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| Death Journey | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Fred Williamson |
| Written by | Abel Joney |
| Starring | Fred Williamson |
| Cinematography | Robert Caramico |
| Edited by | James E. Nownes |
Production company | Po' Boy Productions |
| Distributed by | Atlas Films |
Release date |
|
Running time | 74 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Death Journey is a 1976 action crime film written by Abel Joney and directed by Fred Williamson, who also stars as Jesse Crowder.
Jesse Crowder is hired to transport a witness from Los Angeles to New York but instead befriends him and helps him evade his foes.
Fred Williamson returned as Jesse Crowder in No Way Back . [1]
The Jesse Crowder character would be used in four or five films featuring Williamson. [2] [3] He first appeared in Death Journey [4] then returned in No Way Back . [5] He would be used again in Efren C. Piñon's Blind Rage , which was released in 1976. The character's final appearance was in The Last Fight , which was released in 1983. [6]
According to The Hammer: an American Hero by Harold D. Edmunds, Williamson actually knew a guy in high school called Jesse Crowder. Crowder was a tough no-nonsense guy that nobody messed with. After the name was used in Williamson's films, Crowder took legal action against Williamson. The case went to court and Williamson's lawyer placed some phone books on the table and asked him which Crowder he was. Crowder realized he didn't have anywhere to go with this. In the end Williamson decided to cease using the Crowder character. [7]
Michael Hammer is a fictional character created by the American author Mickey Spillane. Hammer debuted in the 1947 book I, the Jury. Hammer is a no-holds-barred private investigator whose love for his secretary Velda is outweighed only by his willingness to kill a killer. Hammer's best friend is Pat Chambers, Captain of NYPD Homicide. Hammer was a World War II army veteran who spent two years fighting jungle warfare in the Pacific Ocean theater of World War II against Japan.
William Emmett Smith was an American actor. In a Hollywood career spanning more than 79 years, he appeared in almost three hundred feature films and television productions in a wide variety of character roles, often villainous or brutal, accumulating over 980 total credits, with his best known role being the menacing Anthony Falconetti in the 1970s television mini-series Rich Man, Poor Man. Smith is also known for films like Any Which Way You Can (1980), Conan the Barbarian (1982), Rumble Fish (1983), and Red Dawn (1984), as well as lead roles in several exploitation films during the 1970s and 1990s.
Frederick Robert Williamson, nicknamed "the Hammer", is an American actor, filmmaker, and former professional football defensive back who played mainly in the American Football League (AFL) during the 1960's. He was a top sports star during the decade, and become a leading man in blaxploitation and action films beginning in the 1970's.
A hammer is a type of tool.
William Goldwyn Nunn III was an American actor known for his roles as Radio Raheem in Spike Lee's film Do the Right Thing, Robbie Robertson in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man film trilogy and as Terrence "Pip" Phillips on The Job (2001–02).
Jesse Kenneth Tobey was an American actor active from the early 1940s into the 1990s, with over 200 credits in film, theatre, and television. He is best known for his role as a captain who takes charge of an Arctic military base when it is attacked by a plant-based alien in The Thing from Another World (1951), and a starring role in the 1957-1960 Desilu Productions TV series Whirlybirds.
John Francis Regis Toomey was an American film and television actor.
Burton Hill Mustin was an American character actor who appeared in over 150 film and television productions. He also worked in radio and appeared on the stage.
Robert Lee Minor is an American stunt performer, television and film actor, best known for doubling many African-American celebrities such as: Jim Brown, Fred Williamson, Bernie Mac, Danny Glover, Carl Weathers, Roger E. Mosley and John Amos. Minor was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and made his first television appearance in 1973 on the television program, Search, then appeared in tons of shows such as: McCloud, Barnaby Jones, The Six Million Dollar Man, Wonder Woman, Eight Is Enough, Magnum, P.I. and Starsky & Hutch among other popular television programs.
Eugene Oliver Edgar Stutenroth, known professionally as Gene Stutenroth or Gene Roth, was an American film actor and former theater manager. He appeared in more than 250 films over three decades.
Blaxploitation is an ethnic subgenre of the exploitation film that emerged in the United States during the early 1970s, when the combined momentum of the civil rights movement, the black power movement, and the Black Panthers spurred African-American artists to reclaim the power of depiction of their ethnicity, and institutions like UCLA to provide financial assistance for African-American students to study filmmaking. This combined with Hollywood adopting a less restrictive rating system in 1968. The term, a portmanteau of the words "black" and "exploitation", was coined in August 1972 by Junius Griffin, the president of the Beverly Hills–Hollywood NAACP branch. He claimed the genre was "proliferating offenses" to the black community in its perpetuation of stereotypes often involved in crime. After the race films of the 1940s and 1960s, the genre emerged as one of the first in which black characters and communities were protagonists, rather than sidekicks, supportive characters, or victims of brutality. The genre's inception coincides with the rethinking of race relations in the 1970s.
Leo Fong was a Chinese-American martial artist, actor, boxer, and Methodist minister who had been making films, acting, and directing since the early 1970s. Fong was still acting in action films right up until his early 90s.
Biff Elliot was an American actor. He is perhaps best known for his role as popular detective Mike Hammer in the 1953 version of I, the Jury and for his guest appearance as Schmitter in the Star Trek episode "The Devil in the Dark".
Blind Rage is a 1978 comedy-themed blaxploitation martial arts film. It was directed by Efren C. Piñon and starring Fred Williamson, Tony Ferrer, Leo Fong, and D'Urville Martin. Although he receives top billing, Fred Williamson's part in the film is only a cameo appearance, reprising his Jesse Crowder role from the 1976 films Death Journey and No Way Back. The plot is about five blind martial artists pulling off a bank robbery in Manila.
Robert Stack Pierce was a Hollywood actor who was previously a boxer and professional baseball player. His acting career began in the early 1970s with television roles in the series Arnie, Room 222, Mannix, Mission Impossible and later as Jake, the alien commander in the 1980s science fiction series V. His film roles include Night Call Nurses, Hammer, Cool Breeze, Low Blow and Weekend at Bernie's II.
No Way Back is a 1976 blaxploitation film written and directed by Fred Williamson, who also stars as Jesse Crowder, a private detective who once used to belong to a police force, but that now finds himself taking odd jobs for a little extra money.
You Can't Get Away with Murder is a 1939 crime drama directed by Lewis Seiler, starring Humphrey Bogart and Gale Page, and featuring "Dead End Kid" leader Billy Halop. The film is from Bogart's period of being cast in B pictures by Warner Bros., before his breakthrough as a leading man in High Sierra two years later. The film is based on the play "Chalked Out" by Lewis E. Lawes.
Down 'n Dirty is a 2000 American action film directed by and starring Fred Williamson as Dakota Smith. It also stars Bubba Smith, Gary Busey, Tony Lo Bianco, Beverly Johnson, Randy J. Goodwin, David Carradine, and Charles Napier.
Efren C. Piñon is a film director and writer from the Philippines. The main body of his career began in the early 1970s and lasted until the late 1990s. He has worked with actors such as Fred Williamson, Tony Ferrer, Leo Fong and Vic Diaz. His directorial work includes Gangsters daw kami! in 1971, Ninja Assassins in 1976 Blind Rage in 1977, Shoot the Killer in 1981 and Bandido in 1997. A significant amount of his films are of the action-exploitation type.
Darnell Garcia is a former martial arts champion, author, actor and former DEA agent. At one stage in his martial arts career he was rated 7th in the United States. He had roles in the martial arts films Enter the Dragon, Black Belt Jones, Blind Rage and Enforcer from Death Row. In the 1990s, Garcia became embroiled in a drug and corruption scandal.