I'm so glad this was brought to my attention. While watching a documentary about the Minnesota Vikings, I learned about the interesting life of Carl Eller, and this movie came up. Needless to say, I had to watch it. From a genre viewpoint, it was a pretty standard Blaxploitation movie, but dang was it kinda funny.
The story is basically the saga of a peace loving biker club, who all happen to be comprised of some of the best football players in the NFL during this era of the early 70s. It was a nice time capsule so to speak, as there was strife in the NFL during this time and the players felt they were not being properly compensated. Only the best could live off the earnings of their NFL paychecks in those days, for many of those men had to get second jobs during the offseason. It only made sense to bring in some well built, hungry football players to portray a tough motorcycle club that was seeking answers for a mysterious death. The fact they got Mercury Morris, Willie Lanier, Eller, Gene Washington, Lem Barney and Mean Joe Green is quite amazing, considering the profile these players had during their time.
All of the tropes are there. Black man gets killed for dating a white woman, the brother of the man searches for answers in a nearly all white town, no one talks, some casual racism is spouted out, good guys battle racism, etc. There is nothing different about this film than from any others beyond the fact the good guys hilariously destroy a racist cafe owner's establishment. Trust me, that scene is gold.
My main critique is the end. Boy oh boy what the heck happened. It's clear they ran out of money, because even though it looked like our boys were going to get burnt and killed by the racist motorcycle gang, the movie just stops and basically tells us they won. How? Anyway, weird ending aside, it's a fun movie and worth checking out.
