"Crime doesn't pay in" BUCKTOWN, or does it? Find out on Scorpion Releasing's Blu-ray of the Blaxploitation classic.

Duke Johnson (Fred Williamson, MEAN JOHNNY BARROWS) comes to Bucktown to bury his brother Ben who owned the local Club Alabam. Upon arrival, he sees white cops shaking down the businesses of black owners, but it does not occur to him that his brother's death might have been something other than natural causes until he gets veiled threats from the police chief (Art Lund, THE LAST AMERICAN HERO) and attempts to shake him by his men – SUDDEN IMPACT's Morgan Upton, AMERICAN GRAFFITI's Jim Bohan, TRILOGY OF TERROR's Robert Burton, and THE SWINGING BARMAIDS' Bruce Watson – down when he reopens his brother's club. With only the support of pint-sized hustler Stevie (Tierre Turner, DEVIL TIMES FIVE), waitress Aretha (Pam Grier, COFFY), and oldtimer Harley (Bernie Hamilton, MYSTERIOUS ISLAND), Duke decides to call in a favor form old Roy (Thalmus Rasulala, ROOTS) who bring some muscle with him: T.J. (Tony King, CANNIBAL APOCALYPSE), Hambone (Carl Weathers, NEW JACK CITY), and Josh (Gene Simms, DARKTOWN STRUTTERS). They divide and conquer the corrupt police force but schemer Roy convinces the mayor to make him the new police chief and his team deputies, carrying out the same shakedown operations on the town. Although Duke refuses his cut of the profits, Roy sets his share aside; whereupon T.J. decides to set Duke and Roy against one another to get rid of one or both of them.

Purportedly based on a true event that happened some time before the film went into production, BUCKTOWN starts off looking and sounding really no different from any other lower-tier Blaxploitation production of the time until a seemingly anticlimactic middle in which Duke and Roy save the day by simply blowing away the enemy. The second half, however, reveals to Duke the shortsightedness of the plan and the corrupting nature of power. While Grier plays the love interest instead of the badass here, her character turns out to be the wisest one, wary of Duke's rushing to action but having enough faith in his friendship with Roy to try to reason with him before all bets are finally off and Williamson avails himself of a nearby armory. After the requisite explosions and shootouts, the climax is a hand-to-hand fight which we know that Williamson will win but it is drawn out and choreographed in such a rough and tumble manner that the amount of hits he takes is enough to raise the possibility that Duke might not go unpunished for the damage that his good intentions have wrought. Luther Rabb provides one of the less memorable Blaxploitation theme songs here.

Released theatrically by American International, BUCKTOWN oddly did not hit VHS until the AIP titles wound up with Orion in the late 1980s. The film was an early MGM DVD release as part of their Soul Cinema line in 2001 followed by a 2014 manufactured-on-demand DVD-R from the company's Limited Edition Collection line. Scorpion Releasing's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray comes from a master that was presumably not struck specifically for the disc. Saturated colors from gels, neons, and blood are bold while the gritty textures of the settings and the 1970s wardrobe vary with the coverage, as does detail in the night exteriors. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track reveals some rough edges in the dialogue recording but everything is intelligible while the music and effects track is up to AIP's professional standards of the period (when post-production was farmed out to either Glen Glenn or Ryder Sound Services), and optional English HoH subtitles are included.