A bitter and entertaining confection of racial fears, simmering violence and gratuitous sex. It’s high tension on a low budget. Trouble starts when a kindly white liberal Vietnam vet goes to a black neighborhood to deliver a message to a dead soldier’s father. He barely gets out a few words before he’s threatened by a gang of honky-haters with spectacular afros. A couple of racist cops (aging stars Aldo Ray and Jock Mahoney, slinging out slurs like bullets) save his ass from a severe beating, but that only keeps him safe for a short time. The black gang still thinks he needs to be taught a lesson so they proceed to stalk and terrorize him, following him around to groovy head shops and a memorable naked pool party. It’s suspenseful, but more than anything, it’s a piece of social commentary. This is racial tension at the boiling point and director Greydon Clark (in his debut feature) wants us to ponder that without taking a side. The black guys are running on misdirected anger, but that anger didn’t come from nowhere. Meanwhile, our terrorized white man has all of the personality of cardboard (director Clark plays the role himself and avoids any heavy lifting as an actor), with his only dimensions being his womanizing and his desire to make friends with the men who want him dead. In between is a panorama of racial attitudes from unrepentant bigots, far-out bohemians who find black people endearingly exotic, white men who seek out black prostitutes and an elderly black man who can only shake his head at it all. It’s rough-edged and sometimes clumsy, but an intriguing snapshot of the times from a director who’d go on to be a B-movie mainstay.