Black Hooker

Just when I think I've seen every unnoticed example of the 'blaxploitation' genre...along comes this quirky, sincere little film from 1972. It more rightly fits, perhaps, into the sub-genre of African-American themed films set in the Great Depression, like "Book of Numbers" and "Thomasine and Bushrod". The actress who plays the main character's mother bears a rather striking resemblance to Josephine Baker. The film's stage origins often stick out and the fact that all the dialogue was post-synched doesn't help to alleviate a general sense of technical stiffness. Still, it's an interesting story about the son of a light-skinned prostitute (improbably played by an actor who's far too fair-skinned, blonde and blue-eyed) caught between the clash of white and black cultures. The video version I watched (on Edde) was actually a pretty good looking print (apart from a few bad stretches on the soundtrack), moderately letterboxed even. If you can find this and are a fan of the genre, check it out.

Blaxsploitation cinema of the 70's is littered with the same old tiresome genres: Martials Arts, Gangster movies and Drug Smuggling. So it's refreshing to come across a movie that tries to shake the boundaries and try something new. Granted Arthur Robinson's 'Sister, Sister' aka Black Hooker and Don't Leave Go My Hand, suffers somewhat dramatically from amateur directing, but overall the movie delivers its story well enough for the audience to appreciate the intentions it sets out to achieve.

The story follows the early years of a young white boy, abandoned by his mother; A high class African-American hooker from the city, to be brought up by her grandparents in the poor black regions in the countryside. The denial of her son, is illustrated through her disgust at his white skin, blonde hair and blue eyes, a child born a bastard to a drunken white man and a prostitute. The child however, alien to a world of racial bigotry, wants only the love of his estranged mother. After losing his childhood sweetheart and first love to his preacher grandfather at the age of 16, he decides to leave home for the city in search of his mother, only to finally find her and be greeted with stone cold denial, and contempt. A lifetime of rejection and hardship is too much to bare for the son... How will he cope?

A fairly thought provoking story which undeniably sets out to challenge the social and ethnic class structures that were so divided in working class America in the 70's. Which I feel the current IMDb rating does not give it credit for. There's no pretending that this movie is anything particularly special, but it does manage to string together a plausible narrative, which offers somewhat more than the usual pimp/blow/fist fighter we're so used to with blaxploitation.

The strength of this movie comes from the performance of the leading actress Sandra Alexandra who plays the working girl mother. Besides Alexandra's performance, the rest of the cast is nothing out of the ordinary, but the ideals this movie is trying to flagstone, speak louder than the actions actually portrayed on the screen.

Well what can I say, this is a true Blaxpoitation film. To be honest I totally adore this genre and this movie hasn't changed it at all. Basically it follows a little white boy who is the son of a black hooker. (Go figure!) Anyway, he lives with his grandma and grandpa. The characters don not have any names at all, which only adds to the special ambience of the film. Everybody Should really check out the awesome psychedelic special effects of the burial scene! This movie is a real eye-opener! Blaxpoitation will never be the same!!

Black hooker accidentally gets pregnant by a white man, and drops off the finished product at her parents house. Only Grandma cares about little "what's his name". Grandpa the Preacher despises the young lad, due to the fact that his half-blackness doesn't show. Mama the prostitute couldn't care less if little "whats his name" lives or dies, as black hooker is too busy out living her sinful life to care about anyone but herself. It's just a matter of time before half-white offspring becomes seriously screwed-up half-white guy, who has issues with women. An estranged hooker for a mother is one thing, but having to depend on hateful old Grandpa is becoming a bit much. Now that Grandpa has stolen "what's his name's" best girl, maybe it's time to leave home, and go pay mama a visit, to see if she can make life any less unbearable. Apparently, "what's his name" forgot the part about mama not caring whether he lives or dies. Hopefully, she'll break the news to him gently.

Yeah, sure, why not? A little mean-spirited Blaxploitation, now and then, is good for the soul. I'm not even sure this is Blaxpoittation. It's more like some really dismal Hixploitation, which happens to feature a black cast. Whatever the hell this is, it is quite the mean-spirited, uncomfortable little obscurity, which caters only to collectors of the most obscure B-cinema available. A hostile, impersonal story, with zero light at the end of the tunnel. none of the characters even have names. What kind of director makes a movie like this? A director who didn't have a very happy childhood, that's who. I mean, this isn't exactly Cannibal Holocaust, or I Spit On Your Grave, or anything like that, but Black Hooker is just hateful. Available on Mill Creek Entertainment's Drive-in Movie Classics 50-pack. I figure, if you aren't depressed by depressing movies, and are up for anything as long as it's obscure, then who knows? You might not hate Black Hooker. 5/10

This is really a successor to the one-man, low-budget productions of Oscar Micheaux in the 1920's and 1930's, rather than one of the blaxploitation movies of the 1960's and 1970's.

Blaxploitation movies were urban. They were action movies with karate, knife, and gun fights; they pitted black heroes (sometimes good guys but often criminals themselves) against bad white guys (usually politicians and cops). They had pounding rhythm and blues scores and pimp style, and most of them were produced by major film studios, though on relatively small budgets.

The black-audience shoestring independent productions of Micheaux and his colleagues, on the other hand, most frequently had rural or small-town settings. Their characters were rarely involved in crime, and there was minimal violence. There was also little conflict between blacks and whites; the conflict was intraracial, and the movies usually had a religious, moral, or social message.

Under either title, "Black Hooker" or "Street Sisters," this movie markets itself as a blaxploitation movie, but its main elements are all from the earlier genre. It's the drama of a conflicted family, with a grandfather who is a crazed preacher; a grandmother who is the earthy family peacemaker; their daughter, the title character, who is more like the fallen woman in the earlier films than like the flashy, assertive whores of the later ones; and the daughter's son who is light enough to pass for white (and passing is a common theme of the earlier movies).

It's also, unfortunately, just as clumsily plotted and directed as the Micheaux movies.