Our newest femme fatale is American actress Tamara Dobson, a 6'2" former fashion model who made an unforgettable splash in early ’70s blaxploitation as Cleopatra Jones. She’d played a couple of bit parts before then, and played a few more roles after, but it’s the ass-kicking, karate-chopping Jones that film fans will always remember. Dobson died this month in 2006 of pneumonia related to multiple sclerosis.     

Last night we filled one of the holes in our blaxploitation résumé by watching the 1974 horror film Sugar Hill, and we came away with mixed feelings. The luscious Marki Bey plays the lead role of Diana “Sugar” Hill, and she’s extremely pale—so pale you wouldn’t really think she was African-American unless you were told she was. And therein lies the lesson imparted by the film. The most basic fact about racism is that, at its core, it’s simply a social construct in which people behave towards others the way they are commanded to, though it makes zero empirical sense. And so watching the milky-skinned Bey—who could easily be Italian, or French, or Greek—get N-bombs dropped on her at various points throughout the movie by white folks who are exactly her hue began to turn Sugar Hill from a typical blaxploitation exercise into a statement on the utter ludicrousness of racism. We’re pretty sure the filmmakers did not have so lofty a goal in mind, but hey, art is a malleable thing. Their actual intent—to make a good horror flick—was not fully achieved. Sugar Hill is visually interesting but not scary, and it’s watchable because of the radiant Ms. Bey, but not fully engaging. The film does sometimes skirt the edge of unintentional humor—not because it’s so poorly made or acted (though both could be argued), but because it’s a shining example of ’70s fashion gone wild. We marveled at the afros, especially the one Bey suddenly appeared with halfway through the film. Her blowout seemed to symbolize the revenge spree she had decided to embark upon (assisted by a shuffling gang of cobweb-covered zombies). She massacres her white enemies, dropping a few H-bombs along the way (that’s honky, in case you don’t know) that sound every bit as laughable coming from her mouth as the earlier epithets sounded when directed at her. When will we all learn to just get along? But what isn’t laughable about Sugar Hill is the American and French promo art, which you see above. If you like blaxploitation, you’ll like this film. And for the uninitiated, well, maybe start with a Pam Grier movie or two before working your way up to this one. 

Mandingo has a reputation as a piece of campy blaxploitation, but we just watched it today and it’s clear that reputations and reality sometimes don’t connect. The film has its flaws—some of the acting is less-than-scintillating, and ex-heavyweight boxing champion Ken Norton is ponderous as the lead character Mede—but overall Mandingo is a brutal and realistic depiction of the antebellum American south’s slave culture. The provocative poster you see above was produced for Mandingo’s West German run, and while it wrongly presents the film as mainly sexual in nature, it’s still a stunning piece of art. Mandingo tends to polarize audiences, but those who hate it generally cite its upsetting language and subject matter. While those are legitimate reasons to refrain from watching a film, they aren't valid criticisms once you have watched it. We recommend the movie, but we warn you it’s no Gone with the Wind—it’s a lot more historically accurate. Mandingo premiered in West Germany today in 1975.     

Two blaxploitation-influenced album sleeves from American hard funk group Chicago Gangsters, 1975 & 1976.      

Richard Roundtree in a promo still from one of our favorite movies, the blaxploitation flick Shaft, circa 1973. Roundtree turns 67 today.

Black Shampoo is a monument of gratuitous skin and gunplay almost unequaled in the annals of blaxploitation. The film was a take on the Warren Beatty flick Shampoo, but done on the cheap, with burly John Daniels in the lead as a womanizing hair salon proprietor who runs afoul of the mob. You get every stereotype in the book here, and they’re all good for a laugh. Even Tanya Boyd's copious nudity is pushed to an unintentionally comical extreme, as she is at one point forced to flee for her life wearing nothing but a man’s dress shirt fastened by a single button, making the whole long chase over the hills and through the woods a game of peek-a-bush. We just love this movie. Social relevance—uh, not really. Entertainment value—extremely high. Black Shampoo opened in the U.S. today in 1976.

Pam Grier, beautiful and angry in the blaxploitation classic Coffy, 1973.

Above you see blaxploitation-influenced promo art for Craig Brewer’s indie blockbuster Hustle & Flow, starring Terrence Howard, Taryn Manning, D.J. Qualls, and Anthony Anderson. As a bonus, we’ve posted a bright orange one sheet below. The orange art isn’t blaxploitation-influenced, but it’s sweet nonetheless. Hustle & Flow premiered at the Sundance Film Festival this month in 2005, and went on to win the Grand Prize, and later, two Academy Awards.