Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song

...it takes just as long the other way around in this movie. I have a lot of respect for what this film represented to people in '71. And I celebrate what it did to pave the way for the ideals that changed this country and, I hope, are still changing it for the better. The black revolution in film, which I believe this must have been nearly the first of it's kind to be pretty widely distributed concerning the "brothers and sisters who had enough of the man," is to be honored.

However, I found this film to be almost unwatchable. Almost.

I can't help it. I was uneasy and twitchy the whole time. The 60'ish style of almost constant repetitive music, dialogue, and visual, made me feel like I was tripping out. And I assure you that I was not. I wanted to kick the skipping jukebox. I wanted to shout, "O.K.! I get it! Just get on with it ! FOR GOD'S SAKE LETS GO!!!" It takes some patience and sticktoitofness...but the message is clear and you'd better watch your back cracker... cuz he's coming for you!

THIS was the first of its genre and i was cast as the *white* deputy who found Sweetback in the woods toward the end of the picture. I felt privileged to be a part of this beginning. I believe it was showtime recently who did a retrospective on black films....it was weird to see what i looked like 30 or so years ago! lol

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song is a film whose reputation is based almost entirely on its historical importance. When I finally saw it after hearing a lot about it for many years, I was somewhat alarmed at just how amateurish it in actual fact was. This isn't a problem in and of itself but it was a bit surprising how raw it was given its fame and reputation. Director and star Melvin Van Peebles was nothing if not a visionary though, as this was the first film to tap into the African American audience in quite this way. He created a new type of black hero; one that was aggressive and sexually threatening. And one that we are in no doubt is at odds with white authority. Unsurprisingly, this film was made way outside of the mainstream but it turned a pretty big profit from its small budget. As is always the way, other film-makers took note – including Hollywood – and a plethora of exploitation movies were made aimed squarely at this significant African American audience. And with that the Blaxploitation sub-genre was born.

The basic story-line is really simple. A sex show performer called Sweetback kills a couple of cops who are beating up a fellow black man and then goes on the run through South Central L.A. on his way to the Mexican border. It's really the locations, people and authenticity that make it interesting though. The run down sections of L.A. in particular are great time-capsule stuff and give us a peek into a time and place where the streets really did look mean. Overall, the film is an interesting look at the black experience in the early 70's ghettos. It does give out its message pretty clearly about the repression of the black man in a white controlled culture. Its defiant stance must've struck a chord with its audience, as Sweetback is never portrayed as the criminal – it's the police who are regarded as such, so it subverts the whole crime genre in this way. While it may be right-on about race, it's not so enlightened about sexual politics however. The women in the film seem to only exist for Sweetback to have sex with, while the often reported fact that Van Peebles was really having sex on film in these scenes is just too sleazy for me.

This is definitely a landmark movie, though, there is no doubt about that. But I would have to label it important but not that good. The reason I score it fairly high though is that, despite its many film-making short-comings it does have a relentless energy and the rawness of the production does in fact work in its favour at least to some extent. The crazed montage heavy editing keeps up the intensity and is even pretty experimental in approach a lot of the time, while the grimy locations and unusual characters possess an authenticity that serves it well. And underscoring it is a soundtrack of urgent urban funk that sets the scene extremely well. This latter factor was often the best thing about some of the later Blaxploitation movies in actual fact and remains one of the things that best defines them today. So, in summary, while this film isn't very good in a number of ways, it has enough attitude about it to raise it several rungs.

Considered the first blaxploitation film, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song features Melvin Van Peebles (who also directed, wrote, produced, edited and did music for the film) as Sweetback, a Los Angeles-area "male prostitute"/"sex performer" (who only has relations with females). He agrees to be taken in to a police station as a suspect just to make a couple cops look good (because they are tolerant towards the cathouse he lives in). On the way, they pick up a Black Panther and start beating him senseless. Sweetback bludgeons and stabs the two cops with his handcuffs (one end is open) and the bulk of the film has him on the run. Can he make it to Mexico before he's caught?

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song has a lot of historical significance. It is an early independent film in what's considered the current "modern" style, it is one of the earliest mostly black films of its era (there were all black films earlier, such as Oscar Micheaux's work, but they disappeared for awhile), it was controversial (it initially earned an X rating (later changed to an R) and touted that fact proudly as a tagline), it was made for $150 thousand but grossed $15 million, and most importantly perhaps for some film lovers, it is credited with starting the blaxploitation craze in the 1970s. It is worth watching for students of film on those merits alone.

But none of those facts alone make it a good film, and none affect my rating. In terms of quality, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song gets my vaunted 5 out of 10 rating, which is usually reserved for "so bad they're good" films. Although it is loaded with flaws, as one might expect from a low budget film from the era shot guerilla-style on the streets of Los Angeles, it is a hoot to watch. On the weirdness scale, it definitely earns a 10.

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song is firmly mired in the psychedelic era. Peebles gives us frequent shots with negative or false colors near the beginning of the film. More frequently, he directs scenes so they have various "altered reality" allusions--time stretching, repeating, stopping and stuttering, bizarre actions and reactions from various characters, rambling nonsense, and so on--which for the viewer approximate the perception of someone who is wasted almost to the point of passing out. These scenes often play like some kind of avant-garde performance art, and are as much a focus of the film as any of the usually cited "political" messages rooted in racially oriented turmoil and disparity. Perhaps the intended theme was that race relations, and the urban reality of blacks to that point were as bizarre as acid trips, some good, some bad.

The music is equally bizarre (which I love), with a recurrent jazz/funk piece with an almost atonal saxophone melody being the unifier. Some of the vocal music is a veritable Greek chorus, narrating action and emotions, providing critiques and so on. Peebles also frequently layers musical tracks, so two or more can be playing at once for a minute or two.

The film is also notable and admirable for its abundance of almost graphic sex scenes and gratuitous nudity. The opening scene is particularly groundbreaking and laudable. Throughout the film, Sweetback is an unstoppable stud, with almost any woman he desires dropping her drawers for him, even towards the end of the film, despite the fact that he has an oozing, infected sore running up the side of his body, not to mention that he's filthy, and he's been drinking mud and eating raw lizards. The ladies still find him hot enough to give him a poke in the bushes. We need much more of this kind of material in contemporary films.

At one point, Peebles and/or director of photography Robert Maxwell appear to have hit the streets of Los Angeles, filming people at random after they asked them if they've seen Sweetback (the character). These shots are inserted into the extended chase scene near the end of the film (2/3 to 3/4 of the film is actually an extended chase scene). The effect is a lot of fun to watch--definitely guerilla film-making at its finest.

But the problems with the film are legion. Maxwell's camera frequently goes in and out of focus (being generous, we could interpret it with psychedelic intent, but I'm skeptical). Night scenes (which are thankfully avoided for the most part) tend to be seas of blackness where a viewer can only occasionally make out enough of an image to piece together the scene in their mind. The sound is awful--I couldn't make out about half of the dialogue (at one point I thought "this is more like watching a silent film"), and it doesn't help that some characters "jive talk"; if ever a film needed subtitles, it's this one. The camera occasionally has a spot, a hair, or some other gunk on the lens. There isn't much to the story; after awhile, it starts to play more like an odd music video. A lot of shots--scenery, cityscapes, etc.--look like they may have been randomly taken by Peebles with his home camera with the hopes of one day using them in a film.

Still, for fans of weirdness and "so bad they're good" films, not to mention any blaxploitation fan with his or her weight in barbecued ribs, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song is a must see. Make sure you also check out How to Get the Man's Foot Outta Your Ass (aka Baadasssss!), Peebles' son Mario's 2003 film about Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song.

I saw this film on opening night in Philadelphia, Pa. The audience consisted of almost entirely young, Black men (mostly) and women who were obviously active in the civil rights movement,judging by the reactions of the men in the audience when Sweetback gave "the man" his definition of justice - beating the living crap out of them. His methods were quite original - especially with the pool cue. His sexual prowness was the main hit of the film for the ladies in the audience (I admit). The scene that really had me rooting for Sweetback was when he "popped" the white biker chick (in a most original manner) and she practically killed her biker boyfriend trying to join up with Sweetback in his quest. He merely cast her off like a used oilrag, which she was. Hilarious. There was a lot of anger among Black moviegoers at that time, which is why a lot of the blaxploitation films were successful. Our voices were heard loud and clear, especially in films, where our heroes were the victors against racist society and even more racist law enforcement, no matter how grisly, gruesome or violent the methods for dealing with them were. I had the pleasure of meeting Melvin Van Peebles at a screening and lecture of his work shortly after this film was made. His brilliance and genius were even more obvious as this man reflected on his determination to film, release and distribute this motion picture even though "white" America did everything they could to ban it, including slapping it with an "X" rating. I never understood the need for the "X" rating, as many of American-International's horror films were much more violent and graphic than this film (the "X" rating was not because of the sex)yet they were never banned or given that dreaded rating. I highly recommend this film to any student of filmmaking to view it not so much for the subject matter but to see the absolute genius in Mr. Van Peebles' work. Little money had he, but a lot of guts, brains and a wonderful and creative imagination made this film the success that it was.