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Brotherhood of Death (1976)

Dir: Bill Berry

Brothers Junior and Raymond and their friend Ned (played by real life ex-American Football players Roy Jefferson, Mike Bass and Larry Jones) are living out of their battered bus in a dead-end hick town full of beastly racist White trash who make it abundantly clear they’re not welcome.
After one redneck rat turd named Leroy impresses the girl by his side by announcing “Goddamn niggers breed like flies don’t they” within earshot of the guys they decide enough is enough and join the army. As you do.

A blast of newsreel stock footage later we are thrown into Vietnam as our heroes (dressed like those bargain bin, counterfeit, ‘GI Joe’/‘Action Man’ dolls and fighting in the most American looking forest the filmmakers could find) learn to begrudgingly kick ass to save ass as a bunch of hit and run, booby trap dodging guerrilla fighters., when not smoking the weed that is!
Training and experience they will sadly need when they get a less than warm welcome home from the KKK and their assorted crackers.

Oh so swiftly back in the U S of A the guys down some ‘Buds’, get some flash new gear, call each other ‘nigger’ (the good version) and have nasty run-ins with the slimy, bullying, sexual assault loving white populous.
And as injustice is heaped upon injustice (with even the sympathetic but impotent White Sheriff only daring to help from the sidelines), as peaceful attempts to fight the oppression are brutally beaten back and as the KKK get truly lethal, our heroes and their friends decide it’s time for a spot of vigilante justice and soon it’s a re-run of Vietnam in America’s Southern heartland. Only this time it’s the Black man vs. the White Klan!….

 

After being effectively trailered on an old “Faces of Death 2” VHS, the mostly forgotten “Brotherhood of Death” became a bit of a must see for fans of Blackploitation cinema.
The basic idea in itself is of course a crowd pleaser (and surprisingly rare as the KKK were often never tackled head-on in such films) and the fact its fictional Klan tale was being filmed in the heartland of the real Klan adds even more mystique to the movie.
But can the actual film live up to such a mystique?

The film certainly opens in positive fashion, in a negative way, when an amazingly racist diatribe between two guys in a car (heard as a voiceover on footage of Black people picking crops no less!) signposts the movie’s less than subtle colours to the flag from the start…Those honky mofo’s are a mean bunch and we’re going to make sure you know it!
And when your standard funk song cranks up over the credits (“High horse! Get off your high horse…Sooooo high”!) all seems to be going as it should.

The enjoyable initial run-in with cracker-ass Leroy also seems to hint we are in for a treat, but the laughable Southern scrub forest stand-in for those hellish ‘Nam jungles (as well as the guy’s uniforms and equipment) set up a feeling that actually something very cheap and silly is going to play out.
Thankfully this fear is not actually justified, as the rest of the film is well made and serious, but what this ’Nam footage does forewarn us of is the building up of expectations that are never fully satisfied.
Despite the teasing hint we may follow the guys on at least one booby trap filled mission against The Cong we actually have nothing but one bloodless shooting match that lasts barely 30 seconds. And that’s that. That’s your ‘Nam adventure over.
Years later the very similar ‘Nam set-up was re-used in the otherwise weak “Dead Presidents” and it would deliver more fully on this expectation.

Back in America (yeah, like we ever left!) things get straight down to it with a brief but full frontal rape scene (it cuts away before anything too bad is shown) that seems to offer up the 70’s Drive-In, exploitation content we were expecting.
But this initial jolt (the only nudity of any kind in the film as well) softens out into the long and basically serious build-up to the film’s much anticipated climax.
The solid acting and script really help the film now (though a much covered ‘get the Brothers and Sisters out to vote’ plot-strand seems to be forgotten later on) as do some of the conversations between Junior, Raymond and Ned, like this when they get their new clothes to replace their demob uniforms;
"I feel like King Kong"!
"Shit! You are King Kong, nigger!"
Classic!

The White’s racist language and speechmaking during this build-up is prolific and explicit and is presumably presented to hammer home just how nasty, dangerous and beyond help these guys are so as to make their vigilante comeuppance all the more justified.
The Klan, despite their genuinely dangerous status, are basically made to look foolish in the movie by having generally stupid, knuckle-dragging members and by having a leader who swans around in robes oh so pretty and pink with an accountant’s hairstyle.
None of the white characters are remotely pleasant except for the ‘stuck between a rock and a hard place’ Sheriff (well played by Bryan Clark ) who dislikes his Klan Deputies and neighbours but refuses to take action unless he’s pushed into a corner. And even he calls the Black characters “boy”.

Of course there are classic Blackploitation trappings here and all the essential cliché characters such films need. But, as mentioned, for the most part the film is actually a serious dramatic piece and has a slow and steady lead-up (though still engaging enough thanks to the script and acting) to its action finale.
A fine example of this more dramatic approach is the dialogue two of our heroes share with a couple of captive Klan members before all hell breaks loose.
There is certainly a lot of classic exploitation dialogue here (“We’re gonna set fire to this barn, but first we’re gonna nail your balls to the floor and hand you a razor blade. Then it’ll be cut or burn…Cut or burn”!) but also some cutting remarks on the utter hopelessness of any kind of peaceful outcome between such militant people. Be it the ingrained hate for everything Black from the Whites or the spitting anger of no compromise and frustrated expectations from the Blacks.
In its own small way it shows that the only method to resolve such situations is to never let them get this far in the first place, because once you do neither side will ever back down and people will die.

The finale (the only real action in the film) is pretty well handled with the odd moment of bloody violence (a few bullet hits and a spurting slit throat) but it’s far too short to fully satisfy or indeed justify it’s long build-up. So much more could and should have been made of it’s great premise of ‘Nam vets taking on the KKK!
The film’s ending, despite the funky music, is actually pretty sombre and ominous as well as the final credits play over a genuine Klan sign loudly and proudly stating the doctrines that Junior
Raymond and Ned have just been fighting against.
This truly is a long road to travel.

So the (until its recent DVD release much sort after) “Brotherhood of Death” is a well acted, well scripted (with some great back and forth insults, tirades and hip one-liners) Blackploitation flick with it’s feet firmly in the ‘we have serious things to say’ camp rather than the ‘let’s just boogie’ Trash camp, with a long build-up that still manages to hold the interest for the most part.
It also has a dash of enjoyable action and a great basic set-up of course.
But to be honest the almost total lack of full-on Exploitation ingredients and the desperately short showdown ultimately mean this film is simply not as entertaining and memorable as it so easily could, and should, have been.