My review was written in February 1990 after a screening on Manhattan's Upper Westside.
A public service announcement masquerading as a feature film, "The White Girl" is anti-drug propaganda aimed in condescending fashion at educating black audiences. It has zero crossover potential.
Shot in 1987, pic was shown last year at fundraisers and it waves its "good cause" flag wildly; an opening credit card declares it the "first buy-freedom motion picture". Why black people should be shamed into attending a lecture is not clear or fair.
Debuting filmmaker Tony Brown, who hosts the tv interview show "Tony Brown's Journal", tries here to fight drugs and raise black consciousness. His oft-repeated message for his constituency is "Don't try to be white".
While trying to avoid the cliches of early '70s blaxploitation pics (except for directing O. L. Duke's overplayed stereotype of a pimp/pusher), Brown unwittingly reaches back to '30s exploitation film modes. Structurally and in terms of content, film often resembles Dwain Eper's "Maniac" or the more famous "Reefer Madness".
Lovely Troy Beyer toplines as a college student hooked on cocaine (her parents told her it was okay "for recreational use") who seems headed for recovery when fellow black student (at an integrated Southern college) DiAnne B. Shaw and heartthrob Taimak befriend her. Unfortunately, gorgeous roommate Teresa Yvon Farley keeps offering her "the white girl" (punning slang for the dreaded powder).
Worse still, Farley is sleeping her way to the top in hopes of a news anchor position at the local tv station, and even has promised to deliver Beyer's body for sexual favors to the evil white tv producer (Mike Deurloo).
Brown interrupts this barnstorming dramaturgy with even more overt devices, such as assemblies at the black student union where enlightened German student Don Hannah (Daryl's brother in an okay performance) tells us that Ludwig van Beethove was "of African origin". He even throws in a segment on tv of "Tony Brown's Journal" wherein comedian George Kirby recites his poem "King Heroin" to warn how drugs affected his life.
Cast is well-chosen though sabotaged by the strident script. Beyer and Taimak are beautiful to look at in an endless stream of costume changes while Farley steals the show in pic's most dramatic role. Decent support is offered by Petronia Paley as a friendly psychologist, and Kevin Campbell might have an Elisha Cook Junior career ahead of him on the basis of his bug-eyed, drug-crazed white lecher assignment here.
