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The story starts off with our anti-hero, Willie Dynamite (who was the bald Black guy on Sesame Street. You'll never look at Oscar the Grouch the same again) under seige from all sides, as he is set upon by an old flame-turned-social worker, the cops, and a wickedly funny pimp named "Bell" (played by Roger Robinson) who wants to take Willie's dynamite hoes because he won't join the newly formed pimp organized front.
And my God, the outfits.
Willie sports some of the most outlandish stuff you've ever seen, and when he walks down a set of courthouse stairs, prepare to be rewinding the tape a few times.
Sweet Sweet Back's Bad Ass Song (1971)
The best Blaxploitation and fictional pimp narrative I've ever seen. Of course, that's all terribly relative to the genre and time period. A "good" Blaxploitation film means it has a solid ENOUGH storyline and that the producers spent a little money on it to make it seem like an actual film. This one scores high on both counts, and you find yourself trying to figure out what could possibly happen next. And for a film made in 1973, it's surprisingly fresh.
And my God, the outfits.Willie sports some of the most outlandish stuff you've ever seen, and when he walks down a set of courthouse stairs, prepare to be rewinding the tape a few times.
The best Blaxploitation and fictional pimp narrative I've ever seen. Of course, that's all terribly relative to the genre and time period. A "good" Blaxploitation film means it has a solid ENOUGH storyline and that the producers spent a little money on it to make it seem like an actual film. This one scores high on both counts, and you find yourself trying to figure out what could possibly happen next. And for a film made in 1973, it's surprisingly fresh.
And my God, the outfits.Willie sports some of the most outlandish stuff you've ever seen, and when he walks down a set of courthouse stairs, prepare to be rewinding the tape a few times.
Raw, jagged, and explosively angry, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song is a landmark in American independent cinema. Melvin Van Peebles directed, wrote, produced, edited, scored, and stars as Sweetback, a passive bouncer raised in a brothel.
Shot guerrilla style on a starvation budget on the streets of Los Angeles, it's a violent tale of Sweetback's journey from passive acceptance to political awareness and active defiance. He becomes the target of a manhunt when he kills two cops who beat up a young black activist, and he bounces from hideout to hideout before running for the border, all the while getting more booty than Shaft and Superfly put together. The movie was so inflammatory by conservative industry standards that it was "Rated X by an All White Jury," which the ads proudly touted.
The unusual mix of agitprop and exploitation is directed in a jagged style that recalls Godard and set to a funky score performed by Earth, Wind & Fire, which Van Peebles intercuts with chanting Greek chorus-like slogans. Released independently, it was a huge hit and effectively spawned the blaxploitation genre, but none of the films that followed ever recaptured the energy, the anger, and the social politics of this breakthrough in independent cinema.
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song ~ John Amos, Michael Augustus, Simon Chuckster, and Steve Cole (DVD - 2003)
