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Three the Hard Way (1974)

Dir: Gordon Parks Jr.

When a friend is murdered in mysterious circumstances and his girlfriend Wendy (Sheila Frazier) kidnapped, kick ass record producer Jimmy Lait (Jim Brown) enlists the help of three old friends, Jagger Daniels (Fred Williamson) and Mister Keyes (Jim Kelly) to get Wendy back and get some answers.

They discover that a White supremacist cult leader named Feather (Jay Robinson) has teamed up with mad scientist Dr. Fortrero (Richard Angalrola) and is planning on killing the entire Black population of America by putting a racial DNA specific toxin in the water supply of all major cities…..

 

Gordon Parks Jr.(son to Gordon Parks of "Shaft" fame) managed to complete only four films before his untimely death in a plane crash in 1979. One of these was the gritty Blaxploitation classic “Superfly” in 1972 and then two years later this long time fan favourite (often sort but available only on old, mostly TV version edits, VHS releases) that leaves the grit behind and replaces it with a comic strip action/spy movie sensibility.

The rather sedate opening, where the ill-fated friend of Jim Brown escapes from a mysterious compound, owes more to ‘James Bond’ than anything else but Parks does manage to get in one shocking moment when we see a room where the corpses of Black males have been dumped on tables. This scene certainly shows the movie’s amusingly hardcore attitude to how ‘The Man’ treats Black Americans.

This opening leads into the opening credits, and a disappointingly less than funky, slushy, ballad, as we are introduced to Brown’s Jimmy Lait, a very unlikely record producer (real singing group ‘The Impressions’ play his current musical project and provide some pretty nifty tunes throughout the movie), as he meets up with his badly injured friend.
And this less then thrilling opening leads into more foreboding towards the film as we are now given a rather silly plot-hole thanks to the fact his wounded friend is foolishly shown to be very alert and talkative in the car, as Brown takes him to hospital, and yet it seems he does not say anything about what is going on (despite almost dying to get this information out!) and instead waits to do so as he lies in a comatose, barely understandable, state in the hospital and thus fails to relay all the details.

Indeed this opening shows that, despite the three famous lead actors, this is ultimately Jim Brown's film as he is the only one personally involved in the kidnap plot and his is the only character even seen on screen for the first 25 minutes until Fred Williamson shows up when Brown gets him to help.
As always Williamson oozes hard ass cool and attitude.

A few minute later and we have Jim Kelly's introductory fight scene (with some corrupt Cops) and sadly it’s pretty poor with some badly pulled punches and obvious near miss ‘impacts‘.
These weak aspects sadly continue for most of the film as far as Kelly’s fights go and the lack of ‘strike’ sound effects (always OTT but always effective in conveying a hit) also really hurt the fights as far as their impact goes.
These sound effects, although they were very 70’s Hong Kong Kung Fu movie in execution, really helped sell Kelly's fights in "Black Belt Jones" (and even "Enter the Dragon") and as such it seems to show that Park's had sadly little or no idea how to shoot martial arts scenes.
At least Kelly is given a superbly monikered character though as his actual first name is indeed ‘Mister’! Because, we learn, "Mamma wanted people to show me respect".

Thankfully though Brown and Williamson (Brown toting a shotgun, Williamson favouring a handgun... and cigar!) are given some nice and ballsy action scenes with a pretty violent arcade shootout (the film has a few good blood squibs) really helping to keep the movie’s action energy flowing at this point..

Another big plus are some fine vehicle stunts/chases thanks to legendary stunt coordinator /director Hal Needham.
Myriad cars and trucks are thrown off buildings, crashed through advertising hoardings, and driven off roads and all end in some great, huge, utterly comic strip, explosions.

A one-off moment of brilliance, away from the gun action and car carnage, comes in the form of three women bikers who our heroes use to get information from a prisoner.
Sadly though their initial impact is marred by some straight ahead bad film making as the film never even tries to hide the fact that the 'female' bikers, when they first appear riding through the streets, are in fact men!
Not only is their build and shape obviously masculine but you can clearly see one of the men's faces (the 'Blue' biker) through his tinted visor as he rides directly in front of the camera.
And worse, although it's clear he's a big white guy, this 'Blue' rider character is later revealed to be a busty Black woman!

The women themselves though are certainly a great creation though .
They're topless S&M torture sirens who like what they do, hate those they do it too, and go all out to pleasure themselves at their victim's expense.
They’re a wonderful, 100% pure, Exploitation aspect of the movie and the shot of them standing on the balcony (after doing their 'thing' to the captive), with black leather trousers shining and their breasts drenched in glistening sweat, is memorable indeed and the sight of this once arrogant, racist, murderer cowing in the corner and weeping (in his underwear) after the women have finished with him is just a great crowd pleasing moment.

Another enjoyable aspect of the movie is the camp as hell pseudo-Nazi militia, with Jay Robinson giving a great performance as the nutty leader in a turn that must have been an influence on Henry Gibson’s comedic Nazi cult leader in “The Blue’s Brothers”.
This mocking attitude to the White supremacists is shown best when they hold their amazingly lame and polite 'victory' celebration dance during the finale where they play the wimpiest 'White dudes ain't got no rhythm' music you could ever hope to hear.

This finale really delivers the fun action hokum as well.
As well as being naff at partying the supremacists are also truly awful shots and our heroes simply mow down huge groups of them often while standing in the open (in Williamson's case standing in the open smoking a big cigar) and again, although there are a few mildly bloody bullet hits, this is mostly just large groups of guys randomly falling down as our heroes swish their guns back and forth. Once more, not so much gritty Blaxploitation action as comic strip, 'James Bond', style action. Especially when we figure in Jim Brown's exploding bullets.

So we have lots of varied action scenes and stunt sequences, a smattering of exploitation and violence and a great cast of legendary Black actors (even if Kelly is not shown in as good a light as he was in his previous films).
But we also have a few technically slipshod moments and some dubious plotting and ultimately “Three the Hard Way” is pure comic strip hokum with little or no Black 'urban reality' aspects of the pure Blaxploitation films and indeed only the main 'kill all the Blacks’ plot and the bad ass attitude of the three lead characters move this into any kind of 'Black Cinema' category as at it's heart this is simply an any skin colour, comic strip, spy/action film.
But luckily, for the most part, it’s a damn entertaining one!

 

A note on the recent, long awaited, DVD release.

Give praise that this is the full, uncut, ‘R’ rated print that has the odd violent moment and that essential ‘Three lethal women’ nudity intact.
Sadly, this DVD release does suffer at least one (none violent/sexual) scene deletion though thanks to a rights issue over the Curtis Mayfield songs originally on the soundtrack (‘The Impressions’ tracks are all intact though).
The missing scene (after Kelly’s introduction) results in a very abrupt and badly done jump-cut that sees our heroes getting into a car before we suddenly jump to them arriving at a garage and going straight into an action scene.