Boss Nigger

Boss Nigger was directed by Jack Arnold, whose history of exploitation filmmaking includes 1954’s Creature From the Black Lagoon, but the real driving force behind the project was writer, producer and star Fred Williamson, a former football pro and future feature film director. Many of you may remember Williamson as the last surviving trucker in the fun 1996 vampire romp From Dusk Till Dawn. But let’s not kid ourselves; What makes this particular trailer so extraordinary is that the title boldly and proudly features what is possibly the most forbidden word in the English language. And in a show of epic chutzpah they even gave the movie an upbeat, jingle-esque theme song with that title front and center. When it came out in 1975 amid a milieu of touchy race relations the film was released in some areas as “The Boss“ or “The Black Bounty Killer“ (and for the 2008 DVD re-titled simply “Boss“), but 1975 was also the height of the Black Power Movement and i