The Legend of Nigger Charley (1972)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

This is a review of "The Legend of N***er Charley", "The Soul of N***er Charley" and "Boss N***er", a loose trilogy of films set in the pre-Civil War South and starring Fred Williamson as N***er Charley, a runaway slave. The first film, directed Martin Goldman, finds Charley as a plantation slave who kills his master and goes on the run. He teams up with Amos, another ex slave, and spends much of the film dodging bullets, evading bounty hunters and shooting caricatures, all dumb, racist white guys. The film ends with Charley heading further out West, desperate to find some peace and live as a free man. Released at the height of the blaxploitation craze, in the wake of surprise hit "Shaft" and almost a decade before "Roots" (where "black" suddenly went "mainstream" and "prestige"), "Legend" turned out to be one of the highest grossing movies of 1972. A sequel, "Soul of N***er Charley", quickly followed.The best of the series, "Soul" finds Charley as a near-mythical folk hero, a muscular black man who fights for right and has no qualms smashing the faces of racist white guys. The plot concerns Charley's battles with a Southern Colonel who oversees his own private slave trade, exporting slaves to Mexico where they're beaten and forced to work for a colony of Southern aristocrats.The final film in the series, "Boss", was released in 1974, at the tail end of various civil rights and black power movements. Like its predecessors, its aesthetic is an absurd mix of action, exploitation, Italian Opera, western, comedy, race baiting, casual vulgarity and mid century urban nihilism. Like all the Charley films, and most blaxploitation films in general, the film isn't racially progressive, isn't a celebration of racial pride, but is rather a kind of vile, venting of black rage on white figures of power. Organizations like the NAACP and various black civil rights activists actively fought against the blaxploitation "movement", considering these films racist at worst, at best detrimental to efforts toward equality. In truth, the films were largely no more dumb than the "positive image" films (usually with Sidney Poitier as an upstanding black guy who schools racist whites) associated with the Black liberation film movements of the 1960s. Blaxploitation simply substituted angelic, gentlemanly blacks with violence, degeneracy, sex and escapist race bashing. It turned condescension into a kind of empowered irreverence. Both approaches attracted millions, but were equally dopey, putting forth fantastically unrealistic solutions to genuine problems, misunderstanding the systemic causes of racism and glorifying either the loutish elements of the black community or pandering to white ideas of what a "good black man should be". Virtually all these films were produced, directed, financed or green-lit by whites, for whom the dollar was always the bottom line. If more blood and nudity sold more tickets, then so be it. Story be damned. It would be almost a decade before black directors like Charles Burnett and Spike Lee came on the scene.Today "blaxploitation" is an adjective. In the 70s it was a pejorative. Blacks, of course, were for a long while demonised in cinema. DW Griffith is the poster-boy for early Hollywood racism, with his Ku Klux loving "Birth of a Nation" and a bevy of other films ("One Exciting Night") which set in stone a series of racist caricatures. Ironically, Griffith's "Birth" was released the same year as "Darktown Jubilee", the first all black film with major roles for black actors. Today "Jubilee's" been lost. But from it you can trace a gradual relaxing of racist attitudes, until you reach Jules Dassin's "Uptight", 1970's "Cotton Comes" and two influential satires by Melvin Van Peebles, "Watermelon Man" and "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song". From these four films, blaxploitation would be born. Before directing "Song", Melvin suffered severe disillusionment with Hollywood, fled to France, became radicalised and spent some time drifting in a desert. With "Song" he actively set out to "undermine Hollywood's view of the world". But while the film did cause stirs – it was endorsed by the Black Panthers, it fired up radicals, got attached to polemical manifestos, was celebrated as a "new" type of avant grade expression, was predicted to launch a "cinematic revolution" - the political and cinematic shake-up people expected didn't happen. Instead, Hollywood, recognising that there was now money to be made off black audiences, began bankrolling a plethora of black movie projects, most of which were blood and guts action (and sex) movies high on juice and short of substance. Any threat that Van Peebles may have posed was soon nullified. This led to term "blaxploitation"; blacks for bucks.Like most exploitation films, the Charley series is explicitly about revenge. Revenge against slave masters, businessmen, sheriffs and white folk in general. "We've got us some more whites to catch!" is Charley's catchphrase, as he struts about to funk and disco tunes, acts cool, has casual sex and perforates dumb whites. Two of the rare masterpieces in this genre are Pontecorvo's "Burn!" and Jacopetti's "Farewell Uncle Tom". Both are by Italian directors and predate the American blaxploitation movement, which was heavily influenced by trashy Italian B movies, westerns, grind-house and Kung Fu. Because of their unique historical position, partaking of fascism but not scapegoated into petrification to the extent that Germany was, Italian film-makers tend to consistently approach issues like slavery and the Holocaust with rare skill.Quentin Tarantino has made a career out of exploiting exploitation movies. He's done Kung Fu with "Kill Bill", blaxploitation with "Jackie Brown" ("Across 110th street", "Sheba Baby", "Foxy Brown", "Coffy"), American pulp with "Pulp" and Naziploitation with "Basterds". His "Django Unchained" seems ready to pillage Corbucci's "Django", the Charley movies, "Mandingo" and "Farewell Uncle Tom".5/10 - Worth no viewings.

Just watched a muddy copy of this on YouTube. Fred Williamson plays the title character whose ailing master sets him free but gets sold before he could leave so he's now in pursuit along with D'Urville Martin and Don Pedro Colley for killing his new abusive master. He and his two associates also kill some other white men of which many were trying to bilk a farmer and his half-breed wife. Oh, and yes, this half-breed gets to lock lips with Williamson. Ooh, yeah! Then there's this crazy old man named Shadow (Thomas Anderson) also claiming to be half-Indian but we find out different later on. In summation, The Legend of N!gger Charlie has some good action scenes but the story is all over the place and the dialogue can sometimes get real monotonous. So on that note, it's at least worth a look.

Let's try to remember what this movie was all about. It was about making money to line the studio's pocket so that the could make more important movies. It was not well written or well directed, which accounts for the almost high school like performances from some of the actors. This movie was made give African Americans one more hero to root for during a time when Hollywood was cranking out African American heroes in order to: 1.Satisfy the demand by Black viewers to see faces that they could relate to, 2. TO MAKE MONEY, because the film industry knows that African Americans are probably the greatest consumers in the country and we will buy the tickets, the videos and DVD's, if we like what we see. (If you disagree, just look at some of the buddy films from the late 90's up to today) All of that is to say "The Legend of Nigger Charley" was a below average blaxploitation movie that could have been a much better movie, given the genre and the subject, if the filmmakers had taken the time. As far as the title is concerned, aren't we being a little naive? Let's remember the setting--post civil war America. Let's remember the Jim Crow attitudes of America at that time. A western about escaped slaves roaming the west called, "The Legend of African-American Charley" just doesn't have the same ring to it. Let's also remember, especially those of us offended by the "N"word, that here in the 21st century the "N" word is applied by African Americans in reference to African Americans more than any other ethnic group in America. So while the movie's title doesn't make it any better, we sure shouldn't be shocked. In short, I'd watch the movie again and would put it in my library if I could get a copy.

I saw this seldom seen film back when it first came out in theaters back in 1972. I was about eight years old at the time when my parents took me to see this film at the local drive-in theatre(when they had a lot of them back in the day),and this was on a double bill with another blaxploitation flick as well....The Jim Brown action vehicle from 1972 called "Slaughter". Speaking of the title of the film,and from the previous comment that was mentioned here is this,the key word here is not the word "legend",but the main word,and in the theatre marque is the word "n*gger". This film sparked of lot of controversy when it first came out and it really shocked me when I first saw it myself with my parents at the drive-in theatre where it was playing,and again years later during a screening of this picture on a college campus during a discussion session of the blaxploitation period in Black Cinema during the month of February...around the time of Black History Month. And after all these years,why hasn't this movie been out on either video or DVD? For one,this film will never see the light of day on any video store shelf or for that manner anywhere no time soon,due to the powers that be and the board of administration of the NAACP and several other organizations,that called this film "totally racist and replusive at the level". Reason,the people who distribute this film,and its producers at the time this film was being made,especially from fame Italian/Hollywood producer Dino DeLaurentiis and the studio executives at Paramount Pictures,which released the distribution rights to this film. Paramount will never released this film on video,since it does have the title of the word "n*gger" in the name of this film,henceforth to its other title,"The Legend of Black Charley" or its other title too: "The Revenge of Black Charley",will never be released. The only way you will get to see this classic blaxploitation film is through either on a college campus during a screening of this during a film criticism class or through various other places,during private screenings.Even though this is one blaxploitation film that does have no redeeming value since for all the violence that it endures throughout,and the use of the "N" word along with the stereotyping of minorities and excessive scenes,I never could understand why this film ended up with a "PG" rating at the time of its release,which came out in 1972. The film stars former NFL great/blaxploitation cinema king Fred "Hammer" Williamson as the title character of Charley,a slave who gets beaten too many times by his sadistic master who escapes,and becomes a violent wild west outlaw,and gunslinger,who is feared and despised by every white man in his path. And why not? Once he is loose and on the warpath, Charley gets his revenge on every white man who is out to get him. Once Charley has the upper hand and his revenge,he proves to be just as psychotic,sadistic,and down-right brutal as was his former masters. Even towards the end of the film,Charley gets even with his former master,who was out to killed him,but does Charley gets his freedom? Like hell he does. It may have been outdated now,but this movie pervaded of lot of African-Americans when it came out,especially when it appeals to let's get even in 1.5 hours for 400 years of depression. Hence the title of the movie.The sequel,"The Soul Of Black Charley",was released by producer Dino DeLaurentiis and distributed by Paramount Pictures in 1973. Again hence the title of the word,"n*gger",in the 4th word of the title,and this time around it pervaded of lot of African-Americans again,and when this movie came out it sparked a lot of protest in the theaters,and gain some controversy from the folks at the NAACP and other organizations. And to this day,its sequel will never see the light of day on either video or DVD,despite the title of the film and the pervaded folks who raise hell about it:hence the title of the movie. And also,the only way you will see this too is on the college circuit during screenings of films that were made for discussion not to mention the private screenings at certain places,and on the college courses that have film criticism certaining Black Cinema. Hence the year 1973,when this film was released and the sparks that flew from black leaders when this came out.Again,the sequel brings back Fred Williamson as Charley and this time around he is on the loose and got some of his runaway slave buddies(or in the tagline "SOUL BROTHERS")with him to settle the score,and they better watch out! This time around there is enough excessive violence and profanity and racial words around to fill the void and not to mention it basically stereotypes minorities,especially when it concerns African-Americans and Native Americans(The American Indian). Some of the scenes in this film were in fact very graphic in parts and some were just hilarious,hence of all the violence that occurs and the strict "R" rating it received when it was shown in theaters. The sequel is not that good,but still it was grand entertainment all around.