SOLOMON KING, 1974, Sal/Wa Prod., 85 min. Dirs. Jack Bomay and Sal Watts. With “Little Jamie” Watts, Claudio Russo, Samaki Bennett, Tito Fuentes, Belinda B. Burton. "Don't you suckers know the days of Uncle Remus and Old Black Joe are gone?," barks ex-CIA operative/ex-Green Beret/nightclub owner Solomon King to a group of Black gang members at the Sugar Hill Club, in actor/director/writer Sal Watts’s long-lost Black urban crime/action film. SOLOMON KING was shot independently in Oakland, CA in 1973 with a cast of mostly non-professional Black actors, a killer soul-funk soundtrack and incredible clothes from Watts’s own Mr. Sal’s Fashion stores. In the vein of SHAFT meets THE LIQUIDATOR (with slo-mo kung fu fight scenes straight out of the Dirk Diggler movies in BOOGIE NIGHTS), the film stars Watts as an African American version of James Bond/Matt Helm, seducing beautiful nightclub singers and beating the crap out of the henchmen of an oil-obsessed Middle Eastern ruler. Produced on a shoestring budget and shot on location in many of the businesses Watts owned, the film is a priceless document of early Seventies Black culture, music and fashion in Oakland – and a powerful metaphor for Black empowerment, with Solomon turning the tables on every duplicitous white character he encounters. “You can’t do a damn thing without the motherf**in’ white man calling the shots,” he observes at one point. Watts’s personal story is even more fascinating: emerging from grinding poverty and racism in Mississippi, he went on to become a filmmaker and actor, record label owner, host of TV dance program “Soul Is,” fashion store owner and restaurateur in the 1970s, before serving time in federal prison on tax charges and dying in 2003. Restored with the cooperation of his widow Belinda Burton-Watts (who appears in the film), utilizing one of the only surviving complete prints of the film from UCLA Film & TV Archive and the original soundtrack elements, SOLOMON KING like Rudy Ray Moore’s DOLEMITE (1975) is both a wildly entertaining, funk-fueled action/fantasy – and a prime example of an independent Black filmmaker trying to break into the commercial film market his own way.
directed by: Sal Watts/Jack Bomay
starring: Sal Watts, "Little" Jamie Watts, Samaki Bennet, Claudia Russo, Felice Kinchelow, Louis Zito, Tanya Boyd (uncredited)
1974 / 84 min / 1.85:1 / English DTS HD-MA 2.0
Additional info:
- Region A Blu-ray
- New restoration by Deaf Crocodile from the only known complete 35mm print
- New commentary track by film critic and historian Walter Chaw (Film Freak Central, A Walter Hill Film - MZS Press)
- New commentary track by author, journalist, and documentary film producer Steve Ryfle (Ishiro Honda - Wesleyan University Press)
- New three-part video interview with Belinda Burton-Watts (widow of director/star Sal Watts)
- New booklet essay by Josiah Howard (Blaxploitation Cinema: The Essential Reference Guide - FAB Press)
- July 18, 1976 episode of THE JAY PAYTON show (executive produced by Sal Watts)
- Reproduction of the original SOLOMON KING pressbook
- Restoration demo video featuring the original faded print and the newly restored feature
- Blu-ray mastering and authoring by David Mackenzie/Fidelity in Motion
- Slipcover edition features new artwork by by Robert Sammelin
- English SDH subtitles
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