them fighting and the screen sends an ominous message out to all of those that are thinking about bullying around others in the future "look out honky, hassle a brother and the black six will return."

The Black Six isn't the greatest movie around but what do you rate it against ? There aren't that many black biker movies around. The Black angels would be slightly better and movies like JC and the one with Motown singer Marvin Gaye only featured black actors. As a Black Biker movie in the genre its pretty good , and as a movie its good enough ! Actually its quite enjoyable most of the time and the action at the end makes it more or less well worth it and a great climax. The soundtrack is good funky stuff and the title song is absolutely amazing ! I don't know if the song "The Black Six" was ever released on 45 but the stylus would have a pretty hard job of staying in the groove as it would be dancing all over the place.

The movie is basically about a white girl and a black guy who fall in love. The white girls brother is in a motor bike gang and is a racist and he and his buddies kill the black guy. The Black six are six decent but no nonsense black ex army buddies who ride together . Also the guy who was killed by the racist bikers is the brother of one of the six. So its the revenge thing here with some adventure on the way. And an amazing climax and the end of the movie. Great action !

The Black 6 (1973)

** (out of 4)

Blaxploitation flick about a black kid who is killed by a white motorcycle gang after they catch him with a white woman. Soon after his brother Bubba (Gene Washington) shows up with his five friends to get to the bottom of the crime and soon realize that they're going to have to take down quite a few honky's. THE BLACK 6 isn't a classic movie in the same field as THE DEFIANT ONES but who in their right mind is going to come into this thing expecting greatness? If you're looking for an ultra-cheap, silly and poorly made film that at least keeps you entertained then this here offers that. Again, there's no question that the film doesn't offer up anything of real quality but if that's what you're expecting then it's best to just stay away to begin with. The film's big point to get people to watch it is that the six black guys are all played by NFL players with the two biggest names being Joe Greene and Mercury Morris who most people will know from being on ESPN each year whenever the last undefeated team finally loses a game and protects his Dolphins only perfect season. None of the six NFL players can act but this really doesn't take anything away from the picture. The other motorcycle gang really can't act either so I guess you could say that everyone is on a level playing field. I really thought the story here was pretty predictable and it's certainly nothing we haven't seen before yet it kept me interested in the characters and there's no doubt that the six bikers were fun to watch. There's a very funny sequence towards the start of the picture where the six black guys are taking care of an elderly white woman, which I'm sure was meant to show that they didn't hate white people, just the ones that harmed them. This is followed up by another funny scene where a racist couple refuses to serve them so they literally tear down the building. THE BLACK 6 isn't as bad as its reputation as long as you go into it not expecting it to be something it's not.