User reviews

This is quite possibly the worst film ever made! The story behind the production and the intentions of Peebles may be inspiring, but the movie sure ain't. Sure, the backbone of it was a seriously slap in the face for the oppressive end of the white establishment which still resonates today - and rightly so. But the significant message this movie was conceived to communicate is utterly lost in an unbearably sloppy 90 minute montage of violence, running and f**king. As if that weren't poor taste enough, we even get to watch a guy taking a dump wearing only a towel - lovely.

I have no moral objection to the film, but cannot get past the fact that it is utterly incoherent from start to finish. The plot is almost non-existent, and only about a third of the screen time has anything to do with the 'story' anyway. There are random scenes that have no apparent meaning or significance whatsoever.

It looks dreadful, as if the cameraman was on speed and crack at the same time. Beyond this, the night sequences (which make up a large percentage of the film) are so dark that you literally cannot see a thing. Alas, that may be just as well, as it goes some small way to detracting from the mind-blowingly poor 'acting'. Sweetback himself just pouts and minces about, and he's the best 'character' in there. The sound is awful, often with two songs (the same two songs on a continuous loop) literally playing on top of each other.

I really wanted to like this movie, and I still acknowledge it as a milestone in American culture and social history. As a side note, it was not the first blaxploitation film as is popularly believed - Cotton Comes to Harlem was a year earlier. That said, technically Sweetback isn't a blaxploitation film at all as it was financed and produced entirely by a black man. Moot point really, but worth mentioning.

In case my point has been lost, let me recapitulate. Sweet Sweetback has to be one of the very worst films I have ever seen in my life. As a piece of cinema, there is absolutely nothing redeeming about it whatsoever.

Approach this as a documentation of the shift in (black) American social consciousness as it related to popular culture of the late '60s and early '70s. Otherwise avoid it altogether, you'll thank me later.

I understand that this movie is supposed to be groundbreaking, but nothing about it is good. It's terribly acted, terribly shot, terribly directed, REALLY terribly edited. The scenes cut from one to another abruptly, with no sense of forward motion. It's an hour and a half of a mostly silent guy running through the desolation of Los Angeles, having sex in poorly lit locations along the way. If you like 70's era funk, though, then the music might interest you a bit. It's just an awful movie.

This is probably the worst thing ever- and not just on film. We had to watch this in my film class as an example of blaxploitation and my teacher turned if off after 20 minutes. No real plot, very angry, very crass. If you are not from that era (or maybe even if you are) this movie will mean nothing to you. The first 5 minutes or so are practically child porn. The rest is just a man running from "the man" to the same crappy song. The dialogs is barely audible and the lighting at night or inside allows you to see absolutely nothing. I understand that this film was important as a civil movement and for many of the people associated it was their first chance for work, but their time would have been better spent on virtually any other project. I was in a classroom with 40 or 50 people and nobody, regardless of race, age, or sex, found any cinematic value- in fact the only pleasant thing I gained from this was that short moment of relief and pure joy when it was turned off.

SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAAD ASSSSS SONG has a reputation as a landmark film. Some hail it a masterpiece for depicting whites, and "The Man" as the oppressor. It is also called the first blaxploitation film (even though COTTON COMES TO HARLEM predates it). In spite of this reputation, few have actually seen it.

The truth is that SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAAD ASSSSS SONG, in spite of the good intentions of its message, is poorly made pornographic trash. At the opening of the film we see an under-aged Sweetback have sex with a fat prostitute- and when I say we see it, I mean we SEE it. Not too much time goes by before we see grown up Sweetback (director Melvin Van Peebles) performing in a live sex show. The viewer is treated to a closeup of the star's member as he strips off a female disguise. Soon thereafter the "plot" starts. Our hero is arrested by the Oakland police. He witnesses them beating a young black man and kills them in his defense. The rest of the film is Sweetback running from the racist cops, sometimes stopping for graphic sex.

The photography in this film is terrible. A number of scenes are shot at night without lighting, basically making the action invisible. There is very little dialogue and Sweetback almost never speaks. When people are talking, they are badly miked and their acting doesn't help matters. The chase scenes are done in psychedelic montage which is both ugly and confusing. There are a number of scenes where the cops are asking members of the black community (the film's real star) as to the whereabouts of Sweetback. These are taken from the cops POV and from how it looks, the filmmakers just approached random people on the street and asked them if they'd seen Sweetback. The editor somehow managed to cut off most of their answers. It's hard to tell what's going on half the time, since the camera work is so bad and the dialogue so hard to hear. At one point Sweetback winds up with some bikers. What's he do? He has a kind of sex-match with one of the female bikers. This scene features enough clumsy disolves to make you dizzy and enough genital shots to get the X rating for any ten movies.

I can't tell why this mess is called such a great piece of work. It fails in every technical aspect, the "art" is bad even for an acid-head movie, and the story is nothing special. If anything, this movie hurts the cause of equality since it essentially depicts blacks as inhuman sex-addicted stereotypes. The whites are pretty much shown as monsters. This is the worst blaxploitation film I've ever seen and easily one of the hundred worst movies ever made. SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAAD ASSSSS SONG is no more than badly made violent pornography for the acid head. It's not a classic and it's not important.

Angry film about a black man who kills a white cop and is on the run from the cops for the entire film. Along the way he kills other people (all white) and has numerous sexual encounters.

I saw this years ago at a revival theatre. I had heard it was an excellent, graphic and powerful film about racism. For the record I'm a white guy. What I saw was a dull, stupid, plot less, badly done movie with inaudible dialogue and scenes constantly going in and out of focus. The film makes it clear that white men are all racist jerks and have no problem with killing black guys. And white women should just be used for sex. This attitude might have seemed revolutionary in 1971 but it comes across today as sexist, racist (against white people) and more than a little questionable. This film might actually have been disturbing if it had been better made. The acting was lousy and the technical aspects of the film were so bad that it's really hard to give an totally accurate judgment of it.

And the stupid tag line "Rated X by an all white jury" is ridiculous. Let's see...it opens with a young black kid (about 12) stripped down and forced to have sex with a woman. THAT alone should give it an X. And there's plenty of nudity, sexual acts and violence shown graphically. BTW it was lowered to an R in 1974.

After about 75 minutes of this I walked out of the theatre. I was just so bored and annoyed I couldn't stay till the end. A lousy, disjointed period piece. Skip it.

Sweet sweetback's baadasssss song IMO should get an award as worst film ever made ,so Bad asssss it will make you physically sick, maybe the idea was to get stoned and then view it. Such films like ' "manos the hands of fate" in comparison seem classic.The films sound score contains a single song played monotonously throughout that doesn't make a soundtrack as for great camera work all vomit,the main character seems to always end up in meaningless orgies because of his sexual prowess but the scenes lack any imagination strictly missionary and aren't erotic, there's a meaningless chase scene which you cant really tell who he's running from.The film ends abruptly, the producer must have run out of money ,give a monkey a film camera and you'd end up with a better movie.I disliked this film because it seems devoid of developed characters and plot it felt as if the story was conceived as the filmed rolled.

IF you want to watch a true blaxploitation classic I recommend "hitman."

First, I must state that I love Mario Van Peeple's "Badass." It is a far better film than this joke of a movie. Mario gave this movie far, far more credit than it deserved. Horrible acting, dialogue, editing... Heck, everything was horrible. I would love to see this on Mystery Science Theater.

This movie manages to insult just about everyone. Blacks, whites, hispanics, and women are not spared from some level of stupidity. This movie also proudly exploits children (Mario performing child porn) and women (performing lots of porn). The women in this movie are treated the same as they are in rap and metal videos. If this is Melvin's social statement, he doesn't think too highly of women.

This movie may have started the blaxploition genre but that doesn't mean this was a good movie. This movie had such potential because Melvin was the first black filmmaker to attempt to address serious social issues but failed miserably. Mario's movie did a great job of addressing the social injustices of the time. In the end, this movie had no point.

If this movie had been made by a white guy, it would have been called the most racist movie of all time.

I think I owe an explanation for watching this movie. It all started when I watched the movie "Panther" (1995) by Melvin and Mario Van Peebles about the Black Panther Party. Mario wrote a book to accompany the movie which I purchased. In this book it was mentioned that Huey Newton liked the movie "Sweet Sweetback's Badassss Song" and he dedicated an article to the movie in the Party newspaper called The Black Panther calling the movie revolutionary. Huey Newton isn't exactly an idol of mine, but I figure he'd have a better grasp of what was revolutionary back in 1971 than I would. I wasn't even alive when this movie came out.

That's my excuse. And as you can see from my rating I didn't have the same appreciation Huey had.

There is a saying: "If you can't do it right, don't do it at all." SSBS was an episodic soft porno with poor lighting, bad sound, lousy 70's music, and an even worse script. I'm sure Melvin Van Peebles spent all of $10 making this movie. I failed to pick up on the overall plot as there wasn't one scene of coherent dialog. All I could gather from this waste of celluloid is that there wasn't a woman that Sweetback (Melvin Van Peebles) met except she wanted his rod. The whole movie was him running from the police and having sex with women. One woman required his penis as payment to remove his handcuffs for him. I'm telling you; this movie needed an interpreter. It was so meaningless it may as well had been in Greek.

Yet, somehow, this movie was considered revolutionary. I'm not going to waste another braincell pondering the whos, whats, and whys of this movie. With a title like Sweetback I should've known better.

Controversial opening scenes and a cheap aesthetic, which we'd call indie today, brought this film a lot of notariaty. Ultimately it's nothing more than male fantasy film where his reputation as a great fark it all that matters. The talk of the black community just comes off now as BS and a flimsy excuse for Melvin to screw a bunch of actresses while he fools whitey into thinking he's made an important film. Roger Cormen wouldn't have tolerated this level of amateurish, self-important experimentation. Space Mutiny is more coherent and professional. Pink Flamingo is less disgusting. Porn producers wouldn't have tolerated all the money he wasted on not showing the sex. It's trash and a complete waste of time even for academics. I only finished it to see if in the end it became something better. It didn't and it was obvious it wouldn't. Put this on self next to Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will.