Buck and the Preacher (1972)

The Worst Film Ever

Fantastic!

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

For a while into the movie I thought it might be an all-Black cast Western but that changed when the night riders showed up. There actually was a series of all-Black Westerns back in the late Thirties starring cowboy crooner Herb Jeffries, who's singing sounded as good as guys like Gene Autry. My favorite Jeffries flick is "Two Gun Man From Harlem" but I haven't seen them all yet. One name I was surprised to catch in this film's credits was that of Clarence Muse as the old black fortune teller Cudjo. He had a lot of roles portraying dignified black characters in the Thirties and Forties, and since I brought it up I had to take a look, but he didn't appear in any pictures with Herb Jeffries.Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte team up in this one following a less than friendly first impression between their characters. Poitier is wagon master Buck, leading freed black slaves across the West to destinations they might call home following the end of the Civil War. Preacher Willis Oaks Rutherford is more of an opportunist than a Man of God, but he did have the Bible thing down pretty well when he needed it. Who was going to argue with the Reverend of the High and Low Order of the Holiness Persuasion Church.As a revisionist Western this one works to show a different side of the Old West experience though it doesn't set any new standards by my estimation. The inclusion of the Indian tribe on the side of the black settlers was an interesting element, helping them out in the final shoot out against the night riders even after stating they wouldn't get involved. After that, the wagon settlers make it to a fertile land completing their Westward trek, but done in such an abrupt fashion that one wonders if the ending had any kind of thought put into it.

There's a combination of tragedy and triumph here as Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte combine their light-hearted personalities into emotional drama with this story of two men who, at first on opposite sides of the spectrum, find a common cause in fighting against bigotry. Poitier is a former Northern soldier who has been helping newly freed slaves go west with little help from the vigilantes hired by plantation owners in getting what they still believe their property back so they can continue living "their right way of life". The vigilantes are horrible white men who have no qualms in destroying an entire camp, killing men, women and children, in their efforts to scare these people back into slavery. It is almost like a modernized version of "The Ten Commandments" in that sense, with this group of men the equivalent of Edward G. Robinson's Dathan, and Moses being seen in the forms of Buck and his reluctant partner, a traveling preacher who initially agreed to be informer for the white vigilantes.There's a lot to like about this moving drama with a western setting, and when Ruby Dee, as Poitier's long-suffering wife, reveals how she longs to raise her children far away from even any memory of slavery, you really feel what the millions of slaves must have felt after they were allegedly freed but could not get what was promised to them, still facing adversity for decades after the end of the civil war. Poitier and Belafonte make such a great team and give such a light-hearted performance that at times, it doesn't seem like they are acting. There's a lot of sadness in the light-hearted structure of the story, including the attacks on the innocent people striving to find a new land and their dealings with the Native Americans who are fighting their own struggle against the racist white men determined to steal everything from these people that they can get their hands on. Nita Talbot, usually comical as an Eve Arden type wise-cracker, plays serious here as a madam, and Cameron Mitchell out-does the villainy he had played decades earlier in "Carousel" with a character so vile that you can't wait to see him dispatched.

I just saw this movie for the first time on Turner Classic Movies tonight. I had heard about it, but missed it. It's just another shoot-'em-up horse opera, but this time with a difference. It's one of the only westerns ever made that is a story about black people in the Old West, with black actors in the lead roles. Harry Belafonte is excellent as the Preacher. Sidney Poitier is also very good, and although the story contains the full compliment of standard cowboy movie clichés---shoot-outs, posse chases, bank robberies, whining ricochet sounds, etc.---, it's very entertaining. The vast majority of Hollywood westerns are exclusively white, and feature virtually no black people at all. Indians are almost always featured as pidgin-speaking cigar-store cartoon characters, with white actors usually in the speaking parts. Some idiot composer came up with the pounding tom-toms, descending minor theme music played by trombones and low brass whenever Indians come into the picture. It's unbelievable how ridiculous this music is. Hollywood has a lot to answer for in its racist treatment of minorities throughout its early history, which has never been fully addressed. So it's great to see a western like Buck and The Preacher that is different. As a result, it's a lot better than your average western, even though it milks the same old clichés.

I don't understand how someone could classify this film as a "comedy". It did have it's comedic moments, but no more than any other Western or Drama. Then that false comment ends up on the front page of the IMDb? Weird. This was a first rate Western by any standard. At a time when Hollywood had no interest in making such films. Blaxploitation films and comedies were the rules of the day. Poitier makes a great cowboy and fine director here. I suspect the reason this film is/was not more popular is that there were so few good guys of the White persuasion. The one fair and honest White man was the town Sheriff, who was quickly killed off by another White man for this very reason.