Most interesting though, is that Caucasian actress Stella Stevens plays Jim Brown's love interest. Slaughter was hardly the first Hollywood feature to depict interracial romance, but it may have been the first to feature an established white Hollywood star in fairly explicit sex scenes with a black leading man. Slaughter was, apparently, filmed just prior to Stevens's showy role in the blockbuster disaster film The Poseidon Adventure, released later that same year. That film seems to have given Stevens a tiny bump career-wise, but I wonder if her brave decision to appear nude in love scenes with Brown damaged her career in the long term.

Stevens, for her part was also at about the peak of her voluptuousness, appearing nude in three big scenes. You'll get no complaint from this reviewer.*

Slaughter (Brown) is an ex-Green Beret Captain, a hero of the Vietnam War. That's pretty much the extent of Slaughter's backstory as far as the film is concerned. The movie opens with an elderly black couple, the man being Slaughter's mob-connected father, victims of a spectacular car bombing. Slaughter manages to track down the Cleveland-based mafia gang responsible but the actual hit man, racist psychopath Dominic Hoffo (Rip Torn), gets away.

Slaughter's desire for revenge screws up a lengthy investigation headed by Treasury Department official Price (Cameron Mitchell). Rather than arrest Slaughter for the death of one of their mafia suspects, Price effectively offers Slaughter a get out of jail free card if he'll join Treasury agents in South America and infiltrate the criminal enterprise and put out of business its never-seen super-computer. (This being a low-budget film, a single IBM punched card is shown.)

In "South America," Slaughter is joined by comparatively inept agents Harry (Don Gordon) and Kim (Marlene Clark). Aware of Slaughter's presence, mob leader Mario Felice (Norman Alfe) dispatches Dominic's comare, Ann (Stella Stevens), to seduce Slaughter and extract information from him, or something. But the two fall for one another, and the insanely jealous Dominic flips his lid.

It comes as no surprise that Ann is irresistibly attracted to Slaughter, as he's about the only normal-looking guy in the room. In a strange coincidence, virtually all the white guys in the picture have singularly unreal, unnatural hairstyles and other offbeat features. Cameron Mitchell, Don Gordon, and Rip Torn all are either wearing partial rugs or have styled their hair in elaborate, shaggy comb-overs. (Don Gordon also sports sideburns the size of throw rugs.) Norman Alfe wears what looks like a Ricardo Montalban hand-me-down, while an actor named Eddie Lo Russo, playing a skittish henchman named Little Al, boasts an extravagant comb-over the likes of which has to be seen to be believed. One wouldn't normally pay much attention to this sort of thing, but Slaughter is like a Rogue's Gallery of bad hair.

Actor-turned-director Jack Starrett deserves points for making the relationship between Slaughter and Ann so appealing, and probably to some degree for Stevens's natural, authentic characterization. Excellent but volatile actor Torn may have been slumming doing a throwaway picture like Slaughter, but a scene late in the film in which he psychologically terrorizes Stevens's character and physically beats her sure looks real.

Brown, in the title role, is just okay, good in physical scenes (and more lax union requirements in Mexico no doubt permitted the actors to do more physical action than would have been allowed in the States), but he's saddled with ludicrously clichéd Blaxploitation dialog, co-written by 55-year-old white guy and Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman scribe Mark Hanna.

Starrett's also generally good with the film's plentiful and violent action scenes, though he greatly overuses a distorted image effect, removing the Todd-AO 35 anamorphic lens so that the frame comes out horizontally stretched. There's no dramatic justification for this, and rather than enhance the action these shots instead come off as merely goofy.

Video & Audio

Presented in 2.35:1 ‘scope, Slaughter gets a new transfer from licensor MGM, and the presentation is extremely impressive, with a razor-sharp image, bright primary colors and virtually no signs of damage or age-related wear. It pretty much knocks it out of the park. The DTS-HD Master Audio (2.0 English mono only with no subtitle options) is likewise fine, and the disc is Region A encoded.

Extra Features

The lone extra is a give-away-the-store trailer, amusing but best seen after viewing the film.

Parting Thoughts

A strange mishmash of James Bond-ian spy film (exotic locales, a high-tech gizmo to locate) and Godfather-like crime film, Slaughter is awfully silly but enjoyable. It's never dull with endless shootouts and car chases and a lot of Stella Stevens in-between. The transfer looks great, too. Recommended.

* At a screening in Beverly Hills about 15 years ago, a woman sitting directly behind me tapped my shoulder asking, "Hey big guy, would you mind scrunching down a bit?" It was Stella Stevens but, alas, that was the extent of my one and only encounter.

Stuart Galbraith IV is the Kyoto-based film historian and publisher-editor of World Cinema Paradise. His new documentary and latest audio commentary, for the British Film Institute's Blu-ray of Rashomon, is now available while his commentary track for Arrow Video's Battles without Honor and Humanity will be released in November.