Boss Nigger

Here we have a blaxploitation flik set in the Old West - complete with wa-chika-wa soundtrack, and a title theme that really should not be as catchy as it is. I mean, it's a pretty awkward social situation when someone catches you out in public singing "They call him Bo-oss .... Boss Niigaah" to yourself.

Anyway, Fred Williams does his usual thing, in the usual "stick it to Whitey" violence-filled gratification ritual. The only things really remarkable about it are the brazen title, the Old West setting, and the fact that it seems to have been going for the Guiness World Record for number of times the word "nigger" is said in a cinematic production. Unlike The Black Six, which we looked at here previously, the film doesn't shoot for any kind of deeper social insight - a grand total of two white people in the film are portrayed in a positive light, and one is a young woman who is first portrayed as naive and condescending, then terribly fascinated with "the dark meat". Outside of these two there is not one white person in the movie who is not rich, powerful, or just a stereotypical racist cracker asshole.

That said, this is the Old West and that probably was a fairly accurate situation. And I felt the actors actually played their roles pretty well, doing a believable representation of average folks of the period. The film actually looks like it had a surprisingly large budget for a blaxploitation flick - a lot of the supporting cast are recognizable as regular supporting cast from mainstream movies and TV shows of the 70's, and the cinematography and settings aren't too bad at all.

The problem is, once you get past all the "nigger" this is basically just a tedious and predictable formulaic revenge flick, taking cues from the whole Red Harvest-Yojimbo-Dollars Trilogy lineage but not executing anywhere near as well as any of those movies.

The movie seems happy to pander with cheap potshots at "the white devil", and never really goes beyond that in any significant way. Heaven forbid we examine how rich people have manipulated the working classes throughout the history of industrialization to pit them against each other on racial lines - no, it's easier just to blame anyone with white skin. Anyway, the 1970s soul/jive soundtrack is distracting given the setting, and while Fred Williams brings a certain badass presence that can recharge your Badass Meter if it is running low, everything else here is pretty mediocre fare.

One final point - for a blaxploit flick, it takes it surprisingly easy on gratuitous nudity and violence. There's no sex on screen and only one blurred-out rump as far as nekkid parts go. Whether that's a plus or not is up to you.