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Ralph Nelson, director of Lilies of the Field, returns to the subject of race relations in America for a thoroughly different take in Tick... Tick... Tick... Tensions are taken off the back-burner slow simmer and are placed on full boil in Tick... Tick... Tick... 's tale of a black Southern sheriff trapped between the rock and a hard place of two communities separated by skin color and decades of bigotry. Newly elected, Sheriff Jimmy Price (Jim Brown) offers no favors or privileges to either community, and quickly earns the ire of both. Warned by the mayor against consulting outsiders (the great Fredric March in his penultimate film performance), Price navigates the tensions until one arrest places him directly in the eye of a hurricane of hate. With only the former sheriff to support him (George Kennedy) Price must try to defuse the tensions before the town explodes.