Absolutely Fantastic

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The serio-comic African-American western "Buck and the Preacher," starring Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte, certainly wasn't the first black horse opera, but it may reign as the most prestigious. For the record, the earliest known African-American western was a silent movie, "The Crimson Skull" (1922), that dealt with a cowboy who thwarted rustlers by wearing a skeleton costume. Fifty years later, "Buck and the Preacher" came out. Not only does it qualify as a good, entertaining western, director Sidney Poitier and co-star Harry Belafonte sought to make an oater that chronicled the tribulations facing African-Americans who had uprooted themselves from the post-antebellum South and were heading westward to start new lives that had nothing to do with slavery. Cast as a former Union soldier with the rank of sergeant, Buck became a wagon master who escorted freedom seeking slaves to new lands. The conflict in "Buck and the Preacher" grows out of this exodus from Louisiana, and the appointed representatives of those plantations that dispatched desperadoes, such as evil Beau Deshay (Cameron Mitchell of "Garden of Evil"), who gathered a small army to terrorize blacks and compel them to turn back and pick up where they had left off. At one point, one of Beau's relatives who survived told a lawman that an old way of life had to be maintained. The sheriff of Copper Springs (John Kelly of "The Revengers") warns Deshay to 'walk softly' in his town because the migrating blacks are committing any crimes. Instead, the sheriff is intent on hunting down Buck (Sidney Poitier of "Lilies of the Field") and the Reverend Willis Oakes Rutherford (Harry Belafonte of "The World, the Flesh, and the Devil") after they shoot up Copper Springs and rob the bank. Although they are breaking the law, Buck and the Preacher have struggled to recover the money that Deshay's mob has stolen from them. When Buck counts only $157 left over from some fourteen hundred dollars, the Preacher suggests that they rob the bank.Mind you, "Buck and the Preacher" depicts an on-again, off-again friendship between the two eponymous characters. Initially, Buck steals the Reverend's horse because he has ridden his own horse into the ground. Buck is fleeing from Deshay and his rabid gun hands, and Deshay knows that he has been leading the African-American settlers. Buck not only appropriates the Reverend's fresh mount, but he also helps himself to a rabbit roasting over a campfire. The screenplay by Ernest Kinoy, who scripted an earlier Poitier movie "Brother John," slickly pits our two protagonists against each other until they can become as thick as thieves. Deshay and his gun hands encounter the Reverend Rutherford in the hamlet of Frenchman's Ford since they have been trailing Buck's horse. Instead of killing the silver-tongued Reverend, Deshay dangles the prospect of $500 in the Reverend's face for word about the whereabouts of Buck. Eventually, Buck and the Preacher cross trails again, and Buck still doesn't have any use for the garrulous Preacher. Indeed, he believes the Preacher cannot be trusted. The Preacher administers a blow to Buck and rightfully claims his horse. Buck swaps horses before he sets out to lead the newest caravan of pioneers.In case it isn't clear, Deshay and his despicable gun hands are prepared to kill some of the settlers and burn their wagons with their sole possessions in order to turn them around. Eventually, Buck and the Preacher catch up with Deshay and his hooligans. They find these murderous cutthroats in Madame Esther's bordello and a gunfight ensues, with Buck demonstrating the power of his special arsenal of hand guns. Forged by a gunsmith in Fort Leavenworth, Buck wields a pair of heavy calibered weapons. Indeed, he must reload them because they hold only two bullets each, but the wallop that these firearms pack down cut a man down like a scythe. Deshay and most of those around him, aside from his relative Floyd (Denny Miller of "Tarzan, the Ape Man"), die in the gunfight at the bordello. Floyd rides with the sheriff's posse to catch Buck and the Preacher. In a sense, Buck and the Reverend Willis Oakes Rutherford aren't conventional heroes. They are battling not only the villains, but they also contend with a world that treated African-Americans as second-class citizens. "Buck and the Preacher marked Sidney Poitier's debut as a film director. Poitier and Belafonte had hired Joseph Sargent, director of "White Lightning" and "Colossus, the Forbin Project," but Sargent and his two leading actors had a difference of opinion. They fired Sargent, and Columbia Pictures couldn't find a replacement on such late notice, so Poitier took the helm. "Buck and the Preacher" is as western as all get out.

For a while into the movie I thought it might be an all-Black cast Western but that changed when the night riders showed up. There actually was a series of all-Black Westerns back in the late Thirties starring cowboy crooner Herb Jeffries, who's singing sounded as good as guys like Gene Autry. My favorite Jeffries flick is "Two Gun Man From Harlem" but I haven't seen them all yet. One name I was surprised to catch in this film's credits was that of Clarence Muse as the old black fortune teller Cudjo. He had a lot of roles portraying dignified black characters in the Thirties and Forties, and since I brought it up I had to take a look, but he didn't appear in any pictures with Herb Jeffries.Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte team up in this one following a less than friendly first impression between their characters. Poitier is wagon master Buck, leading freed black slaves across the West to destinations they might call home following the end of the Civil War. Preacher Willis Oaks Rutherford is more of an opportunist than a Man of God, but he did have the Bible thing down pretty well when he needed it. Who was going to argue with the Reverend of the High and Low Order of the Holiness Persuasion Church.As a revisionist Western this one works to show a different side of the Old West experience though it doesn't set any new standards by my estimation. The inclusion of the Indian tribe on the side of the black settlers was an interesting element, helping them out in the final shoot out against the night riders even after stating they wouldn't get involved. After that, the wagon settlers make it to a fertile land completing their Westward trek, but done in such an abrupt fashion that one wonders if the ending had any kind of thought put into it.

We tend to forget that in 1972, in the heart of the whole "blaxploitation" movement, that the very idea of casting African-Americans in traditional white roles was daring in and of itself. As such, Buck and the Preacher, starring Sidney Poitier (who also directed) and Harry Belafonte in the titular roles must have created quite a stir upon its release. The story is pretty standard for a western--a wagon train heading west, led by a tough-as-nails trail guide, is harassed by outside forces (usually bandits or American Indians), but in this case, the settlers are all freed slaves, and the "outside forces" are hired guns by the south, bend on stopping every black settler group, destroying their supplies (and murdering a few of their people), thus terrorizing them into returning to the plantations. Former military sergeant Buck (Poitier) will have none of that, and the slick-talking con man "Preacher (Belafonte), whose initial intentions may seem questionable, mans up and does the right thing, joining forces with Buck for a typical final showdown. A fun western, to be sure, but if you're looking for deeper social commentary that what has already been described, you won't find it. A traditional western with an African-American cast is daring as it gets in 1972, but don't let that keep you away. The original score by Benny Carter, heavy on the mouth harp and that weird pig-sounding instrument they use on Green Acres, will annoy the hell out of you yet stay with you for days.

Buck and the Preacher was the first movie I ever saw about the black experience after the civil war that was centered on their migration west. I've seen this movie three times since it was originally shown, and have enjoyed it as much each time, while Buck, a no-nonsense Wagon Master played by Sidney Poitier takes his responsibilities very seriously. Naive ex-slaves are putting their very lives and fortunes in his hands in their attempt to find the American Dream after slavery. A subtly that many non-blacks do not understand about the relationship of blacks with each other is the historical mistrust and scheming that happens within the culture and still goes on today. That is what makes the meeting of Buck with the Preacher, played by Harry Belafonte Jr. so poignant. They are at opposite ends of the cultural trust scale, but they are forced to team up against a common enemy to secure their individual survival.The Preacher, shiftless and scheming, and the only stereotypical character in the movie, is very well known to blacks, and not really as funny to blacks as non-blacks may sometimes think.Buck and the Preacher was one of the first modern movies about black people to provide any depth to the characters, and also to present characters and subject matter that are not normally associated with the black experience. I found it entertaining as well as informative. A well-done move about an often ignored subject.