Fifteen years after being raped as a child (and mute ever since), farm girl Frigga (Swedish sexploitation star Christina Lindberg, Maid in Sweden) rather naïvely accepts a ride from a stranger (Heinz Hopf, Exposed). Instead of delivering her to her doctor’s appointment, Tony takes her out for a steak dinner, then back to his rape pad, where he proceeds to drug her drink and get her hooked on high-grade smack.

Tony’s intent is to get her so addicted that she’ll be forced to work for him as a prostitute. Frigga takes this news so not well that when her first would-be client arrives, she claws the guy’s face. Ever the businessman, Tony’s response is to cut out her left eye with a scalpel. (On the bright side, this allows Frigga to don a variety of colorful eye patches for the bulk of the film, not to mention sparks her to learn martial arts.)

Whoever decreed this rape-revenge with the name of Thriller: A Cruel Picture, truer words never were spoken. The point of viewers being subjected to witness Frigga’s debasement is to make her eventual doling out of comeuppance to her abusers that much more cathartic, even near-patriotic. Writer/director Bo Arne Vibenius, a protégé of Ingmar Bergman, wants us to revel in her acts of vengeance that he slows down the shots so we see every explosion of the squibs, every kick to the balls, every trail of blood bursting forth like the tail end of a cracked whip.

Shrewdly, Vibenius denies us the money shot of top tormentor Tony, but we are not spared the drawn-out demises of any johns, including the guy who dared sport tight, bright-red briefs with a tiger pattern. (Speaking of “money shot,” an alternate version includes hardcore inserts, entirely unnecessary.) Artier than you’d expect, this Cruel Picture plays the rape-revenge game more aggressively than Abel Ferrara’s silent victim of Ms. 45 would eight years later. —Rod Lott

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The first of four low-budget vanity productions starring former pro football player Fred Williamson as alter ego Jesse Crowder, Death Journey was directed by Williamson as well. According to the credits, he also served as “producer and executive producer,” suggesting the Hammer’s ego was way out of control.

Crowder is an ex-cop hired to escort a mob-snitch accountant (Bernard Kirby) from Los Angeles to New York in 48 hours. Killers await at every turn; Crowder punches them out. In one instance, he throws a punch that clearly doesn’t even make contact, but the would-be recipient falls down anyway. The witness is a fat, perspiring slob who unwraps and eats four candy bars at once. Yes, this is a case of “laugh at the fat honky.” You just might.

Williamson spends the entire movie with his shirt unbuttoned (when he’s wearing one at all, that is), presumably for easy-on/easy-off access, as no fewer than four women throw themselves at Crowder for casual sex. One of them attempts a post-coital hit on Crowder’s tubby charge, and begs for her life when Crowder thwarts her plans.

“I’m not gonna kill you, lady. You’re too good in the sack for that. I’m just gonna bruise you up a little,” he says. So he throws her off a moving train with a toodeloo line of, “Happy landing, bitch!”

Williamson shows even less talent behind the camera as he does in front of it. Scenes go on and on (sometimes in excruciating slow-motion), as if he were determined to use every frame of film shot. And there are so many needless scenes of people driving cars, you’ll wonder, “Hey, where are Jim Nabors and Dom DeLuise?” —Rod Lott

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A nice, young black man is killed by a group of racist white bikers because he’s been dating the sister of one of the gang members. When his older brother, Bubba (Gene Washington), gets the news, he and his roving motorcycle posse of five other burly black guys roll into town for some payback. Together, they are … wait for it … The Black Six!

And they’re really nice, peaceful boys, first shown helping out an old widow on her farm, petting goats and sewing(!), but when pushed too far, they’re more than ready to stick it to The Man. And The Man deserves some sticking, especially when he’s represented by guys with names like Snake, Moose and Thor (yes, he’s the one with the Viking helmet). Moose rouses an army with such warnings as, “These ain’t your normal spooks!”

Indeed, all half-dozen of our heroes were NFL players, with the team association of each spelled out in the opening credits of the film by director Matt Cimber (Butterfly). Among them is “Mean” Joe Greene, who looks like he needed to be downing bottles of diet Coke instead of the straight stuff. Unique insults bandied about in this underrated blaxploitation effort include “mustard ass” and “porkchop lips.”

Sadly, there was no sequel for these African-American Avengers, although the end frame sure threatened one: “Honky … Look Out … Hassle a Brother …. and The Black 6 Will Return!!!” Oh, how one wishes they had! —Rod Lott

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Considering that whole moving-to-L.A. thing didn’t work out (see: Death Wish II), vigilante architect Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) returns to the Big Apple — the very town he was told to skedaddle from — in Death Wish 3. Only the numbering system of the title has changed; trouble still follows Paul like his magnetic-filament mustache.

His first stop off the bus is the apartment of a Korean War buddy who’s just been fatally beaten by the neighborhood punks, and Paul is immediately pinned for the murder and tossed in jail. Lucky for him, Lt. Shriker (Ed Lauter, Cujo) knows how trigger-happy Paul is, and agrees to let him loose in exchange for helping NYPD squash the gang activity.

Their crime spree goes down in a six-block ‘hood that returning director Michael Winner depicts as comically dangerous. One of the most prolific gang members is called Giggler (Kirk Taylor, Full Metal Jacket), so named because he giggles when he runs — y’know, like a real tough guy. Paul won’t stand for it, setting booby traps in the apartments and pulling out his ol’ .475 Magnum, which he says, “makes a real mess.”

The same could be said of this sequel, except it is enjoyable trash cast in the unmistakable Cannon Films mold. Its reputation is sealed by the extraordinarily violent extended climax, in which the residents rise up against the bad guys, and everybody shoots everyone else, all to a terribly discordant score by Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page.

And as for Bronson, he is — once more — the man. —Rod Lott

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The Tuxedo is not the worst of Jackie Chan’s American movies — that’d be The Medallion and The Spy Next Door — but close enough.

Chan plays Tong … James Tong, a mild-mannered cabbie with a lead foot and a Hooters T-shirt who one day is hired as the driver for billionaire Clark Devlin (Harry Potter vet Jason Isaacs), a secret agent with a gadget-equipped and strength-empowering techno-tuxedo. When he’s nearly killed by a skateboard bomb, James takes it upon himself to don the tux and continue Clark’s espionage work.

Said work has something to do with the world’s water supply being threatened, but it’s so poorly explained that you won’t know what’s going on until the end. Pairing up with James is the wonderful pair of Jennifer Love Hewitt (Can’t Hardly Wait) as an agency chemist. Although she initially has the air of being miscast, she acquits herself fairly well; all the cleavage shots work toward that admirable goal.

Even if Jackie’s English were good (every time he said “Clark Devlin,” I thought he said “Cock Devlin”), The Tuxedo still would be a difficult movie to understand. I’m not sure it ever intended to tell a lucid story; rather, its aim seems to be to put him in one demonstration of physical prowess after another. The ones that are 100 percent Chan are fun; the ones that are 50 percent CGI, not so much.

And that’s the movie’s biggest problem: It doesn’t quite know how to use him, and when it does, it muddles it up with confusing editing and poor direction by first-timer Kevin Donovan. By not using its star’s massive physical potential, it might as well be, I dunno, Craig Sheffer in The Tuxedo. As with the Rush Hour franchise, the most enjoyable part comes with the end-credit outtakes. —Rod Lott

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