The Blaxploitation Buddy Film

Abstract

The villains in the 1974 Blaxploitation film Three the Hard Way (Gordon Parks, Jr.) are members of a latter-day Nazi group who plan to poison the nation’s water supply with a chemical lethal to blacks but harmless to whites. “Just like sickle cell anemia,” the toxin’s creator boasts, “this little mixture of mine is as lethal as cyanide, [but] will not affect the people of the Caucasian race.” “It took God seven days to create the world,” another member exalts, “we can cleanse it in just three.” Evoking memories of WWII Jewish genocide, the paramilitary group kidnaps African Americans to use as guinea pigs for the chemical’s development process. One of the film’s three black heroes, a Vietnam veteran and martial arts expert named Mister Keyes (Jim Kelly, the international karate champion of the 1970s) recruits a friend and fellow black belt, an Asian American man called Link (David Chow), to help him save African America. Unarmed and vastly outnumbered, the interracial pair intercepts the villains at a Detroit water treatment plant. On defeating the white supremacists, black and yellow reaffirm their bond with a Black Power handshake.