Blaxploitation Education: Hammer
Fred Williamson enters the picture and makes a hell of an impression.
Hammer
Written by Charles Eric Johnson
Directed by Bruce Clark
1972
Like Jim Brown, Fred “The Hammer” Williamson came to the world of acting after finding success as a professional athlete. He played for the San Francisco 49ers in the 1950s, and he got his nickname due to his hard-hitting style of defense. So when it came time for him to join the ranks of Blaxploitation stars, he got a movie to match that reputation. Since he plays another athlete with the nickname “Hammer,” it certainly seems like the movie was crafted around him.
Williamson is pretty good here, but I don’t think he’s quite at the level of some of the other heroes of the genre like Richard Roundtree or Jim Brown. However, he manages well enough, playing a tough guy who isn’t willing to back down when people try to intimidate him. He gets to exhibit just enough vulnerability to make the movie exciting when it counts, but he’s not quite as smooth as some of his contemporaries, at least not at this point in his career. Fortunately, the movie around him is good enough that he doesn’t need to hold it all together with his charisma.
The story here involves a segment of the criminal underworld in Los Angeles that’s run by a Black mobster known as Big Sid (Charles Lampkin), who is introduced in a scene where he receives orders from a faceless white guy who is meant to be a more powerful mob figure (he’s mostly distinguishable by his voice, which is similar to the one used in old horror movie trailers). While Sid seems to mostly focus on being a boxing promoter, he’s also instructed to take care of a heroin shipment coming in at the port, so we definitely know he’s a criminal.
At the port, one of the guys handling the heroin gets into a fight with another worker, but it’s broken up when BJ Hammer (Williamson), who seems to be friends with the guy being attacked, intervenes. He easily beats the guy up, even managing to disarm him when he pulls out a switchblade. This is the first indication that this is going to be a good example of a crime movie with some nice action scenes. The fight is chaotic, with the handheld camera seeming to get into the middle of the action and quick cuts between punches and kicks providing some oomph and making the viewer feel the pain being inflicted. It’s really well shot and edited, and it bodes well for what’s to come.
The guy who is at the port to pick up the drugs, or at least make sure the transaction proceeds correctly, who we’ll later learn is named Brenner (William Smith), orders the foreman to fire Hammer, probably because he might interfere with things. However, one of the witnesses to the fight recognizes that BJ seems to have some skills, so he brings him to meet Sid and see if he can become a boxer. After taking him to the gym and having a trainer check out his skills, Sid is impressed enough that he hires Hammer on, ordering him to live in Sid’s guest house and start a new training regimen led by a guy everyone calls The Professor (Mel Stewart).
Sid’s secretary, Lois (Vonetta McGee, who we’ve seen in Blacula and Melinda) brings Hammer back to his place to pick up his personal effects, leading to an interesting scene in which the woman he was living with screams at him, furious that he’s apparently found a new woman. At one point, she opens up her robe to show him her naked body and says, “See what you missin’, sucka?” and he coldly replies “Just like a bus, mama; miss one, catch another.” This clearly was not a healthy relationship, but he certainly didn’t end it well, and it’s a bit of an indication of how he’ll approach his newfound success.
While Hammer gets to training, we get to see more of Sid’s operation, letting us know that working for him might not be the most healthy choice. An older boxer tries to get out of the game because he’s sick of the life, and Sid sends Brenner to take care of him. While the guy is strutting through the streets in some pimp-like garb, Brenner comes after him in a car, chasing him down an alley and eventually running him over repeatedly. Later, we see one of Sid’s flunkies pick up some drugs at the harbor, but it turns out the cops were watching, and he ends up leading them on a surprisingly lengthy chase that features some more exciting handheld camerawork. The guy manages to escape (without the drugs), and when he returns to Sid for help, Brenner ends up shooting him up with a massive dose of heroin to get him out of the picture.
Interestingly, Brenner, a white guy with a douchebaggy shoulder-length haircut, initially appears to be Sid’s right hand man, the guy who takes care of the dirty parts of the business. But as the movie goes on, it becomes clear that he’s actually working for the higher-level mobsters who are pulling Sid’s strings. He’s there to keep an eye on operations, and he’s just as much of a threat to Sid as he is to everyone else. And while he spends most of his time around Black people, he seems to revel in any chance to inflict violence on them. If there’s any doubt about his racist intentions, that goes away in a scene where he confronts Sid’s white girlfriend (Elizabeth Harding) after she sneaks into Hammer’s room at night, grabs her violently, spits in her face, and calls her a “n***** lover.” He’s a bad dude, making his eventual comeuppance extra sweet.
While all this is going on, Hammer works on wooing Lois during the occasional breaks he gets from training. It’s clear that while she’s aware of the criminal activity going on, she’s not a participant and is just trying to get by as well as anyone else. In fact, she gets a nice speech during a scene in which she and BJ are in a nightclub, watching a striptease by a woman in a leather catsuit who is brandishing a whip. She says, “I could take you, if you were a little more together, but you ain’t ready, not for me. And don’t get it twisted; I’m not looking for a husband. I can pick and choose, and right now, I’m not choosing.” She’s a strong Black woman, and she would have to be to survive in this world. Unfortunately, she mostly falls into the girlfriend role after that, but we’re at least given the idea that she’s tough and willing to stand up for herself.
As the plot moves along, Hammer starts his boxing career, and he’s very successful, winning plenty of fights. The main conflict becomes whether Hammer is too enamored of the money he’s making and the acclaim he’s receiving to pay attention to the criminal activity going on around him. A cop who keeps showing up at the gym and other locations reminds him that Sid’s boxers never seem to survive after their careers flame out. Hammer also starts to wonder whether he’s winning his fights fair, and the people he used to hang around with are starting to look at him in disdain, since he doesn’t seem to have much time for them anymore.
Everything comes to a head when Sid informs Hammer that he needs to lose his next fight. This turns out to be too much for him to bear, but they apply some leverage, making it hard for him to stand up to them. We get a pretty exciting final boxing match, with more of the well-shot action that the movie has done so well, putting us in the ring alongside the boxers and providing point-of-view shots when punches are thrown. It’s good stuff, keeping us on the edge of our seats as we wait to see if he’ll be able to win the fight or will have to take the expected dive.
The movie does take a bit of a silly turn in its final moments, with Hammer and some other guys having a big brawl with Brenner and his thugs. After winning the day, Hammer and Lois get to walk away together, presumably leaving all of the crime and violence behind. For a movie that had taken a somewhat complex approach to the ways characters needed to survive in its underworld setting, it’s an oddly simplistic way of wrapping things up, ignoring the fact that the gangsters who were profiting from all of the illegal activity wouldn’t be too happy about having their plans foiled. But since the trend in Blaxploitation movies was to have happy endings in which Black heroes prevailed and survived, that may have been what the filmmakers thought would work best with audiences. I do wish there had been some more ambiguity or hints of darkness, but I can’t complain too much when 95% of the movie was pretty solid. I’m definitely hoping to see Williamson develop into a more charismatic star in future entries in this series.
Blaxploitation Education index:
UpTight
Cotton Comes to Harlem
Watermelon Man
The Big Doll House
Shaft
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song
Super Fly
Buck and the Preacher
Blacula
Cool Breeze
Melinda
Slaughter
"A faceless white guy..." Like Dick Tracy's nemesis The Blank (who literally has no face)?"
While Williamson starred in and eventually directed many films in the subgenre, he may be remembered best by many film fans as the unfortunately named Spearchucker Jones in the film version of "M.A.S.H." (A football game is part of that film, allowing him to show off his skills.)