If there is one thing you need to know about The Hammer, it’s that Fred Williamson doesn’t wait for permission. While most actors are content to sit in their trailers waiting for lighting setups, Fred was busy staging a cinematic heist.

The story goes that while filming Enzo G. Castellari’s The Inglorious Bastards (the one Tarantino loved so much he borrowed the title), Fred realized he had a crew, a camera and a weekend. Every Friday, he’d essentially kidnap the production equipment and go shoot his own movie. He spent the weekdays writing the script on the fly and Saturdays and Sundays playing the baddest man in Italy.

In Mr. Mean, Fred plays the titular character, a high-stakes hitman hired by a former Cosa Nostra heavy to take out a guy named Ranati (Stelio Candelli). Ranati is the kind of low-life even the Mob can’t stand. He’s running fake charities to steal from the poor. It’s bad for the brand, see? But once the job gets moving, Mr. Mean finds out he’s being set up by the very people who cut him the check.

This has that greasy, gritty Euro-crime aesthetic thanks to the Italian locations, but it’s injected with the soul of a Blaxploitation epic. Speaking of soul, The Ohio Players show up as themselves and provide a soundtrack that absolutely drips with funk.

Is the plot a little messy? Sure. That’s what happens when you write a movie on a Tuesday and film it on a Sunday. But you aren’t watching this for a tight screenplay; you’re watching it for Fred Williamson looking cool in a leather jacket, Raimund Harmstorf as a heavy named Rommell and the sheer audacity of a film made behind the backs of another production’s producers.

Mr. Mean is the ultimate DIY action flick. It feels like a beautiful accident, a collision between the Italian Poliziotteschi genre and the American badass archetype. 

You can watch this on Tubi.