Sometimes a movie is so full of itself it forgets to be entertaining. Slaughter, the 1972 Blaxploitation action flick starring Jim Brown, isn’t just a relic of a time when explosions were cheaper than dialogue—it’s a masterclass in how not to make a revenge thriller. It’s got all the ingredients of a good time: car chases, mobsters, a leading man who looks like he could bench press a Buick. But somehow, it all comes out tasting like canned chili left on a hot radiator.
Let’s start with the premise. Because, sure, there is one—somewhere between the explosions, groin kicks, and whatever Ed McMahon was doing here. Slaughter (yes, that’s his name, like he was raised by wolves and vengeance) is a former Green Beret whose parents are blown to pieces by a car bomb. This happens in the first five minutes, and it’s all the motivation the script thinks we need to cheer for whatever comes next.
But revenge, as they say, is a dish best served cold. And Slaughter serves it up lukewarm, like microwaved spaghetti, slathered in a sauce made of clichés and confusion.
Jim Brown: Man, Myth, Mumbler
Jim Brown was a football god. On a field, he moved like thunder trapped in human form. In this movie, though, he acts like he just woke up from a NyQuil coma. His portrayal of Slaughter is 90% scowling, 10% squinting, and 0% charisma. You’d get more emotional range from a hat rack.
Slaughter doesn’t speak so much as grunt with subtitles. He walks into scenes like he forgot why he’s there. And yet everyone reacts like he’s some magnetic force of nature. Women throw themselves at him, villains fear him, the government trusts him with an undercover assignment that could make or break international crime syndicates.
Why? Because the script says so.
The Plot: Mafia Logic and CIA Fanfiction
After the murder of his parents, Slaughter travels to Mexico to kill the guy responsible. He blows up a car, stabs a man with a shard of mirror, and looks good doing it—well, as good as one can look in wide collars and polyester slacks. Instead of being arrested, he’s scooped up by the feds and offered a deal: work with them to take down a mob operation, or rot in prison.
Naturally, Slaughter agrees, because the CIA apparently staffs like a video game: “Congratulations, you stabbed a mobster! Now go to South America and infiltrate a cocaine ring!”
The mob is led by Mario Felice (Rip Torn, who acts like he’s in a different film entirely—maybe The Godfather on acid), and his right-hand psycho, Dominic (Don Gordon), whose main character trait is “tries too hard to be Joe Pesci before Joe Pesci existed.” These villains are cartoonishly evil. Like, tying-women-to-train-tracks evil. If they had mustaches, they’d twirl them between murders.
Felice even has a pet monkey. Not a metaphor. A literal monkey. Why? Unclear. Maybe it was in Rip Torn’s contract.
The Action: Explosions, Judo Chops, and Slaps That Echo Through Time
For a movie called Slaughter, you’d expect something visceral—brutal hand-to-hand fights, tactical gunplay, maybe a few creatively violent kills. What you get instead are the same three punches repeated in slow motion, cars flipping like toy models, and a lot of bodies ragdolling down staircases like they were allergic to gravity.
Slaughter fights like a man who’s two seconds from pulling a hamstring. The choreography is so stiff you can practically hear the stuntmen counting beats: “One-two—duck—three-four—fall into fruit stand.”
The shootouts are even worse. Every bullet sounds like it was dubbed in using a cap gun from a dollar store. The editing is schizophrenic at best—action scenes cut from car to face to ceiling fan to monkey to car again. The cinematographer must’ve filmed this while dangling from a ceiling by his shoelaces.
The Romance: Blink and You’ll Miss It (But Please Don’t Blink)
In one of cinema’s great crimes against believability, Slaughter pairs our monosyllabic hero with a glamorous woman named Ann (Stella Stevens). She’s Felice’s girlfriend, but that doesn’t stop her from immediately falling for Slaughter after one conversation and half a smolder. Their chemistry is nonexistent—less heat than a freezer aisle on Pluto.
Their love scenes are awkward and dry, like two mannequins trying to make out in a wind tunnel. There’s more passion in a ham sandwich. She spends the rest of the movie either begging Slaughter to run away with her or screaming as bullets fly past her hair extensions.
The Direction: Oscar Williams, Please Report to Earth
Director Oscar Williams seems to think every shot should either be a dramatic zoom or a Dutch angle. Subtlety? Not in this zip code. Every time someone walks into a room, it’s like the camera is trying to escape through the window.
Williams also has a strange affection for lingering reaction shots. Someone gets punched? Cut to a full five seconds of a guy blinking. A car explodes? Let’s pan slowly across everyone’s sweaty, confused faces for half a minute. You could nap between line readings and not miss a beat.
The Score: Funked Up and Out of Place
The soundtrack is funkadelic—no surprise, since this was the era of Curtis Mayfield and Isaac Hayes. But here, the funky grooves clash with the tone like a disco ball at a funeral. Every time Slaughter stares moodily into the distance, wah-wah guitars kick in like he’s about to dance, not kill a man with a garden rake.
Final Thoughts: Slaughtered Expectations
Slaughter is a film that wants to be tough but ends up tired. It aims for gritty revenge drama and lands somewhere between slapstick and self-parody. Jim Brown is wasted, the villains are laughable, and the plot is stitched together like a ransom note made from old Playboy issues and war flashbacks.
The film has some unintentional charm—mostly in the “so-bad-it’s-weirdly-watchable” department—but that’s not the kind of praise anyone wants to put on a poster.
If you’re a fan of Blaxploitation, skip this one and stick with Coffy, Super Fly, or even Black Caesar. If you want to watch Slaughter, just know that you’ve been warned. And maybe keep some strong coffee nearby.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5 Exploding Corvettes
One point for Jim Brown’s sheer presence. Half a point for Rip Torn’s commitment to insanity. The rest? Lost in the rubble of logic, pacing, and that monkey subplot we never got closure on.
