Review: Joshua

Fred Williamson plays the title character, a taciturn Civil War veteran out to avenge the death of his beloved mother (Kathryn Jackson), who worked for a rancher. The rancher’s home was beset by a gang of thugs (including a ham-fisted Ralph Willingham in his only screen credit as an old coot named Weasle), who in addition to killing poor momma, also kidnapped the rancher’s mail-order bride (Brenda Venus), whom they also rape. If there’s one thing you don’t ever do to Williamson, it’s mess with his momma! Didn’t these creeps ever see “Black Caesar”?

Fred ‘The Hammer’ Williamson’s ‘Po Boy Productions tended to offer little more than cheap, cynical so-called ‘entertainments’ (“Original Gangstas” and “Adios Amigo” weren’t bad, though), and this 1976 cheapo western directed by Larry G. Spangler (who directed Williamson in “The Soul of Nigger Charley” and “The Legend of Nigger Charley”) from a screenplay by star Williamson is no exception. Some might call this unoriginal film minimalist, I call it crap.

The funny thing is, former gridiron star Williamson’s contributions as writer and star are far from the worst things about the film. In fact, Williamson’s performance is fine, and I’ve certainly seen him give worse performances. He plays it rather grim, determined and akin to the Man With No Name kinds of roles in spaghetti westerns, mixed with the semi-‘good guy’ roles Lee Van Cleef occasionally played in spaghetti westerns (“For a Few Dollars More” comes to mind). The role doesn’t play to Williamson’s strengths (good humour and charisma), but he’s surprisingly good (Jim Brown would’ve knocked this role out of the park!). An amusing side note: The shoddy DVD version I saw of this film has an out-of-whack aspect ratio, rendering the opening credits unintelligible, all except for Hammer’s screenwriting credit! Anyway, the film’s pretty crummy, with director Spangler (who knows nothing about action or tension-building techniques) overdosing on zoom shots, and either the print is horribly aged or the cinematographer has simply done a terrible job at trying to present day-for-night footage in some scenes. It’s a shame, because the scenery looked as though it might have looked nice had there been more talent in the direction and photography. The score by Mike Irwin is a typically bad attempt at emulating Ennio Morricone (“The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”) with a John Carpenter (“Halloween”) electro/synth vibe. Epic fail, Mr. Irwin. The post-production looping might’ve been done by the actors themselves, but it’s so poorly done, it certainly doesn’t look to be the case.

There’s some merit in Williamson’s screenplay (though it’s curiously short on dialogue, even for the genre), especially with its seemingly anti-war sentiment and the characters of Joshua and his mother, but no one (especially the director) has any idea how to make a good movie out of this. It’s technically inept on just about every front. Apparently Isela Vega is a Mexican star, but she can’t act (she’s in good company here on that front, though, nearly everyone’s awful!), and doesn’t look Mexican. In fact, she looks like a young Kathleen Quinlan, if anything. Screechy-voiced Willingham, in a performance that suggests someone doing a bad impersonation of L.Q. Jones aping Gabby Hayes, shows us perhaps why he never appeared on screen again. Meanwhile, poor Brenda Venus is stuck in a role that hasn’t been properly thought out, probably the weakest aspect to Williamson’s screenplay. Is she supposed to have Stockholm Syndrome? Just adjusting as best she can to a bad situation? I bet even Hammer doesn’t know. The lack of originality in the script isn’t a problem for me (Though my synopsis might not suggest it, it’s a bit like “Once Upon a Time in the West” without the railroad or the epic scope), I mean there’s what, maybe three western plots out there that get reused, remade, and re-tooled?

Despite a little more effort than usual from Williamson, this is really uninspired, ineptly-filmed stuff that I doubt even Hammer’s fans would bother seeking out.

Rating: D+