Review: Boss

Fred Williamson and D’Urville Martin are opportunistic bounty hunters Boss and Amos, who arrive at a New Mexico town called San Miguel. San Miguel is without a sheriff and mostly full of racist and/or cowardly white folk, including the a-hole mayor (R.G. Armstrong). However, the town is being run over by a band of nasty outlaws led by the hateful Jed Clayton (William Smith, natch), so Boss manages to talk the corrupt mayor into appointing him sheriff, with Amos his deputy. They soon implement a bunch of stringent rules, that seem to involve hefty fines that fill their coffers. Use of the ‘N word’, for instance comes at a hefty price. Meanwhile, Jed and his men are told what’s going on by a certain member of the township, and decide to come to town and meet this new black sheriff. That’s just fine though, because Boss has Jed in his sights anyway. Don ‘Red’ Barry plays the local doctor, with Barbara Leigh a local school marm whom Boss gets to know during his stay.

 

I’m gonna go ahead and just call this one “Boss”. If you’re curious as to its other title (and I’m not talking about “Black Bounty Killer”, I’m talking about the other title it has) head on over to IMDb. Yeah, that’s legit what it’s also known as. So sorry, Fred. I know you’re the one who came up with that title and I know why, but I’m gonna have to clean it up a little for 2020. Heading in to this 1975 Jack Arnold western with the unused-by-me title, I was expecting something angry, reactionary, violent, exploitative, and probably not much fun even for a blaxploitation fan like me. What I actually got from Arnold (director of two of the greatest B-movies in cinematic history: “Creature from the Black Lagoon” and “The Incredible Shrinking Man”) and screenwriter-star Williamson is surprisingly enough a fairly light-hearted western with occasional comedy touches that really wouldn’t look too out of place on a double bill with either “Blazing Saddles” or “Skin Game”. I actually liked this one quite a bit, even if it’s not the laugh riot of “Blazing Saddles” nor a great western in the league of “The Magnificent Seven” or “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”. It’s just a solid, fun B-western with some rather nasty racial themes sprinkled in there as well. And a title song that rather cheerfully uses the N-word throughout. Crude or not, I gotta admit the song is pretty dang cool (It’s a ‘reclaiming and re-purposing of the word’ kind of deal here I guess). I loved hearing 70s funk/soul music in a western for a change, the score by Leon Moore (strangely his sole film score credit) is funky as hell.

 

Black-clad, cigar-chompin’ Williamson cuts an undeniably cool figure in this, and he gives one of his more commanding and assured performances. Whilst Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor, and Cleavon Little lampooned racist white people in “Blazing Saddles” the year before, Williamson just straight up slaps the fuck out of racist ‘whitey’ here. You’d expect nothing less from the Blaxploitation era. However, I actually found his sidekick/partner D’Urville Martin to be the scene-stealer. Martin supplies the majority of the comedy in this one, he’s hilarious. He and ‘Hammer’ definitely make for a fun duo here. They’re backed by a pretty terrific cast, especially veteran mean ‘ol bastards R.G. Armstrong and William Smith as the easy-to-hate villains. Arnold certainly gives Armstrong more to chew on here than Williamson himself did with his own directorial effort “Mean Johnny Barrows” (an otherwise underrated film). You know Williamson’s in trouble the moment you find out that Armstrong is the local mayor. And that’s before Armstrong opens his mouth to talk about ‘feathering’. A mixture of Jack Palance and Burt Reynolds, big William Smith owns the screen the moment he turns up, though you need to wait quite a while for that ownership to begin. The only dud performance here comes from Barbara Leigh, who is really quite terrible. Somehow I don’t think she was cast for her acting ability but even then she’s still somehow worse than you expect. Outside of her, the only issue I have with the film is one of pacing. A little too laidback perhaps, it lags from time to time for a film that is ultimately concerned with violent conflict.

 

I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a western-comedy, but this is definitely a fairly light-hearted endeavour, albeit one with very racist characters. I think its original title is a little too incendiary and crass for an otherwise relatively standard western. Well-acted for the most part, especially by D’Urville Martin, and quite a solid western overall. I was surprised to enjoy this one as much as I did, actually.

 

Rating: B-