NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were taken directly from the Blu-ray disc.

ADDITION: Kino Blu-ray (November 2026): Kino have transferred Robert Goodwin's Black Chariot to Blu-ray. It is on a dual-layered disc with a max’ed out bitrate. It is shown in its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio, pillarboxed in the 1080P frame. The 4K restoration by the Smithsonian’s NMAAHC had to work from what survived: a 1971 color internegative struck from a 35mm print, and a 1973 black and white kinescope negative filmed off the original 2" videotapes. The result is about as uneven as any restoration we have seen, and deliberately so. The 35mm exteriors shot on the streets of Los Angeles look excellent, with sharp detail, natural skin tones and strong, saturated color in the clothing and signage. The video-originated interiors are another story: soft, washed out with a cool cyan cast, and the video texture is plainly visible. The black and white kinescope sequences, part of the climax among them, are the roughest, very soft, faded and grayish. Roughly 1/4 the film looks freshly restored, and the rest has been preserved 'as is' rather than disguised. That is the right call for a film whose mixed media is part of its identity, and the max’ed out bitrate means the Blu-ray reproduces each source faithfully. Viewers just need to know going in that the swings in quality come from the surviving elements, not from the transfer.

NOTE: We have added 50 more large resolution Blu-ray captures (in lossless PNG format) for DVDBeaver Patrons HERE

On their Blu-ray, Kino use a DTS-HD Master dual-mono track (24-bit) in the original English language. It handles the source well: dialogue is clear for the most part, though it reflects the guerrilla production and the variable sources, and the songs with Robert L. Goodwin Jr.’s lyrics come through with decent presence. Nothing about the track works against the film, and it is as authentic as one could hope for. Kino offer optional English subtitles on their Region FREE Blu-ray.

Kino's Blu-ray includes a solid set of extras that put Goodwin’s career in context. Black Chariot: Hiding in Plain Sight runs almost 1/4 hour and features interviews with actor Robert L. Goodwin Jr. and film historian Rhea L. Combs (Regeneration: Black Cinema, 1898–1971) on the making of the film and its rediscovery. Most valuable are two of Goodwin’s television works. The Upper Chamber (1963) runs over 50 minutes; Goodwin wrote and produced this TV drama, directed by Buck Richard Pennington with Lew Ayres, Reed Hadley, Duane Grey, Preston Hanson and Goodwin himself in the cast. The Death of Simon Jackson (1969) runs 1/2 hour; it’s an episode of the series Insight, courtesy of Paulist Productions and the UCLA Film & Television Archive, and Goodwin’s teleplay follows a gifted Black poet, played by Robert DoQui, who embraces militancy for social change while rejecting violence; Ralph Senensky directed, with Judy Pace and Joel Fluellen also in the cast. It makes an interesting companion piece to Black Chariot’s own questions of conscience. A theatrical re-release trailer of about 1.5 minutes rounds things out. 

Robert L. Goodwin, one of the first Black writers in television, raised the money for Black Chariot door-to-door, shot it guerrilla-style on the streets of Los Angeles, and premiered it himself at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in 1971, after which it all but disappeared. It is a film about a drifter drawn into a militant organization and torn between its violence, his attraction to Sylvia and his own conscience, and Goodwin, an ordained minister, treats those questions of faith, loyalty and self-determination with a seriousness that sets it apart from the blaxploitation films that followed. Bernie Casey, in his first starring role, is a commanding presence (Chains of Gold, The Glass Shield, I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, Amazon Women on the Moon, Revenge of the Nerds, Sharky's Machine, Ants!, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Cleopatra Jones, Boxcar Bertha, Brian's Song, Tick, Tick, Tick,) and Barbara O., in her screen debut, is fierce as Sylvia (Demon Seed, Daughters of the Dust.) The Kino Blu-ray presents the Smithsonian's 4K restoration with a max'ed out bitrate, and while the image swings from excellent 35mm color to soft, faded video and black and white kinescope, that reflects what survived, not the transfer. The extras, including two of Goodwin's own television dramas, make this an important package. Black Chariot is a genuine rediscovery of independent Black cinema, and this disc is easy to recommend to anyone interested in the era.

Gary Tooze