Super Soul Brother (1979): or, Wildman Steve is Wild, Man

Sometime back I reviewed a home-grown blaxploitation flick/folk art cinema entitled The Guy From Harlem (1977), which chronicled the exploits of P.I./Kung Fu Master/International Security Contractor Al Connors. (Read that review here, if you know what's good for you!) While not by any stretch an accomplished piece of filmmaking, The Guy from Harlem was not without its peculiar charms, one of which was a scene-stealing turn in a supporting role by one Steve Gallon as local crime lord Harry Dubaul, who enlists Connors' aid against the more powerful and eeeviler crime boss Big Daddy. Charismatic, profane, and absolutely irrepressible, Gallon made such an impression that I quickly scampered to his imdb page to find out where I could see more of his idiosyncratic dramatic stylings.

As it turns out, despite a 40-year career as a DJ, media personality, stand-up comic and recording artist under the stage name "Wildman Steve" (according to this affectionate if sparse tribute site, Gallon was "the first black comedian to chart on Cash Box and the first to sell a million records"), he only appeared in front of the camera in three films: the aforementioned Guy from Harlem, the legendary Rudy Ray Moore vehicle Petey Wheatstraw, the Devil's Son-in-Law, and the movie under discussion today, Super Soul Brother, aka The Six-Thousand Dollar Nigger.* Released in 1979 and directed by Rene Martinez Jr., who also helmed The Guy from Harlem, Super Soul Brother is Gallon's only starring role, and clearly designed as a showcase for his bombastic comedic talents.

*Don't blame me, folks--I didn't come up with the title.

We Are the Untamed

After an absolutely priceless opening credits sequence, we find ourselves in the offices of independent researcher Dr. Dippy (Peter Conrad), a dwarf mad scientist with a spectacularly bad German accent who is working on a kind of Super Soldier Serum that will give its subject enhanced strength, agility, and invulnerability. Dr. Dippy's research is being funded by small-time crooks Jim and Bob (Lee Cross and Benny Latimore), who hope to use it to knock over a strip-mall jewelry store that inexplicably has ten-million dollars' worth of diamonds in its safe.

Alas, the course of SCIENCE never did run smooth, and while the serum does what it says on the tin, it also has a rather unfortunate side effect: exactly seven days after being injected, every super-powered lab rat in the trial group has invariably dropped dead. While Dr. Dippy and his comely research assistant Peggy (Joycelyn Norris) keep working to find "the neutralizer" (apparently through test-tube mixing trial-and-error), Jim and Bob grow impatient to see a return on their $6000 investment. Unwilling to take the shot themselves and trust the diminutive doc to save them in time, they decide to recruit "a wino out the ghett-o!" to be their short-lived strong man.

Dr. Dippy: Giant of SCIENCE

Of course their unwitting guinea pig is Wildman Steve (Gallon), a down-and-out homeless drunk prone to mouthing off to other hobos and getting beat up by wandering gangs of toughs. When Bob picks him up and promises him an apartment, money, and all the food he can eat, Steve is too astonished to say no. He's taken back to Dr. Dippy's lab, examined by Peggy, and told to rest up and get healthy for the upcoming experiment.

As in The Guy from Harlem, each scene in Super Soul Brother seems mostly improvised around
a central idea, be it exposition about the serum, details of the heist plans, or the preliminary examination of the subject. However, here the supporting characters' dialogue serves the dual purpose of bookending Steve Gallon's frenetic physical comedy and shameless stereotype baiting. It's nothing short of astounding: Wildman Steve makes Mantan Moreland (King of the Zombies) look like Morgan Freeman. Add the fact that Gallon seems to have only two comedic settings--Full-Bore Insanity and Unconsciousness--and you've got a one-way ticket to Over-the-Over-the-Top Town.

Q. How do you tell an oral thermometer from an anal thermometer?
A. Taste.

As a brief and relatively tame example, when Gallon is being examined by Peggy in the lab, she asks for his name for the waiver forms (?). He replies, "My name is Steve: S-T-V, all capital letters!" He does a Scared Mantan Moreland impression when Peggy proposes an anal thermometer probe ("You gonna stick THAT pole...in MY ass-hole?"), then screams to the doc, "This girl thinks my asshole is a Tunnel of Love!" After this ordeal, though, he quickly makes up with Peggy, admitting, "My 20/20 tells me you is a Mighty Mighty!"

Incredibly, it just gets worse from there. Given his own apartment by his benefactors (the same apartment Al Connors used in The Guy from Harlem--I'd know that orange shag carpet anywhere!), Steve is further treated to the services of lady-of-the-evening Addie Williams, who says she's there to do "anything he wants." He responds by having her cook him dinner (hilarious?) and then by requesting something special he remembers from his childhood, when his mother would put him in the bath and give him a good "butt-washin'!" After this joke is exhausted (it takes a while), he tells the girl, "Before I got down on my luck, I was a playa! I used to make my money making love to WHITE WOMEN!" He then opens his robe to show her his equipment, which is apparently just as impressive as the stereotype would have us believe.

Not the reaction he was hoping for.

His later seduction of virginal Peggy is even less restrained from a comedic standpoint, as he literally jumps up and down with excitement over "gettin' that cherry!" Later, he amazes her with his formidable lovemaking skills. Sample dialogue:

"Don't hurt me, Steve, don't hurt me! That ring on your finger!"
"That ain't no ring on my finger, baby...that's the watch on my wrist!"

As expected, Steve Gallon does almost all of the comedic heavy lifting in the movie, though we do get a couple of borderline surreal interludes with Dr. Dippy and his lover, the Amazonian burlesque-girl-gone-to-seed, Monica (Wild Savage--seriously), who refuses to sleep with the Doc until he buys her the diamond pasties he promised her. Instead the two exchange backrubs and play chess, with Dr. Dippy all the while dressed like a middle-aged female spa-goer. Get ready for a sight you can't un-see:

Check and Mate

The rest of the movie is basically a series of vignettes constructed to give Gallon the opportunity to get as wild as he wants to be, which is plenty wild, believe me. Eventually he's given the injection, leading to more jumping and wide-eyed face-pulling ("Is he a monster? Is he a wildman? Is the n*gger crazy?" Bob helpfully narrates), gets his revenge on the gang that roughed him up, and out of gratitude to his new friends agrees to play a "practical joke" on the jewelry store clerks by walking out with the safe (under cover of a bizarre diversion courtesy Dr. Dippy and Monica). The effects here are as low-rent as possible (a cardboard safe that doesn't even budge the car into which it's loaded), and the fight scenes are choreographed with less skill than a backyard wrestling tournament. (The fights in The Guy from Harlem are spectacular by comparison.) Of course the silly but good-hearted Soul Brother eventually tumbles to his friends' nefarious schemes, and with Peggy's help tries to stop them and find the neutralizer before he's another dead superhero.

It's a maxim that there can be too much of a good thing, and in comedy this is doubly true, it seems to me. Limited to five minutes of screen time in The Guy from Harlem, with a specific role to play and certain dramatic strictures in which to work, Gallon showed himself a memorable, scene-stealing screen presence, a shining light in the otherwise dim-bulb cast. He obviously needed those constraints, because without them, he's really too much to take. (Think the difference between Jim Carrey's performances in Earth Girls are Easy and in Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. Then amplify that difference and add race humor.) Though Gallon does manage to wring a few laughs out with sheer energy and ebullience, most of the time he's so far over the top he's absolutely impossible to connect to.

Unfortunately for Bob, his trigger finger was not only itchy, but ticklish.

The rest of the cast are mostly forgettable, and unsurprisingly many have only this movie in their acting credits. A notable exception is Peter Conrad as Dr. Dippy, who went on to assay such roles as "Midget with Lady" in Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse, "Midget" in Smokey and the Bandit Part 3, and "Mule Train Driver" and "Sandy's MC" in Porky's and Porky's II: The Next Day. Conrad is no Peter Dinklage, but at least his chronic bed-head hairstyle and atrocious German accent add a little texture to the character.

As for the direction, it seems Rene Martinez Jr. had his best work behind him at this point (i.e., The Guy from Harlem, faint praise as that may be). The pacing is terrible, though to be fair if we shortened Gallon's comedy bits to manageable lengths and focused on the plot, the movie would likely be 30 minutes long. The script clearly never got beyond outline form ("Say something about Steve needing to get some rest. Let Steve go for a while. Cut to..."), and most scenes are filmed from a static mid-range shot that does nobody any favors. The whole thing is even more amateurish than Martinez's other flick, and lacks that film's sense of energy and purpose. And yes, of course there's a boom mike cameo.

It's a little blurry, but it's up there.

After watching Super Soul Brother, I still like Wildman Steve, but I'm more acutely aware of his dramatic limitations--more perhaps than either he or his director were. As a supporting character he's a stick of comedic dynamite. However, strap a movie to his back, and what you've got is a bomb. (See what I did there?) If you like dwarfs, mad scientists, pre-PC race humor, and a good ol' fashioned butt-washin', I'm still not sure I'd recommend watching Super Soul Brother. It's not surprising that the promised sequel (we fade out on Gallon in a t-shirt that reads, "This N*gger is Coming Back!") never materialized. Though I certainly wish Gallon had done more character work before his death in 2004, I still must sadly give his sole starring effort a paltry 1 Thumb. He deserved better--but then again, so did the audience.

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The House on Skull Mountain (1974): or, Voodoo House Party

Rich old woman Pauline Christophe (Mary J. Todd McKenzie) seems to have everything a woman could want: a palatial estate, devoted and attentive servants, and the respect of her community engendered by her fabulous wealth and rumored occult powers. However, like many landed aristocracy, as she nears the appointed hour of her death she begins to think about the important things that are missing from her life--namely, family. Therefore, from her deathbed, she sends out four letters to her remaining living relatives, summoning them to her mansion for a chance at reconnection and an opportunity to pass the torch, and presumably all her glorious riches. However, before her grandchildren--none of whom has ever met any of the others--arrive on a stormswept summer afternoon, Pauline kicks the old bucket, clutching a voodoo doll in her gnarled, wrinkled fist. Of course almost immediately Strange Things start happening around the Cristophe estate.

Stop me if you've heard this one.

It may not tread any new ground, but here's a movie that hits its marks with competence and enthusiasm if not overwhelming skill. Featuring some well-done voodoo sequences, a couple of strong performances, and enough nonsensical supernatural happenings to keep you from getting bored, 1974's The House on Skull Mountain does manage to divert and entertain for its hour-and-twenty-minute running time. And really, what more could you ask for from a voodoo epic starring Carter Country's Victor French?

The first of the family to arrive at Christophe Manor is Lorena Christophe (the elegant and lovely Janee Michelle)--or rather, she would have been the first to arrive, had her loud-mouthed, jive-talkin', fast-drivin' cousin Phillipe Willette (Mike Evans, better known as the straitlaced spawn of George and Weezy Jefferson) not nearly run her off the treacherous mountain road in his pimped-out land yacht. Understandably shaken by her brush with automotive cataclysm, Lorena pulls over to the shoulder of the road...


...gets out of the car, takes a few deep breaths...


...and then looks out through the clear, sunlit summer afternoon sky to get a look at her destination, which looks...well, a little like THIS:

He-Man's Summer House

And, just so you don't think you're flashing back to the thunderstorm that accompanied Grandma Christophe's death, director Ron Honthaner stretches his budget to give us some near-seamless matte work:

Welcome, Matte

Say what you will about this movie, but when it promises a house on Skull Mountain, it FUCKING DELIVERS.

Lorena gets to the house in time to attend the last half of Grandma Christophe's funeral, attended only by the old lady's servants Louette (Ella Woods) and Thomas (Jean Durand). Here we get a little voodoo lore for no extra charge, as the servants have scattered shards of broken mirror on the grave "to keep the evil spirits away." It doesn't seem to work, though, as Louette sees a crow drop a chicken-foot totem on the coffin, which bursts into flames! I don't know from voodoo omens, but it's clearly meant to be a not-so-good one here.

Inside, Lorena spars with Phillippe over his near-vehicular homicide, though her righteous indignation does not prevent him from putting the moves on his much classier cousin. Nor his OTHER much classier cousin, Harriet (Xernona Clayton, who arrives safely despite having a vision of Hooded Death on her plane trip), nor serving girl Louette--here's a brother who believes in keeping all options open. One Christophe is still missing, and stately Mr. Leroux (Senator Leroy Johnson, the first African American to be elected to the Georgia General Assembly since the end of the Reconstruction era--thanks imdb!) insists they wait for him to arrive before reading the will.

"Whattaya think? Too much, right?"

As it turns out, to quote the ever-observant Phillipe, there must have been "a honky in the woodpile," as the fourth cousin is Dr. Andrew Cunningham (Victor French, also of TV's Little House on the Prairie and Highway to Heaven fame, though both those efforts pale in comparison to his Carter Country years, in my humble), a white professor of anthropology with an emphasis in voodoo studies. The will stipulates the expected division of gold between the surviving children and the servants, and also contains the requisite warning against evil spirits, lest you forget where you are.

Photographic proof of the existence of the Lightning Worm

Man, I just love that.

After some racial tension between Phillippe and Andrew (that neither of the much more sophisticated female cousins take part in), they all turn in for the night, and of course that's when the voodoo vengeance starts in earnest. Drunken Phillippe is lured to his death in a vacant elevator shaft, and Andrew finds a chicken-foot totem beside his corpse. The next day Lenora and Andrew go out on the town (Atlanta, I think, though I don't know of any famous skull-like rock formations in that general area) for a falling-in-love montage and an appropriately heartfelt love song. Back at the house, Harriet sees more visions and finally falls prey to a venomous snake in the old lady's rocking chair. Another chicken-foot calling card is found at the scene.

Don't go thinking this is some kind of pre-Clue whodunnit, however--we the audience know from early on that the bad mojo in the Christophe House is being delivered courtesy butler Thomas, a voodoo priest of great power who was (I think) enslaved by the more-powerful Pauline Christophe while she was alive. Now seeking vengeance on her heirs (not to mention an undivided chunk of the estate), Thomas is bumping them all off with his evil black magic. Can Dr. Cunningham's university training stand between Thomas and his evil goals?

"Don't worry, Sheriff--I'll handle-it handle-it."

With at least two relatively famous TV personalities in the cast and a cinematic style that would be right at home in a two-camera sit-com of the era, The House on Skull Mountain feels like it'd be right at home as a Very Special Episode of The Jeffersons or Good Times. (You know, like the evil-Tiki Hawaiian episode of The Brady Bunch, only a lot funkier.)

Still, there are a few things that lift it from the "meh" to the "actually pretty okay." Despite a largely static camera, one-time director Honthaner does give us a couple of nice transitions based on skull imagery, including a rather effective overlay of a death's head on a living (?) character's face near the end. And late in the proceedings there's a voodoo ceremony/human sacrifice that is actually well filmed and choreographed, a few suggestive snake scenes (sometimes a bulging python is just a bulging python, but not here), and a double-astral projection for no reason that nonetheless made me smile.

It's symbolic, of course

The performances are all pretty good as well. Victor French does his usual tough guy/teddy bear character work, and has a real knack for playing both strong and vulnerable at the same time. He has a certain amount of chemistry with love-interest Janee Michelle, who is strong and intelligent (not to mention lovely) in her only screen appearance. It's interesting to watch Mike Evans play the jive-talkin' asshole instead of the upright young man he essayed on TV. But the best acting prize goes to Jean Durand as voodoo baddie Thomas, who really brings power to his role as voodoo master bent on vengeance--even going so far as sacrificing his coworker and raising his former boss from the dead to kill her own offspring! Talk about a disgruntled domestic!

Benson: The Untold Story

I'm gonna go ahead and classify The House on Skull Mountain as a blaxploitation flick just because it was clearly intended to cash in on the blaxploitation audience; however, as far as the ethos of those films go it kind of drops the ball, since the male hero is the only white character (as appealing as French might be) and the only sharp-dressin' brother is the first to go. It's not a barn burner, but I had an okay time with it, so I give it the slightly better-than-average 1.75 thumb rating.

"WHAAAAT?"

Okay, 1.85. But that's my final offer.

"Okay, son...show me how funky and strong is your fight."

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Top 10 Inexplicably Awesome Bit Characters: Part 1 of 2

It should almost go without saying by now that Mad Movies are not like regular movies. Different rules apply; different dialectics are at work. Things that would get a mainstream director hounded off the set and sent back to the Music Video Bush League are transformed by the filmmakers' enthusiasm and joie de vie into something charming and even emotionally resonant. Performances that would make the average moviegoer toss his popcorn in disgust become emotive tours des force that earn their actors a permanent place in the b-movie lover's Pantheon of Awesome. Reviewers who don't know enough French to order breakfast at their local Le Madelaine suddenly grab their baguettes and start gushing over the film's je ne sais quois.

It's easy to love a particularly resourceful hero or a deliciously evil villain. But often the real joie of a Mad Movie resides not in the pro- or ant- agonists, but in the supporting characters who add that certain special indefinable something to the flick, sometimes pushing the film from horrible trash-piece to joy-bubbling giggle-fest by sheer force of personality. Today on Mad Mad Mad Mad Movies, I would like to pay tribute to a few of these minor stars in the constellation of awesome with my Top 10 Inexplicably Awesome Bit Characters.

Today's post celebrates honorees 10 through 6; enjoy, and be sure to check back tomorrow for the Top 5!

Nota Bene: in the interest of simplicity and pumping up my archive-reading traffic, I've limited my choices to movies that have been previously reviewed here on the site. I invite my loyal parishioners to propose their own honorees in the comment section--because God knows I need more movies on my To Be Watched list.

10. Sheriff Liggett in Silent Madness (1984)


There are lots of neat little touches in this largely forgotten 3-D slasher effort to warm the cockles of the mad movie fan's heart, but chief among them is Sydney Lassick as the foul-mouthed, combatatively incurious Sheriff Liggett. Despite bearing an ugly neck scar from a previous encounter with the movie's killer, Liggett is aggressive in his determination to let bygones be bygones and stay as far away from the scene of the crime as possible. Sort of like the anti-Loomis. Plus, how can you not love a police chief who looks like Zelda Rubenstein in man-drag and delivers lines like "Just because the goddamn broad is so good-lookin' don't mean we all have to think with our dicks! Huh? Right?" I'll answer that for you: you can't. You can't NOT love this guy.

9. Sherry in Three on a Meathook (1972)

William Girdler's early-70s paean to cannibalism and Mommy Issues focuses mostly on the trials and tribulations of young Billy Townsend (James Pickett) as he tries to come to terms with having an alcoholic father, a dead mother he may or may not have killed when he was a kid, and heaps and heaps of frustrated sexuality. But the real star is for me is compassionate-beyond-belief barmaid Sherry, played with inexplicable awesomeness by Sherry Steiner. With a voice like the world's most soothing dental hygenist, Sherry is indugent of Billy's drinking, accepting of his father's rudeness and tendency to pickaxe her friends, and works in a bar where the house band is the similarly inexplicably awesome AMERICAN XPRESS. But most importantly, when after a night of wild passion she awakes to find Billy has WET THE FUCKING BED, she shrugs it off with a smile, kisses her urine-soaked lover, and heads off to fix breakfast. Maybe she's a saint or maybe she's a freak, but in either case, she's a keeper.

8. Nicky in Savage Weekend (1976)

Cinematic history is littered with portrayals of the Flaming Gay Friend. He's almost always played for comedy, and hardly ever given more to do than flounce about commenting archly on the female characters' taste in clothes and periodically making double entendres about the hero's "package." Well, that ain't how Nicky rolls. Played with uncommon intensity by Christopher Allport, Nicky does his share of flouncing in a early scene at a redneck bar, but reveals the iron fist below the velvet glove when he throws off the sheepskin and proceeds to beat the asses of every local tough in the joint! He's the only character man enough to remove the totemic vampire bat nailed to the cabin door on their arrival, and his protectiveness of best friend and total slut Shirley (Caitlin O'Heaney) borders on the psychotic--in the best possible way. His final, ambiguously sexy dance number with Shirley is a highlight. In fact, if he hadn't been distracted by his own fabulousness in a full length mirror in the hallway, I doubt the killer would ever have got the drop on him. Nicky, you rule.

7. Harry DuBaul in The Guy from Harlem (1977)

A piece of wild folk art masquerading as a blaxploitation movie, The Guy from Harlem is something special, in both the "extraordinary" and "riding the short bus" senses of the term. One of the major contributing factors is the explosive screen presence of Steve Gallon as gang lord Harry DuBaul. (Pictured above right.) Dressed like a $300 picnic and delivering all his lines as if his vocal chords can barely contain the awesome bubbling up inside, Gallon bleeds charisma and confidence, making the most of his sadly limited screentime. When I say he's like a less shy and reserved Don King, I mean it as the highest complement.

6. Rodriguez in Die Screaming, Marianne (1971)

Though Pete Walker's family drama-cum-thriller is one of the more misleadingly titled films of the era, if one can get past the lack of screaming and dying, there are quite a few things to enjoy here--such as beautiful Portuguese scenery, a fairly risque incest subplot, and Susan George shakin' it like a Polaroid in the movie's rightly revered opening titles. (Check youtube now, thank me later.) But my favorite character is Rodriguez (Kenneth Hendel), the strong, silent bodyguard to the deliciously nefarious Judge. Hendel plays the thin, seldom-speaking heavy with quiet, self-assured menace throughout, and a late-reel face-turn is both surprising and perfect. One of those characters whose importance you don't appreciate till the end credits roll, Rodriguez makes the movie for me.

What bit characters will make the top 5? Come back tomorrow for the rest of the list! And tell us your favorite bit characters in the comments below!

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The Guy from Harlem (1977): or, Al Connors, International Brother of Mystery

Rene Martinez Jr.'s 1977 blaxploitation effort The Guy from Harlem is, there's no getting around it, a bad movie. In fact, it's one of those movies that goes beyond bad. With its high-school Senior Play-level acting, its horrendously choreographed action sequences, its static-to-the-point-of-paralysis camerawork, and its consistently worst-of-the70s set design, it's a movie that practically dares you to find something good about it. Hell, it even largely shies away from blood and sex, two of the virtually required qualities of the subgenre.

Why then did I find myself enjoying it so much?

Maybe it was the funky, Isaac Hayes-ish title song over the credits that first started me boogeying toward The Guy from Harlem's side. ("UNGH! The Guy from Harlem! [Watch out!] That cat's a baaaad dude! [Get on down!] Watch the moves! [The Guy from Harlem!] He's a mean, clean, fightin' machine!") Maybe it was the deliciously Ed Wood-ish, passionately amateurish aesthetic apparent from the unnecessary pre-credit scene and the way the character-credit crawl played over the *front* of the movie rather than the end--as if acknolwedging no one would stay around that long, so best to get the credits up there now. Maybe it was the way emotively challenged star Loye Hawkins seemed completely convinced of his own awesomeness and badassery, despite the voluminous evidence to the contrary. These things all played a part, no doubt.

But perhaps the real reason is something metaphysical--the way a movie can sometimes sink so deeply into the depths of Bad that it comes out the other side of the wormhole. It happens, right?

Or maybe there's just something wrong with me.

"UNGH!"

Loye Hawkins IS Al Connors, Miami-based P.I. known to friends and enemies as The Guy from Harlem. (I can only assume that no other Harlem natives lived in Miami at the time.) At one point Connors explains seriously to one of his clients that "Harlem is the experience playground of all people interested in becoming detectives," and it's obvious that he's very much in demand--as soon as he gets to his office and has some innuendo-laden banter with his secretary Sue, he receives a visit from his old friend David McCloud, CIA Agent (ROCKING the pink leisure suit), who has a job that only The Guy from Harlem can handle.

It seems that Princess Ashanti, "a person from an African Nation...she's the wife of a head of state," is coming into town for a meeting with the US Secrectary of State, which is presumably a photo-op/meet-and-greet, since the Princess herself tells Connors later she gets bored while her hubby is doing all this country-running stuff. The CIA has reason to believe someone might try to kidnap the Princess--a mysterious gangland drug lord named Big Daddy--which is why they've secretly moved the meeting from Washington DC to Miami--which kind of defeats the PR purpose, but let's move on.

McCloud wants Connors to be Ashanti's bodyguard, because "it's possible there could be a leak somewhere in the CIA," and so presumably none of the federal agents can be trusted. (Imagine!) Therefore they outsource security to Connors, giving him carte blanche to make his own arrangements for Ashanti's saftey without filling them in. Makes sense to me!

"Don't worry ma'am--we're with the Government."

Connors takes the case after McCloud answers his one and only question: "You want to know if she's cute? Yes, she's cute. But remember--INTERNATIONAL REPERCUSSIONS." His plan is to check into a hotel of his choosing as man and wife, spend the night, and deliver her to the meeting the next day. However, when a CIA agent who won't give his name calls Sue and asks for Connors' location, the patriotic secretary readily gives it to them...proving she's just not as hard boiled as she needs to be.

So basically what we have here is a story that could have been written by a couple of action-movie addicted 3rd graders with no idea how politics, crime-fighting, or gangland warfare actually work, but nonetheless want to incorporate it all. The acting is about that level too--the actors seem to know basically what they're supposed to say and when, but have no sense of the emotion of the scene, or even timing--repetitions and stepped-on lines are par for the course, and in fact get more frequent as the movie goes on. And the cinematography by Senor Miguel de Medio-shot Tripod makes the security cam footage from the women's dressing room at JC Penney's look positively dynamic. Or at least so I'm led to believe.

"Please--just try to relax."

So once Connors gets the *very* un-African-Continental sounding Princess to the hotel of his choice, he orders a masseuse for the jet-lagged Ashanti and a full bottle of J&B to help her relax. The lady masseuse who shows up immediately goes to the window and signals a couple of toughs outside--in PLAIN SIGHT of Connors--which understandably arouses his suspicions. He decides to watch the massage from the bedroom doorway--"for SECURITY PURPOSES," he assures the off-put princess--and thus foils the first kidnapping attempt.

After some extremely undiplomatic flirtation from Al which the princess is powerless to resist ("I'm very lucky to have you as my bodyguard!" "Baby, you don't know how lucky you are!"), Al orders some New York Strip steaks brought up to the room, even though the princess wants to eat out. ("No, for SECURITY PURPOSES, we have to eat up here!" Al informs her.) But when the maid brings in the room service tray, Al shocks us all by pulling an Austin Powers and leaping across the table to cold-cock the broad!

"It's a MAN, baby!"

You see, Al can smell a New York Strip a mile away, and there weren't any steaks on that tray, just a bottle of J&B and a Midnight Special. After an awesome...ly bad fight scene with the remaining toughs, Al takes Ashanti to his main squeeze's apartment, kicks the chick out, and settles in to protect the princess from everybody but himself.

While all this has been sometimes painfully, most often hilariously terrible cinema, the movie has a couple of points in its favor. For one thing, Al's aforementioned COMPLETE confidence in his own awesomeness, which seems unfounded and yet somehow manages to convince. (It helps that he's the best actor in the admittedly bad lot, keeping his velvet tones and smooth moves pumping even when his costars are stumbling over their lines or stepping on his.) Also, the decor of just about every room in the movie is so wonderfully 70s ugly-cool, it's kind of mesmerizing. The orange shag carpet that appears in at least two of the sets is particularly difficult to look away from.

Al and Ashanti finally GET IT AWN (though the movie seems very shy about going further than "beginning to undress and then fade to black"--again, I'm wondering if awkward 3rd graders wrote the script) and he delivers the princess to the meeting offscreen and returns to his office the next day to put more moves on Sue and go over his accounts.

They even had enough fabric left over to make an 8-track tape cozy!

At this point the movie breaks pretty neatly in half, as if it were meant to be marketed as two 45-minute episodes of the Al Connors Show rather than one coherent movie--and the second half has almost exactly the same plot set-up as the first. This time instead of Agent McCloud, Miami gang leader Harry Dubaul arrives to hire Al to retrieve his kidnapped daughter Wanda from the clutches of rival ganglord Big Daddy. He's to exchange $250K cash and $500K worth of drugs for Wanda, and get back with DuBaul's daughter alive and as much of the ransom still in his possession as possible.

The actor playing Harry DuBaul is Steve Gallon, and he is AWESOME. Like a jolly, foul-mouthed Don King with the volume turned up to twenty, Gallon seems to detonate his lines rather than speak them. Though his acting style has only one setting--FULL THROTTLE--he overwhelms all the other characters onscreen, Al included, and I was grinning like an idiot for every foot of filmstock he owned.

Big Daddy is a riddle wrapped in an enigma, says DuBaul--nobody ever sees him, and he has henchmen do all his dirty work. "All I know about him is this--he's big, six feet tall, and has a lot of muscles! Curly blond hair, and always wears these bands around his muscles! That's all I know!" Wow, he really *is* a man of mystery, isn't he?

"I'm STEVE GALLON, BITCH!"

So Al heads down to the local bodybuilders' gym to get the details of the drop from Big Daddy's right-hand man Jim. On his way in he goes right past a 6 foot blond dude with big armbands pumping iron in the front room, who glares at him significantly as he goes by. Damn, where could this shadow-man known as Big Daddy be hiding?

Anyway, the rest of the movie deals with Al's mission to rescue Wanda from Big Daddy's goons and his eventual confrontation with the pasty, musclebound drug lord himself. Highlights of this section of the movie include Wanda's incredibly confrontational bad attitude that seems to be the only thing protecting her from rape at the hands of the henchman assigned to guard her (well, that and the guards bottomless stupidity and almost adorable hesitancy to actually make good on his threats--at one point he even goes all sour grapes after being rebuffed particularly roughly: "Ah, you're probably no good anyway!"), Jim's incredible powder-blue leisure suit, Martinez's...interesting decision to film Al's action-packed fight scenes from about thirty yards away, another appearance by the endlessly entertaining Harry DuBaul, and of course the final fight between Al and Big Daddy for pride, honor, and triumph over racism.

Let me say again--by just about any standard (even mine!) this movie is BAD BAD BAD. The acting, the cinematography, the editing (more than once entire exchanges of dialogue are repeated, seemingly because the actors ran out of things to say and so went back to the Important Bits)--nothing raises its gloriously Afro'd head above amateur hour at any point, and in fact seldom even approaches it. Even the n-bombs flung around by Big Daddy's gang seem half-hearted, and while Martinez *does* finally give us a little nudity (Wanda takes a nicely gratuitous shower post-rescue), nobody seems that interested in backing up all of the movie's innuendo. And as for pacing, the movie really drags in the second half, with three too many repetitions of the initially entertaining but eventually tiresome rebuffed rape attempts by Big Daddy's henchman on Wanda.

Scintillating Action!

And yet, to steal a phrase from BC over at Horror Movie a Day, the movie reaches a point where it's *so* bad, it's kind of lovable. In spite of everything--hell, even because of it--I found myself grinning like an idiot almost all the way through, awash in trash-movie euphoria.

So can I recommend The Guy from Harlem? In good conscience, no--most people, even those who usually like bad movies, are probably going to hate it. But criticism is subjective by its nature, and I can only rate *my* experience of the film, which as I say was positive overall, even though it was for all the wrong reasons. Therefore I'm bucking the trends and giving The Guy from Harlem 2 thumbs for the fun it provided. Your mileage will almost CERTAINLY vary though--you were warned.

Nota Bene: Apparently director Rene Martinez made only one film after The Guy from Harlem, the amazingly un-PC titled The Six Thousand Dollar Nigger, starring the irrepressible Steve Gallon as a character named "Wildman Steve." I...kinda have to see this one now. For SCIENCE. ;)

"Eat it, Whitey!"

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Black Mama, White Mama (1972): or, The Defiant Chicks

1972's Black Mama, White Mama is like three movies in one, a mixture of three genres. The first third of the flick is a good n' sleazy women-in-prison exploitationer. The second, a low-budget remake of The Defiant Ones with Pam Grier in the Sidney Poitier role and Tony Curtis replaced by leggy blonde Margaret Markov--a definite improvement, you'll agree. And the final act is a rip-roaring gangsters-vs.-revolutionaries action flick with bloody gun battles and machismo aplenty.

So really, no matter what you're in the mood for, chances are good that Black Mama, White Mama will satisfy. It's like a great big dish of neopolitan ice cream--drizzled all over with sweet, hot chocolate, of course.

We open on a heavily-armored bus that's taking a load of female prisoners to the WOMEN'S REHABILITATION CENTER, prison farm in the middle of a jungle in the Phillipines. The camera focuses our attention particularly on sassy sister Lee Daniels (Grier) and the silent, runway model-esque revolutionary leader, Karen Brent (Markov). A sadistic guard who looks a lot like Hot Lips Hoolihan imposes her authority on the two uncooperative women, and then it's time to process the new prisoners. Wasting no time, the Warden barks, "Okay, strip 'em and get 'em wet!" leading to the requisite communal shower scene.

The girls don't seem to grasp the gravity of their situation, romping and giggling in the shower like they're at camp or something, only soapy and naked. Guard Hot Lips watches from an enclosed peeping booth and pleasures herself while the girls have their fun. (It should be noted that this goes on FOREVER...not that I'm complaining.) When the Warden finds her and warns her off such activities with a big, passionate kiss, we know what kind of party it is. Ten minutes in, and we're already well on our way to surpassing the recommended daily sleaze requirement!

"And tomorrow, I'm makin' an ashtray!"

Hot Lips can't be satisfied with the Warden, however, and puts the moves on Pam, getting predictably sassy results. Pam gets a beating for her trouble, and later when Brent takes the guard up on her amorous offer in exchange for lessened work detail, it sets Grier's blood a-boilin'. This leads to a catfight in the mess hall, after which the jealous Warden sentences them both to bake in The Oven for a day. This is a sheet-metal locker in the middle of a sunbaked field, in which the girls are shackled back to back, nude, with only each other for support against the searing steel walls. The sweat and hate run free in the box, and by the time they're released, you're convinced there's no way they can ever be friends.

Then act two kicks in, as Pam and Brent are chained to one another for transport ot a maximum security prison, where the Minister wants to interrogate Pam for info on a gang lord/smuggling chief she used to work for, and Brent for details about the Revolution's next move. They never make it to the new prison, however, as Brent's guerilla friends ambush the prison transport and give the girls the opportunity to strangle Hot Lips with their chain and escape in the ensuing fracas. The police reinforcements arrive and the guerrillas must flee before Brent can meet up with them, so the fugitive women head into the jungle, alone but for each other.

But of course the girls can't agree which route to freedom they should take--Brent needs to be on one side of the island to meet a shipment of guns in two days, or their cause is lost; Pam needs to be on the other side of the island a day earlier to pick up some loot she stole from the gang lord and make her escape via boat. The debate quickly devolves into fisticuffs, as we get another, longer cat-fight between the two tigresses that goes on almost as long as the shower scene did.

Black Panties, White Panties

Exhausted and still stuck together, the women work out a plan whereby they'll head to Pam's rendezvous since it's closer, then they'll break the chains and Brent can get a car to drive to her meeting a few hours away. Thus resolved, they quickly jack some nuns and steal their habits, then are picked up by a drunken good Samaritan whom they also beat senseless and steal his truck. Everything's comin' up Mamas--it's almost too easy!

Meanwhile, rotund gang lord Vic Cheng is getting a pedicure from a couple of nude women while his men torture a prostitute with a battery and jumper cables, trying to get out of her information about Pam's plans. Vic Diaz as Cheng is really a frightening villain, lying shirtless like Buddha the Hutt and imparting all his lines with a calm, eeeevil assurance that's much more disturbing than a maniacal screech could ever be. This lets us know the girls are in real trouble, and the nudity and torture here pushes the sleaze-meter finally into the red.

"It's a trap!"

The cops are on the girls' trail too, as no-nonsense Captain Cruz (Eddie Garcia) enlists the help of part-time cowboy/full-time pimp Ruben (a wonderfully flamboyant Sid Haig) to track down the girls before the guerillas do. The guerillas are also on the trail, stealing Ruben's dogs to track their leader across country.

The girls run on and on, being rousted from a bus by police (no idea what happened to their truck) and stealing food from a rural homestead while the owners have noisy sex inside. ("I sure hope he can hold it!" Pam giggles as they clean out the cabinets.) We get more topless women servicing the grotesquely inert Vic Cheng, an attempted rape by a mechanic who almost gets the girls free of their chains, and some absolutely movie-stealing character work by Sid Haig, who is just so wonderfully sleazy and funny every time he's on screen you can't help cheering for him, even though he's a despicable dirt bag. (Examples: in one scene--for no reason--he has Captain Cruz and Cruz's superior compare pecker sizes at gunpoint, with hilarious commentary; in another, he romps raucously with a henchmen's two young daughters while the mortified father listens from outside the door.)

Tutti-fuckin'-fruity!

The girls manage to evade capture (at one point Brent puts her panties around the neck of a small dog and sends it running in the opposite direction to mislead the bloodhounds on their trail!) and bond over their hardships, learning to work together and eventually becoming friends. Unfortunately all parties are converging on the port where Pam hopes to make her getaway, leading to not one but two bloody, really exciting gunfights and a tragic ending that I admit I didn't see coming, but was satisfied by nonetheless.

The thing that surprised me about Black Mama, White Mama was that, despite its sharply disjointed triptich of styles, each individual part works really, really well. Pam Grier is great as the same character she always plays, the tough-n'-sassy sister who takes no crap. Markov is not as good, but is gorgeous enough that it doesn't matter, especially since she can just play straight woman to Pam's buoyant, crowd-pleasing schtick. Sid Haig totally owns every scene he's in, but even his bloody exit doesn't deflate the film's momentum, since the action scenes are so well staged and suspenseful. And Vic Diaz is one of the great villains of all time here, giving a truly scary and intriguing characterization. (Henchman: "You should have killed that guy when you had the chance." Vic (calmly): "It's not too late.") The exploitation and sleaze, the blood and action, all first rate for this type of movie. Kudos there.

Mucho macho.

And because each section works so well, somehow it all hangs together. Maybe part of the credit should go to one of the writers, a guy who would go on to have a respectable career in Hollywood by the name of Jonathan Demme. (Seriously!) Maybe director and Filipino film legend Eddie Romero had something to do with it. Or maybe it was just a perfect storm. Whatever the reasons, the end result is a delicious sweet treat for lovers of action and exploitation. 2.5 thumbs. Can you dig it?

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