SUGAR HILL - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Blaxploitation Like You've Never Seen Before!

Sugar Hill (1974)
Dir. Paul Maslansky
Scr. Tim Hill
Cin. Robert C. Jessup
Starring: Marki Bey, Robert Quarry, Zara Culley, Don Pedro Colley,
Charles F. Robinson, Richard Lawson, Larry Don Johnson, Betty Ann Rees

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This fella's seen more than his fair share of Blaxploitation in his life, perhaps too much. Nah, what am I saying? One can never get too much super soul action from the 70s. I've gotta tell you though, nothing rocked my world quite like Paul Maslansky's Sugar Hill from 1974. I thought I'd seen every cinematic African-American permutation of genre pictures, but this one's a true original; a bloody vigilante movie with zombies, raised from their graves by the power of voodoo.

It doesn't get sweeter than that. Well, actually it does when the lady needing vengeance is the sweeter-than-sweet Marki Bey in the title role of Sugar Hill. And man, Sugar is sweet, luscious and totally badass!

The movie opens over a stunning opening title credit sequence with a sumptuous voodoo ritual replete with snakes, chickens and furious dancing and conjuring. All of this is set to the unforgettable Dino Fekaris/Nick Zesses song "Supernatural Voodoo Woman" as sung ever-so smoothly by The Moderns. It then comes as a special treat when we discover why this all feels like a super-soul-styled musical number; it's none other than a very cool nightclub act in Houston's "Club Haiti".

Its proprietor, Sugar's loving fiancé, is threatened by some mean-ass gangsters representing local mob boss Morgan (Robert Quarry of Count Yorga fame). The scum bucket wants to buy this super successful dining, dancing and drinking emporium for a mere song. He refuses, of course and is summarily beaten to death.

Sugar goes ballistic! Travelling deep into the bush, she looks up her old pal, voodoo woman Mama Maitresse (Zara Culley, Mother Olivia Jefferson from, you guessed it, The Jeffersons). The good Mama introduces her to the mighty devil man himself, the ultra-stylish, mega-flamboyant Baron Samedi (Don Pedro Colley) who agrees to take Sugar's soul (when the time comes naturally, of course) in exchange for his services to raise the living dead to do her bidding.

The good Baron and his zombies are especially looking forward to whuppin' some Whitey and Oreo Cookie ass since they're long-dead slaves from the deep pre-Civil War South and they live as the living dead to get some payback too. Sugar and the Baron work as a team to rustle up each and every one of Morgan's henchman and we're the beneficiaries of some magnificent vengeance involving a variety of death instruments: machetes, snakes, spears - all manner of gruesome butchery.

Tim Hill's lively screenplay injects a fair bit of juicy satirical elements as the film goes about its supremely entertaining business. It gives the wonderful actor Don Pedro Colley quite a few hilarious bits where he dupes Whitey with any number of Sambo routines that give Steppin Fetchit a run for his money. One of Colley's best scenes has the Baron happily singing "De Camptown Races" replete with "Doo-Dahs" as he chauffeurs an unwitting gangster to his horrific demise.

And what a demise it is. Sugar wryly quips, "I hope they don't mind white trash," as the gangster is dumped alive into a pit full of starving pigs.

Oink. Oink.

The movie is spiritedly directed by Paul Maslansky making his feature length debut. Good thing it's so spirited, too. Sugar Hill was the only movie Maslansky ever directed. He did, however, have a hugely successful career as the producer of such acclaimed cult genre films as Castle of the Living Dead, Raw Meat, Race With the Devil, Damnation Alley and many others before settling in to produce every single Police Academy movie ever made (including its upcoming reboot). There are a few rough around the edges moments in Sugar Hill (which Maslansky immodestly notes in the ample supplements on the Blu-Ray), but he was wise (using his producer noggin) to surround himself with a great creative team including the wonderful underrated cinematographer Robert C. Jessup.

Okay, this is no masterpiece, but it sure is fun seeing Whitey get His. And even though the main creative team are anything but African-American, they go out of their way to deliver entertainment which more than appealed to its target audience. Then again, even Whitey is going to have fun with this. I sure did - especially when Robert Quarry's blonde whore tells Sugar not to get "uppity" with her and our heroine quips back with:

"Uppity? My dear, talking to you means I look nowhere but down!"

Yup, this is some mighty Hot Voodoo!

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** (Film) & **** (Blu-Ray)

Sugar Hill is available on Blu-Ray from Kino-Lorber. It's a gorgeously produced package with a ton of fantastic extra features including a wonderful Maslansky commentary, generous interviews with the actors and a great transfer from nice source material which allows for all that glorious 70s grain and punchy colours courtesy of cinematographer Jessup.

While you order your own copy of Sugar Hill by clicking HERE (Canada), HERE (USA) and HERE (UK), why not check out the opening scene of Sugar Hill below, complete with "Supernatural Voodoo Woman".

COTTON COMES TO HARLEM - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Ossie-Davis does Blaxploitation like nobody ever did in this extremely entertaining adaptation of the Chester Himes novel with super dicks Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, now on Kino Lorber Blu-Ray

Cotton Comes To Harlem (1970)
Dir. Ossie Davis
Starring: Godfrey Cambridge, Raymond St. Jacques, Calvin Lockhart, Redd Foxx, Judy Pace, Lou Jacobi, Eugene Roche, J.D. Cannon, Cleavon Little

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"We may have broken some heads,
but we've never broken any promises." - Coffin Ed Johnson

Coffin Ed (Raymond St. Jacques) and Gravedigger Jones (Godfrey Cambridge) do what great cops do best; they always get their man and if THE MAN says, "Don't bust heads," they sure as hell make sure to bust all the heads that need busting to clean the scum off the streets of Harlem in glorious NYC.

And, they're cool.

Coffin Ed suavely serves up a sardonic wit, whilst Gravedigger Jones favours a more broad approach to inspiring yucks. As drawn by novelist Chester Himes, these cats have been immortalized in one of the ultimate Blaxploitation pictures of the 70s by none other than screenwriter-director Ossie Davis, one of the greatest African-American actors of all time (lovers of Spike Lee will never forget Davis as the philosophizing old man in Do The Right Thing and genre fans have long admired Davis as JFK - YES! - JFK in Don Coscarelli's immortal Bubba Ho-Tep).

Ed and Jones were perfect heroes for helmer Davis to march through their action-comedy paces. These two guys, as penned by Himes and immortalized onscreen by Davis, seem practically born with crime-fighting in their blood and they do the citizenry proud by never kowtowing to the rules imposed upon them by those uptight honkies running the NYPD and the city at large. No job is too big, small or untouchable. The People love 'em to death.

And, they're damn funny.

Call them an ebony Abbot and Costello if you must, but for whatever laughs they wrench consistently from us, they're mean buggers with lightning fists and sharp-shooting pistols, always ready for action.

Now, every good cop picture has a mystery to be solved, but the one which plagues Cotton Comes To Harlem is a doozy. The primary question that drives the picture is thus:

"Now what in the hell would a bale of cotton be doing in Harlem?"

Not just any cotton. We're talking raw, untreated and oh-so pure fluff, straight off the fields in the deep south. Buried within it is the quarry of Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones. A sleazy slime ball common criminal, the "good" Reverend Deke O'Malley (a deliciously ooze-dripping Calvin Lockhart) has been running what our boys know is a scam. The slick-talking man of the cloth has been running a major scam (or so our super dicks are convinced) to secure oodles of money from the good, poor, hard-working folks of Harlem in order to transplant them back to their roots in Africa and out of the mire of America which snatched up their forefathers in the first place.

Coffin and Gravedigger know better. They're convinced O'Malley, always adorned in fine clothes, jewels and living with a hot babe in a slinky pad, is going to take the money and run, run, run. Hunches, however, are not evidence and this is something our boys are going to have to beat out of a few heads. O'Malley, you see, has just collected a huge whack of dough during a rally which, has conveniently been hit by deadly, armed marauders in masks.

And the secret's in the cotton.

Damn, where's that cotton?

Davis generates a fun, slam-bang cops and robbers steam engine replete with a breakneck pace, plenty of babes, oodles of action and one of the best damn car chases on the streets old NYC - ever.

Replete with a great soundtrack, loads of laughs and sheer dogged detective work, Ossie Davis plunges us into a grand, two-fisted crime picture.

St. Jacques and Cambridge acquit themselves with aplomb and the rest of the cast is jam-packed with a who's who of African-American comic talent like Redd Foxx (Sanford and Son) and Cleavon Little (Blazing Saddles), plus a stalwart team of grizzled character actors including Lou Jacobi, Eugene Roche and J.D. Cannon.

And then, there are the babes, the most luscious being Judy Pace, as O'Malley's wily, sharp-tongued mistress.

This great working actress should have been a much bigger star than Hollywood let her be, though as Vicki Fletcher in the famous TV nighttime soap opera Peyton Place and the one of three beauties who "love" a philanderer to death in Three in the Attic, let her prove to be no slouch in the popularity and talent department.

Blaxploitation was a long and popular sub-genre in the movies, but Cotton Comes to Harlem manages to transcend that label by being one of the best cop pictures of the 70s - period. Sadly, Ossie Davis only directed five feature films and one TV movie. He clearly had a great command of the camera and could easily dance rings round most studio hacks of the period and certainly held his own with the period's better filmmakers.

Davis delivered a lovely, but little seen drama called Black Girl and Gordon's War, a magnificently nasty action film with Paul Winfield leading a charge of Vietnam Veterans against scumbag drug dealers, pimps and other assorted miscreants. Still, Davis left behind an amazing legacy of legendary performances and with Cotton Comes To Harlem, he delivered an absolute must-see.

And, of course, there's Judy Pace.

Damn, she is fine!

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

Cotton Comes To Harlem is available on a gorgeously Blu-Ray that captures all the grain, grit and colour of the 70s from Kino Lorber. In Canada, the title is distributed by VSC (Video Services Corp).

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BOSS NIGGER aka "Boss", "The Boss", "The Black Bounty Killer" - Review By Greg Klymkiw @FantasiaFest2014

Play the theme song from BOSS NIGGER sung by Terrible Tom while you read the review:

"Look Mayor, you've been hunting black folks for so long,
we just wanted to see what it'd be like to hunt white folks."

Boss Nigger (1974) ****
aka Boss, The Boss, The Black Bounty Killer
dir. Jack Arnold
Starring: Fred Williamson, D'Urville Martin, R.G. Armstrong, William Smith, Carmen Hayworth, Barbara Leigh

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Boss (Fred Williamson), a tough, tall and lean African-American cowboy, counts his reward money, pockets it obligingly, then flashes a big smile at the racist lawman who grudgingly had to pay it out. "I wants to thank ya, Sheriff," says our title character. "Sorry, we ain't got time to stay for supper, but we got us more whities to catch."

And so begins Boss Nigger, one of the best westerns of the 70s. Boss and his trusty, wiseacre sidekick Amos (D'Urville Martin) ride off into the picturesque natural beauty of New Mexico in search of their next easy kill - always wanted, dead or alive and yes, always of the White Trash Caucasian Persuasion.

Now if you saw Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained and thought the idea of an African-American bounty hunter was original, just remind yourself that QT's entire output has been steeped in ripping off, or rather, referencing the works of older films he revered as being cooler than cool.

And don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed the Jamie Foxx/Christoph Waltz western bloodbath, but Boss Nigger is the real thing.

JED: Go ahead and kill me, Nigger!
BOSS: That's "Mr. Nigger" to you!
JED: Then go to Hell, Mr. Nigger!
BOSS: To Hell is where you're going!

Made almost forty years ago, it's way ahead of its time and proves to be more cutting edge revisionist than Tarantino's. Written and produced by the former football champ turned superstar and directed by the legendary Jack Arnold (The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Mouse That Roared), this terrific duster blends old fashioned western tropes with the very best elements of Blaxsploitation. Don't forget that Django needed to be rescued and taught the trade by a White Man, but Boss Nigger and Amos are former slaves who broke free all on their own and carved a path of destruction to emancipate their fellow brothers in the legendary Nigger Charley series (not to mention that Django is single-minded in the pursuit of securing his wife's freedom at the expanse of anyone, whereas Williamson's character is all about making America a better place for all oppressed people of colour).

How can anyone not like a film wherein
Fred Williamson goes at it with William Smith? 

And so it is that Boss and Amos are on their way to a wild, wooly tank town bereft of a sheriff in order to track down Jed Clayton (William Smith), the meanest, orneriest criminal psychopath this side of Hell and his gang of bloodthirsty, shoot 'em up, rotgut-guzzling and female-violating redneck racists. The pair rescue the beautiful Clara Mae (Carmen Hayworth) from gang rape at the hands of some Clayton cowpokes, deposit her in the care of some kind Mexican-Americans on the outskirts of town, then proceed to nominate themselves as Sheriff and Deputy of a town so corrupt that its Mayor (R.G. Armstrong) is secretly in cahoots with Clayton.

Boss and Amos waste no time in posting the new laws of the town which all include hefty fines for spitting, cussing, shooting and worst of all, using the word "nigger". Many townspeople are shocked by this and would just as soon put up with the Status Quo, but some, like the sexy schoolteacher Miss Pruitt (Barbara Leigh) are relieved that law has come to their town. She even develops a mad crush on the muscular, leather-adorned Boss Nigger.

In addition to their shenanigans in town, the Boss and Amos wreak havoc upon the huge gang of cutthroats and Boss Nigger reigns solidly as a violent, action-packed western of the highest order.

Jack Arnold's helmsmanship is first-rate, the fisticuffs, shootouts and explosions are taut and engaging and Fred Williamson's writing equally so.

The dialogue is especially ripe and you'll feel like delivering a standing ovation when the prim, proper schoolmarm Miss Pruitt begs Boss to take her along when he leaves town after tidying up his business. Williamson, always the King of Cool, writes himself one of the best lines in movie history. Bidding the sexy schoolteacher farewell, he says:

"Lady, a Black Man's got enough trouble in this world without a White woman following him around."

Enough trouble, indeed!

Boss Nigger (with the title Boss) is playing at the 2014 FantAsia International Film Festival in Montreal.