Baadasssss Cinema

Even I, who have seen Melvin van Peebles' Sweet Sweetback's Baaddasssss Song, loved every minute of this revealing documentary. Richly documented with inserts from the films that are being discussed on camera, or that merely give extra power to the narration; also, a number of newspaper clips with headers that made history, or highlighted the political change trends in the late 1970s. The number of people interviewed, and the important messages they deliver now - is a unique upraisal of their work of a quarter of a century ago. For me at least, it was also marvellous to see how Pam Grier, and Gloria Hendry, have gained weight, but are beautiful, sexy women even now. For the young generation, this documentary is also a good introduction to white/black relationships in the USA in the late 1960s - and a big incentive to discover nice, little action and nudity films of the 1970s now (unfortunately) mostly relegated to video warehouses.

With one exception, this film was an exceptional look at a genre of films overlooked today...the so-called 'blacksploitation' film. Using lots of clips from many of the most important movies as well as a lot of interviews, it's a very nice homage to the pictures.

The film begins, well, at the beginning. "Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song" was the first film and the experts talk about it...and completely ignore that the film was among the worst films in Hollywood history...worse than "Plan 9 From Outer Space"!! Its lack of criticism of the film is odd. Sure, it was the first, but it was also the worst and features child pornography and practically no plot.

Fortunately, after this rocky start the film does a much better job and goes from "Shaft" to "Superfly" to the films of Pam Grier and Fred Williamson among others. This is very interesting and worth your time....and is a GREAT introduction for folks who are unfamiliar with the genre and want to know where to start...as well as learning what killed these exciting films. Well worth seeing...just wish they's spent less time on "Sweet Sweetback" and perhaps had mentioned some other great films such as "Truck Turner" and "Bucktown" or, perhaps, a discussion of the horrible blacksploitation films! Still, well made and well worth seeing.

A pretty good overview of black cinema in the early '70's. The first ten minutes are taken up with trying to set the political climate of the time, which I don't think is necessary, this is about movies. Clips from all of the major films are shown: "Superfly", "Sweet Sweetback...", "Shaft", etc... Plus nothing is cut out so the viewer is allowed to see the "shocking" stuff. Of the talking heads, Fred Williamson, Larry Cohen and Pam Grier come off as the most interesting, although film historian, Armond White adds a lot. As with most documentaries, there is some head scratching, Afeni Skakur and Quentin Tarantino add nothing and could have been easily dropped. I also have to disagree with "Jackie Brown" being an homage to these films. But those are minor quibbles. Anyone interested in delving into this genre should watch this documentary.

Baadasssss Cinema (2002)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Quentin Tarantino, Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson, Melvin Van Peebles, Fred Williamson and critic Elvis Mitchell are among the people interviewed for this entertaining documentary that takes a look at the blaxploitation movies of the 1970's.

At just under a hour there's no question that this doesn't contain the greatest details but it at least has many of the stars that were in the movies as well as people like Tarantino who has kept the genre alive for new fans to discover. The best thing about this movie is that we get some very good discussions about race relations at the time and how these movies were fresh and original and especially in how these movies helped give black crowds a different type of hero.

The documentary covers not only the popularity of these films but also the controversy that haunted them. Both subjects are discussed in great detail and we also get some wonderful clips from various movies. There's also a great interview with Grier who of course was one of the best actresses from this era and certainly one of the most beautiful women to ever grace the screen.

Just watched this doc on YouTube. It's a fascinating look at the Blaxploitation film era, roughly 1971-75, and some of the people involved in it who consented to an interview like Pam Grier, Fred Williamson, Gloria Hendry, plus Caucasians like Larry Cohen as well as Quentin Tarantino, the latter having grown up watching those films and then putting Grier in his Jackie Brown as a tribute to them. I've seen many of these films when renting videos during the '90s and have reviewed some of them on this site and since many of them are also online, I may review many more in the near future. Many of the movies are of their time but many also still have their merits as entertainment. I mean, Shaft, Coffy, Foxy Brown, and Super Fly, well, they're bad Mutha (Shut Yo' Mouth)! So watch this space for my reviews of those and more...