Starring - Richard Lawson (Poltergeist, Sugar Hill), Annazette Chase (Truck Turner, The Mack), Philip Michael Thomas (The Wizard of Speed and Time, Wonder Woman)
Release Date - 1975
Genre - Action/Crime
Tagline - "You know where he's comin' from"
Format - DVD (Personal Collection) (Screener)
Rating (out of 5):
Horror fans in various Facebook groups often ask me and other blaxploitation fans why we like those films so much. This is a question I have asked myself hundreds of times and I usually come back to the characters and the fight sequences. The cheesy fight sequences and larger than life characters always draw me in. As I work my way through the Soul Team Six box set I find myself looking at the next film in the set which is centered around a street fighter. The film, Black Fist, was released under the title Bogard in 1975 but the title wasn't black enough so it was retitled Black Fist to better fall in line with the Blaxploitation craze. 
The film follows Leroy Fisk (Lawson) who becomes a popular street fights for a mobster. When he makes a name for himself and starts drawing in huge paydays the mobster schemes with a cop to shake him down for money in order to earn back some of the profits Leroy was earning. Leroy figures out he is being shaken down and wants out of the game. He wins a big fight and takes the money to buy a club. This angers the mobster and they put a hit out on Leroy but mistakenly kill his pregnant wife instead. Now Leroy is pissed and will stop at nothing to kill the ones responsible for taking his bride and unborn from him.
I was hoping to get a blaxploitation flick with some heavy fighting and fun characters and Black Fist delivered. The film was action heavy and the story was not 100% predictable like many others. The acting in this one is better than most but still plenty of room for improvement. The characters are all fun, including the mobsters, but there is a few scenes that are pretty heavy that just don't have the impact one would think due to the casts' reactions. The story for this one is the textbook definition of Blaxploitation. Plenty of fighting, evil white mobsters, and a black character getting wronged before turning into a war machine. The film does have a few slower scenes but the story is strong enough to hold the viewer's attention through these. Finally, this is not a death heavy film. The focus of this one is the fight scenes which are far from perfect. They are prime example of 70s exploitation fight sequences and I fucking love it. Overall, Black Fist is not a perfect film but it's a damn near perfect Blaxploitation flick. It has action and some extremely entertaining characters. Check it out. 
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