Jack Arnold is principally remembered for directing THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN in 1957, a science fiction movie done with imagination, well pulled off special effects, a gripping script and Grant Williams in the best form of his career.
From Williams to Fred Williamson in 1974, and BLACK EYE. Willimson does perform creditably, but then that cannot have been that difficult, seeing that he is surrounded by by uniformly dumb members of the white community, beginning with a prostitute who steals a cane with a metallic wolf's head from the top of a coffin, a crazed criminal who atatcks her with a knife and makes off with the cane, but not before beating up and insulting Williamson with the worst adjectives for a black person, followed by a string of third and fourth rate white actors who must have been badly overdrawn or downright bankrupt to have agreed to play such dumbsters, junkies, sinful preachers and diabolical felons.
BLACK EYE is worth watching because of Williamson (especially while destroying valuables belonging to an antique collector enjoying "good vibes from the dead"), his Ford Mustang, his gorgeous Whitney Houston lookalike girlfriend, and the inevitably gay white guys and bombastically beautiful white birds who keep throwing themselves at him. The action ain't bad, either. 6/10.
