Black Street Fighter/Comments

Leroy Fisk (Richard Lawson) is a small time street fighter who gets to show his stuff to a promoter named Logan. After Leroy fights one of Logan's top guys (the hillbilly rapist from Foxy Brown) and loses, Logan decides to keep Leroy anyways and help him make some big money. Pretty soon, Leroy has his first official streetfight and he wins. Leroy's now well off and he begins buying his lady presents. Enter Officer Heineken (Dabney Coleman), a corrupt racist cop that confronts Leroy and tells him he wants part of his winnings each and every time he fights. This is where the standard Blaxploitation rules come in to play and we see that now Leroy must go up against "The Man". Leroy's friend is a guy named Fletch, look closely and you'll see that this is none other than Phillip Michael Thomas, the same guy who went on to play Ricardo Tubbs on TV's long running police show "Miami Vice" in the 1980s. In this film, Thomas is practically unrecognizable. He plays a drunk and hes got a beard. He's basically playing "Creeper" to Leroy's "Dolemite". I was surprised to see Dabney Coleman show up in this film, but he really did a good job with his character. Hes very believable and funny. Hes got this "Popeye Doyle" type style. You can see why he went on to bigger and better things. Black Fist is filled with ALOT of racial slurs, especially the N word. Most of which are used by the white characters. Theres also lots of the use of the words "Boy" and "Black Ass" too. Overall, Black Fist is a good but not great entry into the Blaxploitation genre. --Pete