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Fred Williamson on William Smith: "Bill Smith is the perennial bad guy. He's always the kind of guy I need to fight. I've always got to have a big guy to fight, so, I've killed him two or three times. I've had some gigantic fights with him. I'm always looking for guys who are both actors and stuntmen, which is very hard to find. Bill is definitely a believable bad guy, but he's a good stuntman too." [Interview in Psychotronic Video, No. 10, Summer 1991.]
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'90's Yuppies Look at '70's Blaxploitation: Sad to admit, although most of us had heard of it, only one of us had ever seen Hammer before we screened this TNT edition, the only version we could find for our Blaxploitation month. In fact, aside from a few who had seen Coffey and Foxy Brown, none of us had seen any of the blaxploitation films. Their release preVCR and the fact that they were seldom seen on TV provides a partial explanation. But that's the purpose of our Thursday NiteOwl group, to screen movies most of us haven't seen, or at least haven't seen in a couple of decades and fill the gaps in our film education. It was impossible to view Hammer as anything but an interesting period piece with it's "70's movie slang. Compared to 90's films, Hammer seems quite innocent. If it was made today, every third word would be "fuck" or "nigger". Of course, TNT may have excised some harsh language, but it couldn't have been too much or it would have been noticeable. The word "nigger" is used - good cop Davis [later Captain Dobey on Starsky & Hutch] finds blonde bimbo Rhoda beaten up by Brenner comments that she's been "nigger whipped." We found the '70's version of political correctness interesting. Some of the black characters were corrupt, but none were vicious. The big boss was a white guy whose face we didn't see.
 
Brenner & his cohorts were the violent ones. |
Big Sid grovels for the big boss who tells him Hammer will be popular with "your people". |
Bill's final fight scene with Fred Williamson is pretty good. But we think the real skill was making this groin punch look so realistic. And the real courage was shown by the actor [Mel Stewart] who had to trust Bill to do it right.