Take a Hard Ride

Well, this is interesting. Whod'a thunk there's be a film that could be both a spaghetti western AND a blaxploitation flick? An Italian production directed by Antonio Margheretti, 1975's Take A Hard Ride, actually fits the bill. It stars Spag Western legend Lee Van Cleef, as well as three of the biggest blaxploitation stars: Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, and Jim Kelly, who also starred in the hilarious (but not a comedy) Three The Hard Way.

The three of them yet again 'join forces' to deliver an $86,000 bankroll that is also desired by a bunch of other people, most notably a bounty hunter named Keifer (Van Cleef). That's the plot in a nutshell. And, for the most part, breathtaking scenery aside, this film was pretty lame. Lots to poke fun at, however, so here it goes.

Jim Kelly plays a mute Indian with a tiny afro who karate kicks people in the nuts! Yeeeah, boy!

The acting was horrible. Brown, Williamson, and Kelly were never known as acting heavyweights, and it's quite apparent here. Williamson does his typical pimp/hustler talk, smoking those long thin cigars that he has in every movie you've ever seen him in. Brown looks like he's struggling to remember his lines, and mercifully, Kelly's character is mute. Van Cleef looks like he'd rather be elsewhere, as though he's disgusted with himself for even being in this film.

Sensing his career was quickly coming to a close, Van Cleef decided to finally kick back and let his hair grow.

This one was actually filmed in the Cayman Islands, something to do with a rider in Jim Brown's contract - a tax dodge, perhaps?

Fred Williamson and Jim Brown debate the merits of Brown's trouser snake having such a prominent role in a Spaghetti Western. Would Leone or Corbucci go for it?

Like I said, aside from the beautiful scenery and the novelty of the particular cast, there's not really much to like about this film. Even the stock spag western cliche of the camera zooming in to dramatic closeups on faces is overdone. I can actually tell you how many pores Jim Brown has on his nose. There was one laugh-out-loud scene worth mentioning. Williamson's character goes over a 700 foot or so waterfall, and the scene is comprised of a very obvious dummy tumbling down the falls interspersed with a screaming Williamson thrashing around in a swimming pool or jacuzzi or something. I almost pissed my pants.

Dumb movie critic tagline for this one: 'This one's so bad, be sure to 'take a hard ride' away from it!"

Here's the way-too-serious trailer...

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A new link and some blaxploitation articles...

The events of the past week have me teetering on the edge of blogger burnout, so nothing big today. I've added another site to the 'film links' blogroll, 'Bright Lights Film Journal'.

Also, a few articles to give you some more background on the blaxploitation film craze of the early-mid 70's, here and here. Enjoy.

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Black Belt Jones

I know, it's unusual for me to have so many movie reviews up here in such a short period of time, so for those of you who come here for the opinionated blather, move on. Or not. Anyways, last night it was Black Belt Jones (1974), staring Jim Kelly (Enter the Dragon, Three the Hard Way). It was another one of those 'so bad, it's awesome' movies, and it had me smiling for large portions of the film. Let me defer to Wikipedia for the plot synopsis:

The Mafia learns that a new civic center will be built, and they buy all of the land for the site of the building—all except for one place: a karate school owned by Pop Byrd (Scatman Crothers). They arrange to have Pinky (Malik Carter) come by to force Pop to sell his land, but he is killed by them. It's up to the karate school's students to get the hero, Black Belt Jones (Jim Kelly), for help. Sydney (Gloria Hendry), the daughter of the late Pop Byrd, won't sell the building. Because both of them are martial arts experts, they join forces to "clobber the mob".

Ever notice how someone's always 'joining forces' in these films? This one was a hybrid of blaxploitation action and the 'chop-socky' kung -fu genre that was also quite popular at that time (thanks to Bruce Lee's 'Enter the Dragon', which also featured Kelly). The acting and writing were absolutely horrible. The karate choreography was better than that in Three The Hard Way. Kelly obviously has some serious marital-arts skills, that unfortunately don't extend to his acting ability.

Take that, stupid white boy!

This was B-movie/borderline C-movie silliness. A few notables: the badguys are all Italians who sit around, eat spaghetti, and actually say 'Mamma mia.", people who get knocked out by Jones apparently have seizures, as evidenced by the bizzare twitching they do once knocked out, and there are nubile young California beach bimbos who apparently obtain ninja-like qualities from merely jumping on a trampoline all day. And of course, Jim Kelly's karate noises are a hoot, consisting of 'OOoooooooysh' and the 'woobwoobwoob' noises that Curly from the Three Stooges makes. Perhaps he's trying to distract his adversaries with humor, who knows? I'll have to try that next time I'm in a bar fight.

A security camera can be easily deceived by the strategic placement of a Polaroid snapshot. Who knew?

This is another one that was a pan 'n scan Japanese import that I had to get on eBay. It's not available in the U.S., and it is truly our loss.

Betcha didn't know that Isaac the Bartender on the 'Love Boat' was an angry black militant before Captain Stubbing took him under his wing and straightened him out. God bless you, Captain.

All in all, another fantastic horrible movie. Great soundtrack by Dennis Coffy, too. If you can find it, check it out. Here's the trailer to give you a taste...

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Three the Hard Way

File this one under 'so bad, it's awesome'. Last night I watched 'Three The Hard Way' (1974), directed by Gordon Parks, Jr. (Superfly). Not available in the U.S., I watched a Japanese import, a pan and scan version. Now, where to begin?

The film stars three of the biggest stars of the early 70's blaxploitation action film genre... Fred Williamson (Black Caesar, Bucktown, etc), Jim Brown (Slaughter, Black Gunn), and Jim Kelly (Black Belt Jones). Williamson stars as some high-roller publicist, Brown is a Rolls-Royce drivin' record producer, and Jim Kelly runs a karate school. The three join forces (I've always wanted to say that) to stop some wimpy-lookin' white supremacist who's going to poison the water supplies of Detroit, Washington D.C. and Los Angeles with a deadly poison that only kills black people. Yep, read that sentence again. I'm not kidding. Sounds like Trent Lott's wet dream, eh?

This movie was a hoot, soooper low-budget. There were so many funny things about it, here's a few... You can see the shadow of the cameraman in several shots (I was looking for the boom mic to pop into the top of the frame but it never happened). Huge loopholes, continuity issues. There's a huge shootout scene that takes place in a car wash in Chicago. Somehow, in the next scene, everybody's in New York. Nobody ever runs out of bullets. Williamson's character has a long cigar in his mouth in every scene... that's NEVER lit. Jim Kelly makes silly grunting noises in his badly choreographed kung-fu scenes, which sound even sillier when in slo-motion. Our heroes take on and kill huge amounts of white supremacists with machine guns, using only a handgun. The evil mastermind gives his speech about how his plan will exterminate the black race to his massive group of about twenty followers. I'm sure it would work, considering the only places in the country with black populations are Detroit, L.A. and D.C. , right?

Jim Brown explains to Fred Williamson and Jim Kelly how quickly their careers will disappear after the blaxploitation craze runs its course.

Now, it's interesting how some bad movies can really just suck (like Black Shampoo) and how other bad ones are just so watchable. I can't pinpoint it, but I enjoyed the hell out of this movie. The soundtrack, by Curtis Mayfield's old group, The Impressions, was truly funktastic. It was every blaxploitation musical archetype... the sweeping strings, the horns, the soulful vocals, the non-stop wah-wah guitar. I loved it. I was kind of surprised, though at the difference in quality between this and Parks, Jr's other Blaxploitation flick, Superfly, which was a much better movie overall (as far as the genre goes, anyways). Good luck finding this one (try eBay). If you're into the genre, this one's a must-see, if only for the humor of it all.

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Got blaxploitation?

With school wrapping up, I should have time soon to watch some movies and get some more film reviews up here. For those of you wondering what those 'blaxploitation' flicks are, check out these trailers... and remember, it's camp, folks.. pure camp. Not talking Citizen Kane here. Have fun. I do.

Trailer for 'Coffy'


and Dracula's soul brother... 'Blacula'

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Black Shampoo

Ok, most of my film reviews up here have been spaghetti westerns as of late, mostly because I've seen most of the blaxploitation flicks worth watching, and have to watch them again before a review. Unlike some of the spag westerns, most of the blaxploitation genre is lacking any artistic merit whatsoever. It's pure camp, even the better ones, such as Foxy Brown, Shaft, etc. Some are so campy they make you laugh out loud, like Blacula or Bucktown. And then there's pure crap, like one called Black Shampoo. I'm not gonna waste too much time on this.

John Daniels stars as a studly hairdresser named 'Mr. Jonathan', who, in his office gives some of his female clients a bit more than a new hairstyle (and that's where the similarities with Warren Beatty's Shampoo end). Turns out his new receptionist is in trouble with the mob or something like that. They trash his shop and later sodomize his male hairdresser with a curling iron (yup!), so he goes after them with a chainsaw. Do I need to say anything else?

Everything is over the top (or scraping the bottom, rather) in this; the soundtrack is generic blaxploitation movie music, and the dialogue is at times almost porno movie quality (not meaning it's sexually explicit, just that bad). I can't even recommend this one for the camp value, unless you like 'em really bad. You've been warned.

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Detroit 9000

Time for an installment of 'a modern white guy's take on '70s black cinema' (for my introduction to the beloved 'blaxplotation' genre, have a read of my review of 'Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song' here). Today it's 1973's 'Detroit 9000'. Now, as I do more of these film reviews, I find that the easy part seems to be the commentary about subtexts, message, moviemaking details and such, and the hard part for me is the summary. Often, I watch these late at night, and I'm not neceessarily taking notes. Here's a quick summary from Blaxploitation.com:

$400,000 dollars in donations and jewelry is stolen by a masked gang from a fundraising dinner in honor of black congressman Aubrey Clayton. The case is given to veteran detective Danny Bassett, a complex character who has to support his mentally-ill wife. He is partnered with up-and-coming black detective Jesse Williams, a move that provokes Bassett's resentment as he wants to take the credit for solving the case himself. Williams makes the initial investigation lead to an old acquintance, call girl Roby Harris, who provides crucial information about a homicide victim and a related operation for handling stolen goods. Roby is also in touch with pimp Ferdy, who she alerts that the police are on to him; this leads to her murder as his henchmen catch up with her. Williams arrives too late to prevent the fatal shots but Rody confesses while dying that she provided the vital information for the intial robbery after hearing about the fundraising dinner while turning a trick with Clayton. Bassett discovers that the fence for the goods is holed up in a cruise ship and substitutes himself for the gang member who was supposed to be taking the jewelry to the ship...

Ok, now with that out of the way, some background. This was one of those films that Quentin Tarantino, who has many times stated the influence of the blaxploitation genre on his own films, rereleased under his 'Rolling Thunder Pictures' line. He even gave it a brief cinematic release a few years ago. That would explain the high quality restoration. It is crisp and clear, and looks great.

The film stars Hari Rhodes and Alex Rocco. You'll recognize Rocco as Moe Green, the mobster who got shot in the eye at the end of The Godfather. Now, as I get more into the genre, I seem to see two camps here. There is the over-the-top, super explotative kind of film such as Foxy Brown, replete with tons of stereotypes, T&A, violence, pimps and such, and then there's the straight-ahead crime drama that they put the focus on black characters instead of white ones, and although racial issues are often touched upon, it is not the end-all be all focus of the film. Shaft could easily fall into this category, Shaft in Africa, probably not. And there are varying degrees between the two. Detroit 9000 leans towards the second example. Motivations of the police are always in question, and always framed in terms of race(as in all of these films). In terms of quality, this film is all over the map. Like many in this genre, it was mostly released in theaters targeting black audiences. The acting from the leads is exceptional and professional, the acting in some of the other characters is pretty bad. Lots of really fake looking blood. Not much else to say about the story, other than it was a pretty good crime drama, and the ending was good, because it left you with some questions as to the motivations of the white cop, Bassett, a guy struggling to stay an honest cop in the face of a personal crisis involving his crippled wife.

Now with me, the allure for these films is often the campy factor, as well as satisfying my obsession with time, meaning I really enjoy looking at the look of the period, and Detroit 9000 delivers on that. The gritty, shitty backdrop of early 70's Detroit is often reminiscent of a third-world country (there is a particular chase scene that shows a lot of it in all of its abandoned ugliness). There's the obligatory garishly dressed pimp (although none hold a candle to 'George the Pimp' in Coffy). The music was pretty good, alternating between typical jazz-funk of the period and some really great funk-gospel by a female band. The thing that does set this apart from some of the other in the genre is the lack of over-the-top-exploitation. Every once and a while, it stops feeling like a B-movie. It's worth checking out. Plus, where else can you see a suit like this? -

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'Rated X by an All-White Jury'

“This film is dedicated to all the Brothers and Sisters who had enough of the man."

I’m back… Could just be coincidence, but my pathetic number of hits has dropped off in the past two weeks with no new posts. Are you all actually reading this?

So, I initially promised a review of “A Bullet for the General’. But I’ve found that if I don’t write the review that very next day, I tend to forget the details. Soooo, instead we’re going to talk about the film that is considered by many to be one of the most important in black cinema, ‘Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song’, by Melvin Van Peebles. This is often the film credited with kicking off the whole ‘Blaxploitation’ genre of which I am so fond. It’s been a while since I’ve seen this film. Last night, however, I saw ‘Baadassss’, a recent film by Melvin’s son, Mario (of ‘New Jack City’ fame). Mario plays his father, and it is basically a dramatization of the making of Sweetback. I have a much greater appreciation for the original after seeing this film; I’ll get into that in a moment.

The original Sweetback was a no-budget film shot on 16mm around 1970. The protagonist is a sex performer who, when brought in on an arrest, ends up killing two corrupt racist cops as they are beating another wrongfully accused black man. The rest of the film is basically about his escape. The film was rated X (‘by an all-white jury’ as Melvin put it). There’s the obvious foul language, and violence and the sex scenes, according to Van Peebles, are real (he even says he got the clap from one of the actresses). It’s not like a porno movie (gratuitous genital close-ups, etc), but you can kinda tell it’s really going on. The sex subplot, as we learn in ‘Baadassss’, was so Van Peebles could get around having to use and pay union actors, because the union wasn’t interested in porno movies. They thought he was filming some kind of Afro-porn, so they left him alone. Sweetback eventually makes it to the Mexican border, alive. The movie ends and we are told, “WATCH OUT. A BAAD ASSSS NIGGER IS COMING BACK TO COLLECT SOME DUES.”

Van Peebles had already had a successful mainstream Hollywood picture, called ‘Watermelon Man’, a comedy about a white guy who somehow turns black. Columbia was ready to offer him a three picture deal. But he was disgusted as to how blacks were portrayed in Hollywood; the mammy, Jack Benny’s Rochester, the bug-eyed comic relief to the white movie star, etc. Columbia expected more of the same from him. He wanted to make a film that showed the reality of it all, of ‘trying to get the Man’s foot out of my ass’. He assembled a crew of disenfranchised Latinos, whites, blacks and Asians, who were traditionally shut out from working in Hollywood, and shot Sweetback. As we see in ‘Baadassss’, everything that could have gone wrong, did. The film crew was arrested. Peebles continually ran out of money, and his health even deteriorated. When he finally found a distributor, he could only premiere in two theaters in the entire country (Detroit and recently desegregated Atlanta), and could hardly advertise, for most newspapers wouldn’t run an ad for an X-rated movie, let alone print the title. But after the first two showings to empty theaters in Detroit, the film caught on fire, thanks to the support of the Black Panthers (who ended up making this film mandatory viewing for the membership). When it was all said and done, Sweetback brought in something like 15 million dollars, and ended up being the highest-grossing independent film ever as of 1971.

When I originally saw Sweetback, maybe a year ago or so, I didn’t really care for it. It had the feel of a disjointed, psychedelic art film at times. The opening scene, in which a 13-year old Sweetback loses his virginity, got me off on the wrong foot (Mario was the 13-year old). I felt like I might have been watching kiddie-porn, and there is no way in hell this could be released today. The soundtrack by the then-unknown Earth, Wind and Fire, was pumping, though. You wouldn’t know it was EWF, because it was raw, gritty funk, not the slick EWF they would later become. When I was done watching it, I was wondering what the big deal was. Maybe I was expecting something a bit more mainstream, a la ‘Shaft’. After watching ‘Baadasss’, I now understand. When put in the context of what it meant to the black community at that time to have a movie they could relate to, to see the white racist cops they were so accustomed to, the dirtiness of the ghetto, and to have the black hero stick it to the man and not die in the end- that spoke to them in volumes. Audiences would interact with the movie screen, yelling at it and agreeing with it, and cheering on Sweetback. There was no ‘yowsa/mammy’ B.S. going on here. No dapper and polite Sidney Poitier wanting to be accepted by the white man. This was a black film, on black terms and after seeing the dramatization of its making, and all the bullshit involved, I do have a greater appreciation for this film and am going to go back and watch it again with a slightly different perspective. If I were you, I would rent the original Sweetback, then watch ‘Baadasss’ shortly after, and then go and watch the original again. They’re both available on Netflix.

After seeing the runaway success of Sweetback, the movie bigwigs finally realized there was a niche that they had been missing out on. There was a detective story in pre-production at the time. They changed the setting to the ghetto, made the hero a black man, and ‘Shaft’ was born. Many other successful films followed, such as “Foxy Brown’, “Superfly’ and others. The ‘blaxploitation’ genre was born. That, my friends, is another posting in itself. But to get you going, go here. This is an ‘everything you need to know about Blaxploitation films’ kind of place. Enjoy.

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