Joshua (1976)

Best movie of this year hands down!

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Fred Williamson also authored the story and wrote the screenplay for this Western vehicle for himself. He plays the title character, a black man who fought for the Union side during the Civil War. He travels to the homestead where his mother (Kathryn Jackson, "The Black Godfather") has been a maid for a frontier family. Unfortunately, an outlaw gang has just been there. They've killed his mom and made off with the ranchers' wife (Brenda Venus, "Foxy Brown"). Naturally, he relentlessly stalks them, aiming to kill them one at a time in the name of vengeance.Produced and directed by Larry G. Spangler ("The Life and Times of Xaviera Hollander"), this is neither very good nor very bad. It's a rather middle-of-the-road film with competent but undistinguished filmmaking. The scenery looks reasonably good as shot in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio, but you can tell this was still done on a budget. The music by Mike Irwin is fairly decent, but also repetitive. The Hammers' story is very simple and straightforward, and leads to a cynical ending. It's violent without being very gory, and poor Venus does get raped by the bad guys, although this *is* implied rather than explicitly shown on screen. The cast, overall, is nondescript, adequately filling out their roles but never amounting to much. Mexican superstar Isela Vega ("Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia") doesn't get a lot to work with, playing the good hearted woman who comes to Williamsons' aid at critical times. Ralph Willingham, in his only film role, is annoying as shrill old fart Weasel, a member of the gang.Taking everything into consideration, this is an okay viewing for a Hammer fan / completist, but it's absolutely nothing special.Six out of 10.

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.

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.