Continuing with the Blaxploitation theme of my last post, here are another three short reviews. In keeping with my innate inability to keep things ordered, however, I’m not even sure that two of the three can really be called Blaxploitation. One because it transcends that neat genre placing, the other because it’s more of a women in prison movie. The third, you’ll be pleased to note, is completely, unashamedly Blaxploitation and all the better for it.
First up is one of those benchmark movies that helps define the genre: ‘Cleopatra Jones’. I’ve wanted to see this film for a while now as I’m a huge fan of ‘The Kentucky Fried Movie’ – that early Zucker-Abrams-Zucker effort that lampoons all manner of 70s TV and film – which features an ad for the fictional ‘Cleopatra Schwartz’. (NSFW) ‘Cleopatra Jones’ is probably most notable for it’s lead, Tamara Dobson, a striking 6’2″ model who plays a sort of female James Bond but who – with her size, glamorous looks, style and Custom Corvette with personalised plates (CLEO) – sticks out in a crowd more than Bond ever did. This is typified by the scene early on where she returns to the U.S. Hoping to ambush her, the ‘baddies’ are confronted by Cleo standing on the baggage carousel and getting the drop on them with aplomb.
The tone set, this is a fairly run of the mill cops and robbers type film with an ever-so-slight espionage twist – we’re not, for instance, ever told exactly what branch of Government Cleo works for other than she’s an agent for the President. But, like the vast majority of these films, that’s looking at it from a 21st Century perspective. A black, female heroine that helps break down both racial and sexual prejudices must have been fairly radical when this film was made. Especially as it was produced by a major studio (Warner). True, that does mean the overt sexuality and violence prevalent of other entries in this genre are toned down severely, so it’s a little less umm.. ‘sploitation-y’ if you will, but it still paints a picture of a society where Blacks, Whites, Men, Women, Rich and Poor can all work together.
Centering on the battle to keep drugs off the streets, Cleo has enraged drug baroness, Mommy (Shelley Winters), by supervising the destruction of drug crops in Turkey. Mommy attempts to get rid of Cleo with the help of her assorted flunkies and corrupt cops (including Antonio Fargas and Bill McKinney). In the middle of all this is Cleopatra’s boyfriend, Reuben (Hollywood stalwart Bernie Casey), who runs a halfway house for drug addicts and provides the love interest for Cleo and some social background. Tamara Dobson is a decent enough actress but doesn’t have the presence of someone like Pam Grier and the material doesn’t do her any favours by feeling a little slight even if it does deal with some weighty themes. Shelly Winters, on the other hand, has little to do in this film but with such scant screen time, she almost outdoes Shatner in ‘Wrath of Khan’ for sheer, scenery-chewing, shouty goodness. Ranting at the drop of a hat and providing a dowdy, unattractive counterpoint to Cleo’s calm and elegance. There’s a fairly obvious dig at the Women’s Lib movement here, which I found a bit odd considering the overall theme of tolerance and cooperation, obviously the movement was none too highly thought of, you can read a bit more about it here.
That aside, this is a fun, if almost entirely unchallenging film with some great style and wit. A shame that for a supposed super-spy adventure most of the action seems to take place on L.A. side-streets and back lots and it’s over in a flash, but it’s a worthy entry into the genre and should have heralded greater things to come. But you know how it goes with sequels.
Next up is the Pam Grier starring ‘Black Mama, White Mama’. Sadly, title, plot and setting (an island in the South Seas) are never lived up to. Two prisoners, Lee Daniels (Grier) – a hooker who ran off with her drug-dealing, pimp boyfriend’s money – and Karen Brent (Margaret Markov) – a revolutionary trying to lead a revolt on the island – are new inmates on one of the islands prisons. While being transported to a new prison for interrogation, they escape when the convoy is ambushed by Karen’s rebel friends (I cannot resist a Star Wars reference, no matter how lame) and, chained together, must learn to work together to escape the government and the local drug lord and bring about a revolt.
Now read that back. Sounds like absolute gangbusters, doesn’t it? It even drops you straight in to the exploitation goodness with sex-crazed, lesbian prison warders and a fair bit of nudity. How, HOW, I ask you, could such utter genius fail? ‘Surely,’ I hear you cry, ‘it writes itself?’ Well, apparently, no one could be bothered. As soon as the ambush is over, the whole thing descends into a turgid mess.
Grier and Markov are fine as the leads and most of their scenes are well played as they realise the best way out of this mess is to cooperate with each other. Karen is in a hurry to meet up with the rebels, lead by her boyfriend, to take delivery of weapons that will help in their insurrection. Lee doesn’t have much time for a rich, white girl playing at being a revolutionary when she needs to get off the island. All the while, they’re tracked down by government troops and police, a hired-gun, Ruben (Sid Haig), a drug-lord, and Karen’s boyfriend and chums. There’s just so much that could have been done here and it’s almost all utterly wasted. Particularly Sid Haig’s hatstand cowboy mercenary. He has a couple of bizarrely amusing scenes but the character could have been so much more.
The film just lurches from clumsy set-piece to clumsy set-piece and doesn’t add up to anything approaching a satisfying whole, juddering to a halt with a pretty pants resolution. I know that exploitation films as a rule suffer from low budgets and barely legible plots and usually I’m happy to abandon myself to a couple of hours of sex, violence and not much else. But this really could have been a winner and it falls so very, very flat.
Finally, there’s ‘Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song’. Although it can be said to have kicked off the entire genre of Blaxploitation, it’s hard to say that this film is blaxploitation in the ‘traditional’ sense. For a start, it’s far more what would be called an ‘indie’ movie today; with it’s paucity of dialogue (particularly the lead), rough and ready style (shot on a tiny budget and cramped schedule) and auteur-like maker (Melvin Van Peebles wrote, produced, directed, scored and stars in the film). It also transcends the genre entirely as it is perhaps the first film to so blatantly stick two fingers up at ‘the man’ and do it in such an ‘arty’ (for want of a better word) way.
It’s not an easy watch, mind. I don’t know if there’s a decent copy out there but the low budget nature of the production is everywhere. Murky scenes and even murkier sound do little to make things easy to follow. But I enjoyed it, nonetheless. This is not to say that it’s not a well shot film, there are a lot of interesting stylistic shots and, like a lot of ‘indie’ film, it gets away with a lot that a big budget studio picture probably wouldn’t featuring frequent montages and jump cuts.
Sweetback is an adult entertainer, wrongly arrested by the police. While being transferred to the police station, he intervenes in the beating of a Black Panther member, beating up the cops and escaping into the L.A. backstreets in an attempt to reach the Mexican border. Along the way he meets up with bikers (including John Amos), friends and foes, all the while being chased by the police.
The soundtrack is worth a mention as it was scored by Van Peebles and features an up and coming Earth, Wind and Fire. Funk and soul are blended with Gospel-sounding interludes, particularly during the montage segments. They make for an interesting and sometimes unsettling blend.
This film is very definitely an acquired taste, meandering in parts, often explicit and with a message that’s pretty hard to miss. Dated but still powerful, it’s an interesting insight into the history of cinema – particularly black cinema – if nothing else. It’s certainly a long way from the other exploitation films I’ve seen, but it may just have kick started an entire genre.
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