Friday Foster

A rich white businessman has a plan to wipe out all the most powerful leaders of the African American community and the only thing standing in his way is a shapely news photographer who can punch as well as she can shoot.

Fans of Pam Grier already know what movie I'm talking about. The rest of you will just have to catch up.

Friday Foster is not Grier's best Blaxploitation movie (that would be Coffy...or maybe Jackie Brown) but it's still a good example of what's right and what's wrong with the genre.

As Friday Foster, Grier finds herself doing a lot more acting, and a lot less fighting, than in most of her films up to this point (1975), and that's a good thing. The bad thing about the movie is that, like most Blaxploitation movies, Friday Foster hasn't aged well at all. Watch two minutes of Ted Lange's embarrassing performance as the pimp Fancy Dexter and you'll know what I'm talking about. Of course watching it and realizing that it's the same Ted Lange who grew up to be Isaac the bartender on The Love Boat and you may cut him some slack.

In fact, one of the joys of watching Friday Foster is watching the familiar faces do some very unfamiliar things like Carl Weathers (Apollo Creed from the Rocky movies) as the silent hit man chasing after Friday in a truly terrible plaid sports jacket, or Yaphet Kotto playing the romantic lead as private detective Colt Hawkins.

And nothing beats the brief, but twisted appearance of Jim Backus – Mr. Thurston Howell III from Gilligan's Island – as the white racist behind it all.

The Mack (1973)

As one of the many promotional gimmicks he used to pimp his latest movie, Grindhouse, director Quentin Tarantino rented out a movie house in LA and hosted a few nights of original grindhouse films.

When it came to the Blaxploitation genre, he chose to show this 1973 classic, and for good reason.

The Mack has all the makings of a true grindhouse classic – over-the-top violence, gratuitous sex and nudity, etc. But it also has what many such exploitation spectacles are sorely lacking – a decent story brought to life by good actors working under the careful eye of a strong director.

The fact that lightning didn’t hit twice for a lot of the people in The Mack (with the notable exception of comedian Richard Pryor) just makes watching the film more interesting.

The Mack tells the story of Goldie (Max Julian) an ex-con fresh from serving five years in the pen and looking for a way to make some fast money and get revenge on the men who sent him to the big house in the first place.
Naturally – at least naturally for this kind of movie – he becomes a pimp.

Goldie’s rags-to-riches story is a familiar one, particularly if you listen to some of the rap music being made today, but what raises it above the level of a simple gangsta cliché is the commitment of everyone involved to the themes of the story. The Mack isn’t just another one of the dozens of Blaxploitation flicks Hollywood cranked out to cash in on the genre’s popularity.

It’s an original, and it deserves recognition for being better than the rest.

Starring Max Julian, Richard Pryor.

Undercover Brother (2002)

It’s tough to imagine, but there was a time when Black Cinema – so called Blacksploitation movies – was a force to be reckoned with at the box office.

Movies like Coffey, Black Caesar and Superfly were not only huge hits, but serious films – at least more serious than they are taken now when the platform shoes, wild threads and big Afros of the stars are seen more as campy fun than serious style.

Writer John Ridley and director Malcolm Lee managed to combine their obvious love for Blacksploitation cinema with their comically twisted nostalgia for the time when they came up with the idea for Undercover Brother.

The film tells the story of Anton Jackson, a Black spy/superhero who joins forces with The Brotherhood (an all-Black secret service) to stop The Man and his plan for world domination, appropriately called Operation Whitewash.

It’s a silly movie. OK, very silly. But if you are a fan of the films it both honors and lampoons – sometimes in the same sentence – it’s also very, very funny.

Eddie Griffin is terrific as Jackson, whether he’s battling bad buys with his unique kung fu style or going undercover as a wannabe poser trying to fit into The Man’s world. Dave Chappelle is hilarious as the militant Conspiracy Brother and Neil Patrick Harris steals every scene he’s in playing Lance, the White boy trying to pass in The Brotherhood.

Starring Eddie Griffin, Dave Chappelle, Neil Patrick Harris.

IMDB Site.

Shaft (1971)

Who’s the Black private dick that’s a sex machine to all the chicks?

If you don’t know the next two lines to that song chances are you think Samuel L. Jackson originally played the detective being sung about and the singer, Isaac Hayes, got his start as the voice of Chef on South Park.

Well, if that’s you, it’s time for you to watch the original Shaft starring Richard Roundtree as private investigator John Shaft, the very definition of movie guy cool. As the posters used to say, Shaft was “Hotter than Bond, Cooler than Bullitt.

While it is generally lumped together under the banner of Blaxploitation films, Shaft has none of the clichés that other marked other films of that genre – there are no pimps in big hats and tricked out cars and no hookers in platform shoes. Shaft is a gritty, street level drama that could have starred any of a dozen white Hollywood tough guys. Instead, it gave the world what it needed so desperately in 1971 – an African American leading man in a serious film.

In the film, Shaft is hired by Harlem mobster Bumpy Jonas (Moses Gunn) to find his daughter, who has been kidnapped by the Italian mob who is trying to muscle in to Bumpy’s territory. With the help of some young Black militants – and the White police lieutenant – Shaft comes up with a plan to save the day without kowtowing to anybody, Black or White.

Shaft is one of those rare films that was made more than three decades ago yet feels as fresh and energetic as any cop move being made today.

Starring Richard Roundtree.

IMDB Site.