Arriving to bury his brother, Duke Johnson (Fred Williamson, former star defensive back for the Oakland Raiders and Kansas City Chiefs) finds himself in Bucktown, “Where the chicks are on the make, the cops are on the take and the welcoming committee is a sawed-off shotgun!” according to the trailer.

Duke inherits his brother’s bar, the Club Alabama, and is talked into reopening it by an old timer (Bernie Hamilton) who doesn’t have much else but the joint and his memories as a football player. Pam Grier plays an acquaintance of Duke’s brother who assumes Duke will sell the place and split, but changes her mind when he beats down two redneck cops who arrive to collect protection money.

To deal with the dirty sheriff and his deputies, Duke calls his old buddy Roy (Thalmus Rasulala) who arrives in town with three more heavy hitters, including Tony King and Carl Weathers. They quickly dispatch the crackers, but when Roy and his crew decide to stick around and take over Bucktown’s protection racket, Duke has to take them on.

The script was by Bob Ellison, a former writer for The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda. I’d love to play connect the dots on how he went from writing Mary Richards to writing for The Hammer. Despite geriatric direction by Arthur Marks, Bucktown defies logic and is actually quite good.

Shot in Kansas City and Platte City, Missouri, Bucktown skips along quickly, doesn’t pause for anything in the way of needless plot detail, and has lots of action. Williamson puts his foot to the ass of the cracker cops, Williamson & Grier get cozy, Rasulala and his crew arrive to handle business, only to start threatening Bucktown. Williamson then borrows an ATV from the nearby armory and rolls into town for his mano a mano with Rasulala. The end.

Williamson and Grier aren’t given a needless backstory for their characters, and have strong chemistry, coming across as people who have seen it all and done it all. Rasulala is given a lot to do as a good bad guy. Even if the script doesn’t stop to analyze him, you can tell how far back he goes with Williamson and how much he’d like to end up with Grier.

I also liked the conceit of Williamson going to war with the rednecks, but then having to deal with the brothers, who move in and are “ten times worse” than Whitey. Or as Grier notes, “When it comes to the color green, people everywhere are the same.” The flick is well cast and features bad ass theme music – “Bucktown Song” by Luther Rabb.