PhilroPost: HOW DO YOU TAKE YOUR COFFEE?

Stars: Three of five.
I miss the days of the so-called blaxploitation movies because dammit some of those movies were first rate experimental films with hard-working casts and crazed directors who had axes to grind. Some people say that Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) wasn't actually self-exploitive because more than any primarily African-American-oriented film it did not pander to white stereotypes and in fact took on the white establishment from beginning to end. That's perfectly fine with me. Matter of fact, there's an even better reason to think of Sweetback outside that particular category: It can't be strict blaxploitation because it came out a full year before The Godfather and a big part of the black film movement was a reaction to a line in Coppola's film where Don Zaluchi, referring to the idea of the Mafia getting in the drug business, says, "In my city, we would keep the traffic in the dark people, the coloreds. They're animals anyway, so let them lose their souls." But with the financial and extreme artistic success of Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (top grossing indie film of 1972) and the commercial popularity of Shaft, also from 1971, the retroactively amusing concept of amplifying certain aspects of a successful film and running those aspects into the ground caught fire, giving us a lot of genuine blaxploitation flicks, some of which were serious fun and some of which were just tripe.
Sweetback itself remains an amazing work that is nearly all to the credit of Melvin Van Peebles, who starred in, directed, produced, did the stunts and wrote the mother. In the movie, Sweetback is a hung stud with remarkable sexual prowess. When a Black Panther gets offed, the cops ask the whorehouse pimp if they can temporarily blame the deed on Sweet. The Beetle the pimp agrees. The cops pick up another brother on the way to the station. The brother, Mu-Mu, gives the cops lip and Sweet breaks loose all hell. We get riots and the Hells Angels led by a long-haired lady, corrupt piggies and a swim across the Mexican border. We also get great lines such as a preacher concerned with the popos finding Sweetback. He says, "Man, you're hotter than little sister's twat." We also get some first rate propaganda against cops, most of which sort of writes itself. We even get the real life Melvin VP catching the clap from the "unsimulated" sex acts performed in the film. Well, hey, it was the age of realism. Speaking of which, Sweetback even impressed the fans of art films with its lighting and with the way the characters would break through the fourth wall by speaking directly about their own roles right into the camera.
The following year saw the release of another truly great blaxploitation film, Superfly. In this dynamite film, Ron O'Neal stars as Youngblood Priest (damn, whadda great name!), a coke dealer and karate expert who just wants to get out of the one business and has to use his fighting skills and brains to make it happen. See, it was kind of getting through to people in a big way at that time that hard drugs were just another tool used by the Man to keep us down and that trips like soda and smack were just another type of shackle. Even though I just wrote those words in a jive manner common to that period, the sentiment is real, folks, and the makers of films like these--and some of their young, white counterparts, such as Coppola--understood in ways that the glorifiers of hooch never would.
If you think I'm wrong about the anti-Mafia sentiment of these films, just consider some of the other hits of this period. In Hit Man, Bernie Casey (yep, the football player) kills a mobster for ruining his sister. In Across 110th Street (a true classic), Yaphet Kotto tries to save some brothers from getting killed for robbing the mob. And in Slaughter, Jim Brown takes on the crime syndicate. A lot of the film's carried an anti-dope aroma, but none more so than Coffy, which starred a frequently undressed and active Pam Grier, yet another karate expert with an overdosed relative to avenge.
One of the most innovative aspects of these and other blaxploitation films of the era was the soundtrack. A good score can carry a film along and even enhance it. In some of these, the soundtrack did more than that. In some cases, the songs made commentary on the film itself. In others, it make the film bearable. Sweetback featured a then-unknown group called Earth, Wind and Fire. Superfly had the incredible Curtis Mayfield. And Trouble Man, which would not have otherwise been worth spit, had sweet Marvin Gaye.
If it's genuine exploitation you want, it was there. Black Mama, White Mama (again with Pam Grier) was a female version of The Defiant Ones. Blacula's referent is obvious, as is Black Caesar and Blackenstein.
One of the most fascinating films of this glorious period, however, was blacklisted for years. It was called The Spook Who Sat by the Door, a film we will talk about tomorrow.

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Tuesday, January 24, 2012

HOW DO YOU TAKE YOUR COFFEE?

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