Joshua

1976

Drama / Western

3
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 8% · 1 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 8%
IMDb Rating 4.6/10 10 487 487

tough girl

Plot summary

A black soldier returns from fighting for the Union in the Civil War only to find out that his mother has been murdered by a gang of white thugs. He becomes a bounty hunter, determined to track down and kill the men who killed his mother.

Director

Larry G. Spangler Photo
Larry G. Spangler

Top cast

Cal Bartlett Photo
Cal Bartlett as Jed
Fred Williamson Photo
Fred Williamson as Joshua
Stacey Newton Photo
Stacey Newton as 5th Raider
Kathryn Jackson Photo
Kathryn Jackson as Martha - Josh's Mom
720p.WEB
750.8 MB
1280*544
English 2.0
NR
us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 21 min
Seeds 3

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by hokeybutt 6 / 10

Almost Perfect In Its Simplicity

JOSHUA: THE BLACK RIDER (3 outta 5 stars) I am almost tempted to give this movie 5 out of 5 stars because it is almost perfect in its simplicity... a western movie can't get much more straight-forward than this: a man's mother is killed... and he spends the rest of the movie tracking and killing the men who did it. But, really, the acting is kind of poor and the direction is uninspired. There isn't really much dialogue so you can't say the script was well-done. Also, the movie is kind of slow... but personally I don't usually count that as a flaw... I *like* movies that take their time. Fred Williamson plays the title character... the bounty hunter bent on revenge for his mama's demise. The bad guys kidnap a woman along the way and rape her a few times but by the movie's end she has inexplicably allied herself with one of her assailants. Practically the entire soundtrack of this movie is a 90 second piece of faux-spaghetti-western music that gets repeated again and again and again... towards the end of the movie it almost becomes comical when that same old theme is repeated yet again. I think you need to *really* be a fan of westerns to like this one.. otherwise you are probably going to be bored beyond belief.
Reviewed by Robiep 6 / 10

Not Horrible! Just standard.

This really isn't as bad as the other review makes it sound. It does have a simple plot, and actually moves along fairly quick. Not much time is spend on any sort of character development, but we've all seen these types of characters in every other western anyhow. It's true that there is not a lot of dialog from Fred Williamson, but his character (Joshua) is a lone cowboy sneaking along quietly through the desert. What would he say? And to who? The film has a real nice gritty Italian look to it and its starkness works fairly well with the story. It's not going to be the greatest movie you've ever seen but it's interesting enough to watch once. I saw this on DVD which was made for a letter boxed version. They didn't shrink the image or pan and scan etc. So sometimes the picture is cut off a little. It was slightly annoying to watch.
Reviewed by ma-cortes 5 / 10

Western vengeance with unstopped pursuit starred by a king of blaxploitation, Fred Williamson

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