cult film freak: JIM BROWN IN 'SLAUGHTER'S BIG RIP-OFF' WITH DON STROUD

Jim Brown in SLAUGHTER'S BIG RIP-OFF Year: 1973 Rating: ****1/2

SLAUGHTER'S BIG RIP OFF directed by crime-cinema veteran Gordon Douglas is a sequel not only better than the original, SLAUGHTER, it stands completely alone, the only plot being Jim Brown's former Green Beret character avenging the deaths of a few friends at an outside party-picnic prologue by a retro biplane's machine gun...

His initial search is for the pilot, played by biker-flick actor Adam Roarke for about five minutes in a mansion poolside of bigwig mobster Ed McMahon — actually pretty good here — hiring another much meaner and far more lethal thug Don Stroud to kill the first killer, making for possibly the best blaxploitation heavy ever...

Jim Brown in SLAUGHTER'S BIG RIP-OFF

Stroud's menacing, racist hit-man is the perfect, almost equally cunning foil for Jim Brown's titular hero... who goes from one location to the next: having sex with white beauty Judith Brown or siding with slick pimp Dick Anthony Williams to crack a lucrative safe, wherein the film's McGuffin... a list of important criminal names that trailing cop Brock Peters wants while attempting to thwart Brown from his vengeance trail... becomes what the good and bad guys are after, with an equally violent passion...

With practically non-stop action between bits of romance with faithful (yet somewhat whiny) girlfriend Gloria Hendry, this is Jim Brown's smoothest, breeziest ride despite putting his usual physicality into each woodwork-springing surprise, from heavies wielding machine-guns to karate kicks — an almost perfect body-count action-thriller with a touch of investigatory neo-noir, it rarely gets better than this, that is, for this kind of picture.