VCI Entertainment Restores Fred Williamson's "BOSS" For Blu-ray Release On Aug. 14

VCI Entertainment announced this past week that director Jack Arnold’s 1974/1975 Blaxploitation film, Boss Nigger, starring and written by Fred Williamson, will be available as a Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack product offering on Aug. 14.

A new 2K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative is the offing.

The title of the film, of course, is offensive and even during the height of the Blaxploitation wave it arrived it some theatrical venues as simply Boss or The Black Bound Hunter, with the “N” word nowhere to be found.

You have to put the film and its star, Fred Williamson, in the context of the Blaxploitation genre, which was kicked off by the arrival of director Melvin Van Peebles’ 1971 film, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (a new 4K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative will be released by Vinegar Syndrome as a Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack on May 29).   

It was in full steam by the summer of 1972 when Fred Williamson and Bernie Casey announced that they would be producing and starring in a spin-off of the surprisingly successful March of 1972 film release of director Martin Goldman’s The Legend of Nigger Charley.

A sequel, director Larry G. Spangler’s The Soul of Nigger Charley, arrived the following year and somewhere during the timeframe between the release of the two films Bernie Casey dropped out of the project, but Williamson continued in his efforts to produce his own installment in the series.  

To complicate Williamson’s efforts to product Boss Nigger, his film career had taken off and he was in demand big time … Hammer, Black Caesar, Hell Up in Harlem and Three the Hard Way (and others) all arrived theatrically and those films took up space and time.

Finally, during the summer of 1974 he was able to put together the financing and brought Jack Arnold on board to direct — the two had just worked together on the Warner Bros. production of Black Eye, which was released theatrically in the spring of 1974.

Two years from start to finish and finally Boss Nigger went into production.  Williamson returned to the same filming locations for The Legend of Nigger Charley in New Mexico and D’Urville Martin reprised his role as Williamson’s sidekick.   Within a few months of the film being completed, Lawrence Woolner’s Dimension Pictures acquired domestic distribution rights (this is not the same Dimension that was founded by Bob Weinstein in the early ‘90s) and began to platform the release of the film on a regional basis … opening the film at Christmas of 1974 and “bicycling” prints around the country for an entire year!

As to bonus goodies, VCI Entertainment has three featurettes included with the Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack release — “A Conversation with Fred “The Hammer” Williamson,” “Jack Arnold Tribute” and  “A Boss Memory.”