''Mean Johnny Barrows'' is a 1976 American

crime drama film Crime film is a film belonging to the crime fiction genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and fiction. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and combine with many other genres, such as drama or gangster film, but al ...

starring

Fred Williamson Frederick Robert Williamson (born March 5, 1938), nicknamed "the Hammer", is an American actor, filmmaker, and former American football player, a defensive back who played mainly in the American Football League (AFL) during the 1960s. He was a ...

, who also directed the film;

Stuart Whitman Stuart Maxwell Whitman (February 1, 1928 – March 16, 2020) was an American actor, known for his lengthy career in film and television. Whitman was born in San Francisco and raised in New York until the age of 12, when his family relocated to ...

;

Luther Adler Luther Adler (born Lutha Adler; May 4, 1903 – December 8, 1984) was an American actor who worked in theatre, film, television, and directed plays on Broadway. Early life Adler was born on May 4, 1903, in New York City, one of the six children ...

; Jenny Sherman; and

Roddy McDowall Roderick Andrew Anthony Jude McDowall (17 September 1928 – 3 October 1998) was a British-American actor whose career spanned over 270 screen and stage roles across over 60 years. Born in London, he began his acting career as a child in his n ...

also star.

Plot

Johnny Barrows (played by Fred "The Hammer" Williamson) a winner of the

Silver Star The Silver Star Medal (SSM) is the United States Armed Forces' third-highest military decoration for valor in combat. The Silver Star Medal is awarded primarily to members of the United States Armed Forces for gallantry in action against a ...

is dishonorably discharged from the army for punching out his Captain. Shipped back home Stateside, Johnny promptly gets mugged and hauled in by some racist cops who believe him to be drunk. Unable to secure gainful employment, Johnny finds himself on the soup line (with a cameo from "Special Guest Star" Elliott Gould) and down on his luck. Walking into an Italian restaurant hoping for a handout, he's offered a job as a killer by Mafiosi Mario Racconi (Stuart Whitman) and his girlfriend Nancy (Jenny Sherman) but Johnny turns him down. It seems that he's not slipped so far as to start doing odd jobs for the Mob. Eventually, Johnny lands a job at a gas station cleaning toilets and scrubbing floors for the mean penny-pinching Richard (R.G. Armstrong), who receives a beating for ripping off Barrows. Meanwhile, a Mafia war starts brewing between the Racconi family and the Da Vincis (the family, not the painter). Seems the Da Vinci family wants to bring in all kinds of dope and start peddling it to black and Hispanic kids. The Racconis, being an upstanding Mob family, wants no part of that on their streets. And so it goes, with the Racconi family wiped out in a treacherous double-cross, with only Mario left standing. Nancy is kidnapped by the Da Vinci family and gets a message to Johnny claiming that she was made to do "terrible things". Brought to the brink by poverty, The Man constantly screwing him and his love for Nancy, Johnny agrees to become a hired killer for Mario to avenge the Racconis. And so the body count starts going up as Johnny in all his white-suited glory gets mean and starts killing his way through the Da Vinci family.

Cast

as Johnny Barrows *

as Tony Da Vince *

as Mario Racconi *

as Don Racconi * Jenny Sherman as Nancy *

Elliott Gould Elliott Gould (; né Goldstein; born August 29, 1938) is an American actor. Gould's breakthrough role was in the film ''Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice'' (1969), for which he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The ...

as Professor Theodore Rasputin Waterhouse * Anthony Caruso as Don Da Vince * R.G. Armstrong as Richard * Mike Henry as Carlo Da Vince * Aaron Banks as Captain O'Malley * Robert Phillips as Ben *

James Brown James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, musician, and record producer. The central progenitor of funk music and a major figure of 20th-century music, he is referred to by Honorific nick ...

as Police Sergeant

Additional notes

The structure of the film was previously used a year before in the film '' The Farmer'' (which was shot in 1975 but released in 1977).

References

External links

* 1976 films 1976 crime drama films Films scored by David Raksin Films directed by Fred Williamson 1976 directorial debut films 1970s English-language films American crime drama films English-language crime drama films {{1970s-crime-drama-film-stub