Black Samson

Black Samson (1974)

Runtime: 88 minutes

Directed by: Charles Bail

Starring: Rockne Tarkington, William Smith, Connie Strickland, Carol Speed, Michael Payne

From: Omni Pictures

I finally have returned to the blaxploitation genre with this movie; the review of this average movie is below copied and pasted from Letterboxd:

I realize that in the past week I haven't done much on this site. It wasn't planned but I was preoccupied with other things. Well, things should be more back to normal now. I recently realized that it had been way too long since I had reviewed a blaxploitation film here so I decided to fix that last night by watching a pair of movies in the genre.

I've had this on disc for a long while and yet I did not watch it until now. Middling reviews were a reason why. Still, it was time for me to watch this tale of the title character (Rockne Tarkington), a large imposing character-although sadly deficient of charisma, despite what the movie may want you to believe-who runs a bar and is seen as a de facto leader of the neighborhood, who is strongly against drugs. Well, some evil white people want to drive him out and take over the area; the main bad guy is B-movie veteran William Smith, and he definitely has charisma to spare; he also plays a rather evil human being who is easy to hate with what he says and what he does. Really, that character and some supporting ones are more memorable and make up for the monotone performance of Tarkington as the lead.

The movie is average for the most part. A lot of things aren't too exciting. It seems like things don't get out of first gear for much of this. Sure there are funny moments, some wackiness and plenty of both racism and sexism, but it's only the final act that things pick up and it's mainly due to wackiness. What a gleefully absurd finale. At least it was nice to see a new (to me) genre entry and experience the usual tropes, from the urban setting and 70's cars to the hilarious fashion and the funky music, nicely provided here by legendary New Orleans musician Allen Toussaint.

Oh, and at Samson's bar-appropriately called Samson's-there's a LION on display. Yes, a real life jungle cat. Only, it doesn't do anything besides lay there, sleep, or mildly roar a few times. It doesn't attack or devour any of the villains, so what was the point of having it there? It's just set dressing.