Blaxploitation

A not-so-classy revenge flick that launched Pam Grier to superstardom.

The film is more gutsy than many other Blaxploitation movies, both in the seriousness, and in gore content... we literally get a half-second of head exploding within the first 5 minutes, and fights seem to start at the drop of a hat. The obligatory anti-drug protagonism and eponymous title song identify it strongly as a blaxploitation film.

But, not entirely. Layer the excessive nudity and catfights on top of the violence, and it almost begins to seem like a film Russ Meier would have idolized... low-cut blouses get ripped open at any and all times, and of course, a man doesn't flash so much as a nipple: the film is almost a pure blend of sexploitation and blaxploitation.

By the end, a scene which must have influenced Tarentino in Kill Bill: Vol 2, where the revenge-driven femme-fatale is forced to confront the object of her vengeance: her former lover.

A standout but little-known gem of the blaxploitation genre. It contains all the Blaxploitation ingredients: (Crooked cops, a black gang, jive-talking, dashes of pimping, drugs, kung-fu and sex.) But where most Blaxploitation films combine these to corny yet endearing effect, Bucktown manages to reconfigure the chronology and intensity of the ingredients, and come up with a highly refreshing and intense action movie. The whole becomes much more than the sum of its parts.

This is all helped greatly by Williamson's controlled intensity on screen, managing to almost totally eclipse Grier: no mean feat.

A difficult film, both for someone to make in the 70's, and for a modern audience to swallow, but both Film and Novel take their subject matter seriously. This movie took guts.

The militant uprising themes are portrayed through character development, and by the end you are forced to analyze how far the protagonist has progressed, or deluded himself, depending on your point of view. Thankfully, the movie leaves it up to the viewer. To pigeonhole this film as mere propaganda is a bit harsh, as it tells a story not with ideology or metaphor but a well-rounded protagonist, and you are left free to interpret how the film ends.

Yet, the film itself is nothing but a one-trick pony, and cannot rely on gutsy thematic content alone, and the supporting cast is blatantly two-dimensional, the plot, while unique in its setting, is sub-par when you strip away its thematic overtones. The films greatness is dependent on the arguments and thoughts it provokes once it is over, and not on its cinematic merit alone.

The film is trapped in Schroedinger's box, but is well worth the time to examine for yourself, and see what emerges.

A fine blaxploitation-era comedy, which juggles an amazing number of characters with almost no confusion whatsoever, with subplots and a jokes on as many different levels of appeal as there are characters. Lively and entertaining.

On one hand, a vibrant but muddled fugitive-on-the-run story... on the other, a remarkable cultural milestone. Independent, amazingly low-budget and experimental, Van Peebles work influenced the way in which African-Americans would break the color-barrier in film by directly spawning the Blaxploitation genre.

That said, this movie is NOT Blaxploitation, instead having all the earmarks of an independent experimental film... Blaxploitation was merely Hollywood's response to this movies groundbreaking thematic content. To look at this movie without context, only looking at its technical execution, loses much of what made it powerful. While later films would also have low-budgets and deal with similar militant themes, they nowhere near reached the raw content and reality of this film: Peebles' actually contracted Gonorrhea from the sex-scenes in the film, for god sakes. There are some movies which would be impossible to ever duplicate, and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song proudly stands as one of them.

An interesting if standard blaxploitation crime drama, of course involving a black crimelord, villianous racist Italian mobsters... but the complex and origina play between old-school 1940's hardboiled street cop (Anthony Quinn) and the by-the-book yet besieged modern black cop (Kotto), manages to hold ones attention for the duration of the otherwise standard crime-drama and blaxploitation plot hooks (which are gritty and violent, but no more so than other similar blaxploitation movies of the era.)

As a side note, Richard Ward's role as the quintessential black crime-boss is one of the best in the genre.

At some point half-way through this movie, you get rewarded for sitting through the first half, apart from Rudy Ray Moore jumping naked down a hill.
Finally, the Dolemite character moves out of a standard, poor-grade Blaxploitation, into a wonderfully cheesy poor-grade Blaxploitation. Dolomite isn't a Blaxploitation character, he was a stand-up comic character, and for the last hour, the character is in his element.

There is a fine line between "so-bad-its-good" and just bad... and you can watch the transition in this film, as the movie goes for the self-important laughs to decidedly surreal, cheesy laughs... from standardly-bad martial arts to astoundingly cheesy sped-up martial-arts with all the sound effects, and spanking.

Screw character development, we can see the actors, crew and Moore himself develop within the short span of a hour and a half, as if the movie-studio big-wigs casually stopped paying attention, and everyone was able to go for the gusto.

Tamara Dobson defitley blends Bond and Blaxplotation well, from kung-fu action to a gaggle of vaugely similar looking crooks, and an absolutley implausable yet oh-so-cliched villian... and, the standard blaxploitation subplot of drugs and being busted by the cops who always recruit according to the 50% racist quota.

Cleopatra Jones is cheesy, but entertaining, and well put together.

Fred Williamson is one of the best actors of the Blaxploitation era, and his performance here is on par with his other work.

As a spin-off film, taking previously made plots and story hooks, and incorporating all-black casts for marketability, the film is a success, drawing nicely on mob and crime films of the era. As anything but Blaxploitation, the film adds nothing new to the easily-executed crime genre. Standard and forgettable when taken out of its niche.

The shock of the volatile ingredients of "Coffy" have been diluted somewhat in "Foxy Brown." Violent sex, female domination, strangulation, and Gier's blouse being pulled open every 10 to 15 minutes is not as outrageous as it was in Coffy, and thus becomes much more a part of the standard vengeance plot.

More blatantly racist overtones, interracial rape, and setting people on fire push this movie much more seriously into a violent blaxploitation category... one where Geier is not an invincible heroine, but a girl who can be exploited yet goes to unthinkable levels for revenge afterwards.

Less set-pieces than Coffy with more gore... but in the end, less original, and overly violent, where characters are obviously introduced merely to be brutalized and killed; or seduced, brutalized, and killed. One can't deny how bad-ass Foxy is... but her remorseless joy of killing people seems at odds with the compassion for others which supposedly gives her justification for it.

Some truly horrible things, such as bad acting, cornball retro-kung-fu action, gratuitous exploitation, trampoline-jumping beach babes, and lame stereotypes. Strangely, when they are all put together, a creepily entertaining film emerges.

Nonetheless, I admit that this is a standard Blaxploitation genre, with a marvelously cheesy end-fight scene... with lots of bad kung-fu to boot. At least it doesn't take itself too seriously (see Disco Godfather.)

What Blacula lacks, it makes up for by being a heartfelt and serious attempt at being a horror movie, not simply a blaxploitation movie (no drug subplot, pimps, not much jive-talking, etc.) Instead, Blacula barely skirts blaxploitation, and is set much more soundly in the generalized exploitation era, or the realm of cheesy spin-offs of popular franchises.

In a nutshell, really it's just a vampire story, albiet of one desperately in love. Blacula, despite it's flaws, manages to deliver an entertaining experience on its pretty sub-standard plot, acting and dialog by, well, exploiting its niche.

Watchable for some occasionally hilarious one-liners, and to see the honest "stop doing drugs" message crash and burn along with horrible acting, a transparent plot, painfully bad "drug sequences", disco-dance sequences, laughable kung-fu "action" sequences... the list goes on.

A cinematic index of 70's stereotypes, classic badly-done Blaxploitation.

All in all, a pretty bad Blaxploitation film that really is just a vehicle for Rudy Ray Moore, who delivers the standard poor-quality Blaxploitation jive with an unrivaled edginess.

There ARE some redeeming movies in the Blaxploitation genre, but this not one of them, despite being amazingly popular. Drugs, Sex and Martial Arts as themes usually warrant some entertainment value, even if done poorly... but somehow, Dolomite fails to reach even that standard. When Dolomite fails, it doesn't do so in an entertaining B-Movie way, it just ends up being boring.

That said, Rudy Ray Moore's jive IS the best sounding of the era, if not necessarily the best written. In that regard, Dolomite is amazingly watchable, but the second Moore leaves the screen, which is often, you suddenly realize easy it is to fall asleep until you hear the sound of his voice again. Be sure you have friends to heckle the film between Moore's scenes, or you'll be out cold.

Shaft just seems out of his element here, with little or no action, and large expanses of utterly forgettable and unnecessary plot elements for him to navigate. Even the helicopter-fight sequence near the end is utterly boring... for some reason, Roundtree can't conjure up the iconic "Shaft" persona for this sequel, and without a strong protagonist, the film falls flat.

What makes Shaft impressive isn't the mere stylization of the blaxploitation era it depicts. Rather, the movie is actually a bona-fide private-eye flick, with serious attempts at portrayals of race-relations in New York. The lack of thoughtless stereotyping manages to elevate this movie past it's blaxploitation roots.