Fred Williamson Movies

Since its first broadcast in 1970, ABC's Monday Night Football has become one of television's longest running and most popular shows. With a combination of game highlights, announcer gaffs and hilarious banter, this video highlights many memorable moments of the show's first 25 years. Announcers Howard Cossell, Frank Gifford, Al Michaels and others give their impressions of working the games and their contributions to what has become an American institution. Several players and media critics also give their take on how Monday Night Football has helped shape the public's view of professional football. ~ Ed Atkinson, All Movie Guide

One of Fred Williamson's more unusual efforts as both actor and director, this one features the action star as a cigar-smoking detective named Mac Derringer. He is enlisted by his ex-wife (Vanity), a phone-sex operator, to catch the masked psychopath who murdered her co-worker. With the aid of partner Gary Busey and friend Peter Fonda, Derringer closes in on the maniac, but is soon framed for murder. Williamson has an interracial love scene, there's a stoolie who raps, and a subplot involves blackmail and pornography. The Jeffersons' Isabel Sanford appears as Derringer's mother, and the familiar genre cast features Stella Stevens, Robert Forster, and Henry Silva. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

This moderately interesting actioner stars Fred Williamson (who also directed) as John Steele, a Chicago detective who travels to Dallas. His mission is to catch a lunatic assassin named Joe Keno (Doran Inghram), who sports a ponytail and uses a sword to kill. Steele's girlfriend (Phyllis Cicero) gets raped and murdered before having her head sent to him in a box, there is some kickboxing and Gulf War propaganda, and Bo Svenson appears as a tough-as-nails sheriff. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

After a group of technically advanced villains plan to wreak havoc on the world, competent cop Robert Malone (Fred Williamson) is called upon to stop them. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

In this sequel to the 1987 actioner Black Cobra, Fred Williamson resumes his role as a tough-as-nails urban detective. The villain is a terrorist who'll kill anyone who impedes his escape. The terrorist breaks into a schoolroom full of children and holds the kids hostage. It's up to Williamson -- now saddled with an unwanted partner -- to eliminate the bad guy without taking the kids with him. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

An archaeologist has come back home with a priceless gem in his possession. However, it was ill-gotten and his life is in extreme danger. After he's killed, his widow becomes the mark of several treasure-seekers. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

Stelvio Massi directed this Italian-made action film, a copy of George Cosmatos' Cobra with Fred Williamson in the Stallone role. As a tough NYPD detective, Williamson protects photographer Eva Grimaldi, who witnessed a murder by the leader of the vicious Black Cobras biker gang. Fans of Italian genre movies will recognize Sabrina Siani as the kidnapped daughter of the police commissioner. Antonio Margheriti's Black Cobra 2 was next. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Half-Nelson was a very brief TV cop series which made its bow on March 24, 1985, with a two-hour "special". Joe Pesci, sporting lots and lots of hair, stars as ex-Manhattan cop Rocky Nelson, nicknamed "Half" Nelson because he stands well under six feet. Nelson is now a Beverly Hills security guard who dreams of launching an acting career. Guest star Morgan Brittany shows up just long enough to die along with an old buddy of Nelson's. The official police verdict is suicide, but Nelson suspects foul play. Also showing up in cameo roles are Dean Martin, John Matuszak, Larry Holmes and Jerry Reuss. The Half-Nelson pilot was telecast on a Sunday; the subsequent series settled into a Friday night slot (but not for long). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This crime drama features a computer expert who is bilking the casinos in Vegas by hacking into the computers that run the slot machines. This way, he's able to tell when each machine is about to spit out a jackpot. His girlfriend Kathy (Marcia Clingan) goes to Vegas, plays the machines, and brings home a tidy sum each week-end. Before he can start enjoying the good life, the hacker is tortured and killed and Kathy is kidnapped by the murderers. Then a crooked cop (Bo Svenson) and his buddy (Fred Williamson) get involved and the competition for the illicit software is on. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

A Chicago cop is wrongly accused of theft and dismissed from the force. In order to clear his name, he goes after the real culprits -- without the extra baggage of police regulations that might have made his task more difficult if he were still active in the department. This script was originally intended for a Dirty Harry vehicle, but was never realized. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

The excessive violence in this action thriller makes New York City look like the site of a civil war -- or rather, a nauseatingly uncivil war fought between factory workers allied with neighborhood citizens against their enemies: drug pushers and other low-lifes. At first the worker Eddie Merino (Robert Forster) refuses to join a vigilante movement, but when his wife is stabbed and his son killed by a Puerto Rican gang, Eddie eventually opts for his own right to kill. His decision is not allowed to come quickly, he is made to agonize a bit longer. When the gang leader (singer Willie Colón) who killed Eddie's son is caught and brought up for trial, he gets off with a suspended sentence because of a corrupt defense lawyer and an inept judge. Eddie attacks the judge in court and is sent to jail for contempt. When he gets out of jail, he becomes a vigilante, out to kill the guilty or those he sees as protecting the guilty in the death of his son. From then on, a non-stop bloodbath takes over as the star of the film. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

One of many post-apocalyptic science-fiction films which poured out of Europe in the wake of George Miller's Mad Max, this film stars Stefania Girolami as Anna, who runs away from her wealthy but obnoxious family into the surrealistic biker gangland of the Bronx. There, she meets Trash (Marco de Gregorio), part of a gang called The Riders, and soon falls in love with him. Problems arise when Anna's father (Enio Girolami), president of the evil Manhattan Corporation, sends in a psychopath named Hammer (Vic Morrow) to stir up trouble among the rival gangs, including a black club led by Ogre (Fred Williamson) and a rollerskating group led by Golem (Luigi Montefiori). Castellari's direction is surprisingly stylish and exciting, but all of the hyper-macho posturing eventually grows tiresome for anyone over fifteen. Still, undemanding viewers will have a good time, as the action keeps coming fast and furious, laced with suitably hardbitten dialogue by director Enzo G. Castellari, Elisa Livia Briganti and Dardano Sacchetti. A minor classic of testosterone cinema, followed by several sequels starting with Fuga dal Bronx (1983). ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Jack Hedley of The Anniversary stars as a hardbitten police lieutenant tracking a sadistic sex-killer in this gruesome thriller from splatter-maven Lucio Fulci. The misogynistic script (by Fulci and prolific collaborators Gianfranco Clerici and Vincenzo Mannino) posits a femme-hating psycho (who talks like Donald Duck) slashing beautiful women with a switchblade and a straight-razor because his daughter is in the hospital and will never grow up to be beautiful. Fulci was apparently trying to work in a statement about American competitiveness by making his heroine (Antonella Interlenghi) an aspiring Olympic athlete, and having a killer who is concerned that his daughter will never be "the best," but the point gets lost amidst the buckets of blood and gratuitously kinky sex scenes. Pandering to the lowest common denominator as never before in his career, Fulci showed with this blatant play for the sicko slasher crowd that the days of well-plotted, stylish Italian horror were gone, replaced with the most vicious sort of sexual violence and perversion. Despite all of that, there is one fairly masterful sequence in which the suspect's S&M sex partner learns his identity from a radio broadcast and must untie herself and escape while he sleeps. This scene is tense and nerve-wracking, a high-point of genuine fear amidst a nauseating collage of metal blades slicing female flesh. A shameful piece of work that makes Mario Landi's Giallo a Venezia look positively liberated, it co-stars Renato Rossini, Andrea Occhipinti, and Paolo Malco, with cult figures Alessandra Delli Colli, Daniela Doria, and Barbara Cupisti on the chopping block. Cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller, editor Vincenzo Tomassi, and composer Francesco De Masi have all done better work. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide