N.Y.C. police race the mobs to catch three blacks who, disguised as cops, stole $300,000 from a Mafia-controlled bank; mutual distrust of both black and Italian hoods is mirrored by differences between cops Quinn and Kotto.
Exciting, well-paced, and extremely violent, with fine use of Harlem locations.
Pam Grier in a women-in-prison movie? Why did no one think of this sooner? OK, they did. Several times. But this one is different. Black Mama, White Mama is a bizarre update of The Defiant Ones with a little Cool Hand Luke and Chained Heat thrown in for good measure. Grier stars as Lee Daniels, a pimp-and-drug-lord's moll who's looking for a way to escape both prison and her thug boyfriend. The dynamic Margaret Markov ably backs her as rich-girl-turned-revolutionary Karen Brent. The two meet in the friendliest Third World prison ever (Tickling games in the shower! What girlish fun!), and before you can say catfight they're chained together at the wrist. A quick prison break later, our feisty ladies are being chased all over the undefined tropical island by the police, revolutionaries, and dueling pimps. Director Jonathan Demme shares the story credit for this one, and his craftsmanship shows--Black Mama, White Mama hits every mandatory facet of the genre, including butt kicking, gunfire, an Evil Lesbian Prison Guard, gratuitously scanty clothing, and dressing up as nuns. Absolutely not to be missed. VHS & DVD
This blaxploitation thriller from 1975 stars football-legend-turned-actor Fred Williamson as the brother of a murdered bar owner in a racially divided town. After bringing in a gaggle of tough street buddies from the old neighborhood to help break up a corrupt police force, Williamson's character figures he can settle into domestic bliss with Pam Grier. But there's a snag: the hero's restless posse decides to take over the white cops' graft operation, forcing a bloody finale of retribution. In the '70s genre of reactionary revenge movies DVD Only Rated:R Not for sale to persons under age 18.
Shot on the streets of New York, The director captures the bustle and color of the city in this violent, low-budget crime film. Ambitious Tommy Gibbs (a swaggering, self-confident Fred Williamson) has risen from shoeshine boy to Harlem crime lord, but he wants a bigger piece of the pot. With a racist, high-ranking cop (Art Lund) in his pocket, he begins his expansion with a bloody takeover bid but finds himself betrayed from within and the target of both the cops and the mob. Cohen invests this fast-paced tale (partially inspired by the 1930 gangster classic Little Caesar with a touch of Scarface) with colorful characters (notably a hustling religious leader played by D'Urville Martin), high energy, and a scruffy style. Black Caesar is one of the most entertaining movies to come from the 1970s explosion of low-budget black cast genre pictures, more commonly known as "blaxploitation" films VHS & DVD
Sidney Poitier made his directing debut with this 1972 action comedy with an edge to it. Made at the height of the Black Power movement in America, the film has an unmistakable militancy in its story of a wagon-train guide and a con man who team up to throw a posse of white nightriders off the trail of escaped slaves.
Special agent Cleopatra Jones (Tamara Dobson), six feet two inches of sinewy fighting fury clad in layers of runway chic fashions in bright rainbow colors, strolls up a sand dune and orders the destruction of a Turkish poppy field. Thousands of miles away, an L.A. drug lord named Mommy (Shelley Winters hamming it up with garish wigs and lecherous leers) screeches as her life blood burns away and lures Cleopatra stateside to plot her demise. A product of the "blaxploitation" explosion of low-budget thrillers featuring black heroes in the 1970s, Cleopatra Jones may not be the best of the batch but revels in the most outrageous fashion sense. Cleo looks great in furs, pantsuits, ponchos, turbans--a new outfit every scene--and drives a sleek black Corvette with a personalized license plate: "CLEO." It's a shame that the producers dropped the exotic potential of a globetrotting super-agent for an L.A.-bound gangster film, which is entertaining in a comic-book way but rarely reaches the energetic levels of the gritty Pam Grier action pictures Coffy and Foxy Brown. Bernie Casey is a role model of dignity and action as a neighborhood activist, and a garishly overdressed Antonio Fargas delivers a suitably flamboyant performance as Mommy's pusher Doodlebug.
Synopsis: A respectable businessman leads an incredible double life. By day, he takes care of his family and business, but by night, he operates as one of the most powerful pimps on the Sunset Strip.
Inspired by the success of "The Godfather," this film about the life of Mafia gangster Joey Gallo starred Peter Boyle in the title role, along with Paula Prentiss, Fred Williamson, Rip Torn and, in his first film, Henry Winkler.
This is an important story about friendship and manhood. Young Larry Fishburne's admiration of "Cornbread" rings true with any child who had an older friend to admire as a role model. But the outstanding part is where Fish's mother (Rosalind Cash) tells Fishburne to go to the courtroom stand and BE A MAN and not to be intimidated into giving false testimony of Cornbread's death at the hands of the police as the other witnesses were! This scene brought tears to my eyes and a "standing-o" from the audience I saw it with. This scene alone, with the message it gives to young people about integrity, is worth the price of admission alone! VHS & DVD
Based on Chester Himes's novel, this film marked actor-writer Ossie Davis's directing debut. Godfrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques play Himes's volatile police detectives, Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, who are on the trail of white men who pulled an armed stickup at a Back to Africa rally in Harlem. The money belongs to the poor people who paid for a chance to return to the motherland--but was it really a stickup? Or is the flashy preacher at the center of the Back to Africa movement (Calvin Lockhart) involved in a scam to rip off his own people? The plot drags; the best part of the film are the performances (as well as spotting cameos by such actors as the then-unknown Cleavon Little) and the on-location shooting in parts of New York where a camera had rarely ventured previously. Redd Foxx shows up in a small part as a ragpicker that led to his role in TV's Sanford and Son.
