Sheba, Baby.

Review #2508: Sheba, Baby.

Cast: 

Pam Grier (Sheba Shayne), Austin Stoker ("Brick" Williams), D'Urville Martin (Pilot), Rudy Challenger (Andy Shayne), Dick Merrifield ("Shark" Merrill), Charles Kissinger (Phil), Charles Broaddus (Hammerhead), Maurice Downs (Killer), and Ernest Cooley (Whale) Directed by William Girdler (#1636 - Abby)

Review: 

Admittedly, the 1970s had some odd (and possibly fun) titles for select exploitation movies. This was the third action movie with Pam Grier in a starring role after Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974), which were all American International Pictures productions. It was the first of three movies with Grier for AIP that year: the crime action film Bucktown (where she co-starred with Fred Williamson) and Friday Foster (in the title role with Yaphet Kotto as co-star). And then there's William Girdler. You might remember the Louisville native from the movie he made before Sheba with Abby (1974), that movie where they rode the shirttail of The Exorcist. Girdler's next movie was Project: Kill (1976) with Leslie Nielsen as star. The movie was written by Girdler and David Sheldon (who produced the movie) and was filmed primarily in, well, Louisville, Kentucky (not to go on a tangent, since I know it makes some sense to be in Kentucky, but now I expect a movie about boats set in New Mexico) that involves some nefarious people in, wait for it, loan companies. The promotional material for the movie actually called itself "Hotter'n Coffy, Meaner'n Foxy Brown", which is highly ridiculous when you consider those two movies were rated R while this is rated...PG (in fairness, you either got G, PG, R, or X in those days). At least the movie isn't lying in wait for a high quality home media release.

Look, it just isn't a good enough movie to try and get away with being on autopilot for most of its bare 90-minute runtime. Sure, Grier continues to have the charm and stamina to make one believe so much in her as an action star*, but there is basically nothing for her to latch on to in terms of general tension or variety. As ridiculously violent as Coffy or Foxy Brown could seem in their execution, at least those movies actually sounded like they had some energy to them in their craftsmanship. Here, it just seems that Girdler settled for just getting it done in the most basic of ways. It basically is a movie to all hucksters: it wants to coast on doing the most basic of tasks with as little engagement as one can possibly do, where seeing someone on a jet ski is more an "eh" moment rather than seeming like the start of a real fun climax. Another movie where our hero is motivated by the death of a loved one does seem a bit tired when you consider the energy given out by the two prior Jack Hill productions with Grier (okay Grier was in a few other Hill movies, but do you really care about prison movies such as The Big Bird Cage [1972]?). Comparing it to Abby might seem a bit unfair to this movie, but they both still belong to the "dumbass movies you might see on a Saturday night*" classification, so I guess that is a bright side. Stoker flickers with the slightest bit of interest, but he basically is being carried by Grier's energy, and the villains (as headed by Merrifield and a far more interesting Martin) don't exactly thread the needle in why the movie moves the way it does in menace (companies must be acquired because...because!). The best way to talk about the movie is thus: Grier looks cool, things happen, the movie ends and you forget most of it happened right then and there. It is the blaxploitation movie near (or maybe at the end) the back of the line to check out, but there are a few little moments of sunshine through the efforts of Grier and the occasional amusement at the situation presented that may make you not regret it all the way.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

*And also pretty attractive, but again, just the facts.

*This of course assumes that, you, the reader, who I appreciate in getting to the note section, has a nice sleep on the weekend rather than, say, working really late. Hell, some of you may even have friends.

Watermelon Man.

Review #2184: Watermelon Man.

Cast: 

Godfrey Cambridge (Jeff Gerber), Estelle Parsons (Althea Gerber), Howard Caine (Mr. Townsend), D'Urville Martin (Bus Driver), Mantan Moreland (Counterman), Kay Kimberley (Erica), Kay E. Kuter (Dr. Wainwright), Scott Garrett (Burton Gerber), Erin Moran (Janice Gerber), Irving Selbst (Mr. Johnson), and Emil Sitka (Delivery Man) Directed by Melvin Van Peebles (#1970 - Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song)

Review: 

There was one film made by Melvin Van Peebles under a major studio, and, well, here is that result. The brainchild for the film actually was from Herman Raucher. He had been an ad executive in the time that he had started writing for live television (often considered as the Golden Age of Television) before focusing more on writing, which also included the stage. Sweet November (1968) was his first screenplay that he did for film. before he co-wrote a script with Anthony Newley for Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness? [1969]. The basis for what became this film was what Raucher saw from his liberal friends when it came to prejudicial habits. Columbia Pictures liked what they saw but felt they needed a black director. Enter Melvin Van Peebles, who had directed The Story of a Three-Day Pass to critical notice on the festival circuit in 1968 (after having to move to Europe in the first place to even get a shot at making features despite his experience with shorts). Believe it or not, there were other titles considered for the film: The Night the Sun Came Out and The Night the Sun Came Out on Happy Hollow Lane. It was Van Peebles who steered the casting for Cambridge, because Columbia seriously had ideas of casting someone like Jack Lemmon...for the whole film. Raucher took the screenplay with its intended ending and turned it into a novel after clashes with Van Peebles on set about the approach of the film, since he had envisioned a satire rather than a film of black empowerment. The ending differed from the film (seriously, Raucher wanted it to end as if the whole thing was a "nightmare") because Van Peebles told Columbia to let him shoot multiple endings and he simply shot only the one he was going to use and "forgot" to shoot the other one. The result was a movie that made a bit over a million dollars on release in 1970. Raucher is perhaps best known today for his next major effort as a writer with a memoir that he had written based on his experiences as a youth in the summer of 1942 that took ages to get off the ground for a film that became Summer of '42 in 1971, with both the film and book being runaway hits. As for Van Peebles, well, the film was a hit, but he wanted to go with a different approach in mind with his next effort and that result was Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song. A book about the film and its legacy was only just released in 2023.

You have to remember that this was a film about poking fun at white people in a certain way. People are weird, but this weirdness becomes apparent in a particular way when one's worldview is thrown for a loop, whether that involves a new experience in work or, well, something a bit more offbeat in having their skin turn a new color. It isn't as easy to look on the world a certain way when one's reality is different, especially when it now involves one's perceived "tolerant" significant other. In the words of the film and its music (as done by Van Peebles), “naw, this ain't America, you can't fool me." Cambridge happened to have this film and Cotton Comes to Harlem release on the same day (May 27), which surely must have been a fun double-header for those who loved the celebrated comedian, who had once received a Tony Award nomination for his work on Broadway eight years prior. It is a shame that we did not see Cambridge get a chance to do further work as an actor before his sudden death in 1976 (at age 43), because his dry timing works exquisitely well here in conveying the dueling methods of both situation comedy and sly satire of now being a black man in a world that likes to shine a bright light on certain things. Whiteface makeup and all, he sells the personality shift that comes in making humor from both a man who had ridiculous notions of amusement as someone comfortable in their life (running to the bus stop, making cracks about seeing race riots) and then the other side in being thought as an "other" in both business and as a person. Parsons (already a noted supporting presence in film and stage) reflects the sensibilities of the bleeding-heart liberal that reflects pretty well today when it comes to the illusions of tolerance...to a certain point, which works pretty well to the film's advantage in that certain kind of chuckle. Among the supporting presences, consider Moreland, who had once been at the forefront of comedy in steady work in vaudeville and film before the late 1940s saw a reassessment of how black people were portrayed on screen when it came to stereotypes had seen him appear in film less by the 1950s. This was the third-to-last film with Moreland, who died in 1973 at the age of 71. He and Martin have distinct reactions when looking on Cambridge, who went from happy-go-lucky "barbs" to some other type of observation that is curious to try and define. People are far more than their job or their color, but it takes action to get things across. There are a handful of scenes one could highlight when it comes to that growing feeling of metamorphosis, such as Cambridge trying to get calls from the doctor only to have to hear with ones threatening him to leave home (with a certain word used for emphasis) that strikes differently when presented with a dry presence acting it out. Of course, the scene where he bargains his own house away by playing to stereotypes is also pretty funny when one gets down to it. As a whole, the film rests on the amusement of its situations and how timely it all still seems now for a worthwhile showcase in director and star that shows a certain type of empowerment worth letting play out on its own terms.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

Dolemite.

Review #1451: Dolemite.

Cast: 
Rudy Ray Moore (Dolemite), Lady Reed (Queen Bee), D'Urville Martin (Willie Green), West Gale (Reverend Gibbs), John Kerry (Mitchell), Jerry Jones (Blakely), Vainus Rackstraw (Creeper), Hy Pyke (Mayor Daley) Directed by D'Urville Martin.

Review: 
"My structure has an art-form flow, and I do what I do as a form of art. I'm a ghetto expressionist, not a dirty old man."

ACTUAL FILM QUOTE: "I'm gonna let 'em know that Dolemite is back on the scene! I'm gonna let 'em know that Dolemite is my name, and fuckin' up motherfuckers is my game!"

What do you expect from a film once described as "the Citizen Kane of kung fu pimping movies"? This was the brainchild of Rudy Ray Moore, who was an comedian and singer after serving in the US Army for the entertainment unit in Germany., after realizing his desire to be an entertainer through seeing a talent contest as a teen. His first persona was "Prince DuMarr" (done at 17 while in Milwaukee), in which he performed a singing and dance act with a turban. He joined the service in 1950 and found himself stationed to perform for fellow service men, for which he served for over two years that helped inspire him to do stand-up comedy. His initial comedy albums (the first in 1961) were moderate hits on release. It was during his time working at Dolphin's of Hollywood that he would first hear about an eccentric drunk named Rico, who would trade his tall tales for money to Moore, which he was soon inspired to use a routine and persona of his own in Dolemite, with the act differing from other comedians of the time with his profanity that included rhymes and music. In 1974, he got the inspiration to further Dolemite into the public consciousness through a motion picture, for which Moore would use the money made from his records to help fund this project to the sum of over a hundred thousand dollars while Jerry Jones would write the script. Moore would prove to have a career in film (of sorts), with a sequel following in The Human Tornado the following year along with a few other blaxploitation films later in the decade while still continuing to do albums that continued until his death in 2008 at the age of 81. A film depicting the film's production was released in 2019 in Dolemite Is My Name, featuring Eddie Murphy as Moore.

It is obvious fairly quickly that this is a nonprofessional kind of film, one where the editing and shot composition seem to fight each other for whose is more obviously ridiculous, and the acting is basically nonexistent. In comparing it to other blaxploitation fare, I would say that this is probably around the level of Shaft's Big Score! (1972) in terms of general entertainment, where you will laugh plenty for this stupefying film (whether with or at what you see) with curiosity in more ways than one. It isn't great by any means, but it is admirably average enough to override flaws that could've sank in less ambitious hands. Perhaps it is like watching one of those so-bad-it's-good films, where you can poke at the holes present here and still smile a bit, such as the supposed martial arts sequences or the key fight between Moore and Martin (who apparently was not too enthusiastic in directing this film) that ends with a liver pulled out of all things. One can't resist watching Moore on screen, who generates plenty of laughs with excitement with too many actions to count. Martin may not be on screen too much as the villain, but he sure makes the confrontation scene between him and Moore worthwhile. You know why this works enough to be recommended as a winner over other certain average "cult classics"? Because this one actually managed to make me actually really care about what could happen next, whether that involved a sling of unmentionable words to make a cheeky insult by our star or where the cardboard cutouts will do next to react to what resembles a vanity project but with kung fu and style. It is a 90 minute amateur explosion that makes for a good curiosity to view and laugh as an irresistible film of its time and era.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.