Take A Hard Ride (1975)

A former cattle rustler makes a promise to his dead cattle boss that he'll take his earnings back home. He is later joined by a card shark, a prostitute and a halfbreed martial artist as he is chased by a bounty hunter and a cadre of mercs.

I've always been a fan of Margheriti, or in this case, Tony Dawson. I find it interesting that he would try to interlink the Blaxsploitation and the Spaghetti Western sub genres together. It's an amazing effort. The cast was interesting as well. Fred Wiliamson solidifies himself as one of the Lords of Blaxploitation as well as possibly hinting that his character, Tyree, could have possibly been the ancestor of Tommy Gibbs. While it feels a bit substandard, Lee Van Cleef also does an impressive job as the Bounty Hunter. This is all encompassed by a Jerry Goldsmith soundtrack. Very good stuff.

I do think the fight choreography was a bit lacking. I mean. yeah, Brown and Williamson has a knockdown, drag out style, but it really made Jim Kelly look slow. I don't know. Maybe it's me and maybe the only time I saw Kelly was in Enter The Dragon. Just a sharp contrast between Hong Kong and Euro stunt groups I guess. While this movie worked on a simplistic design, I do wish there was a bit more detail to characters. I'm glad Williamson tried to make his character stand out, but all the rest needed something to work with then one simple goal. All this made the ending feel less then the whole movie. It made you wonder if that was it or what. Like you built a train track to the middle of a field.

There's not much on the DVD. Just a trailer and some audio options. If I were a collector, I'd wait on getting this. Unless I was a genre collector. If you are, I'd walk, not run to get this.

2 1/2 stars.