'70's Spoof

BLACK DYNAMITE-2009-In this pretty funny blaxploitation set up (with intentionally bad dubbing and editing). Black Dynamite (Michael Jai White from SPAWN) is a cliche' black pimp out for revenge on the drug dealer who killed his brother. The direction, dialogue and “kung-fu” fighting are straight out of the '70's action films of Jim Kelly, Ron Van Clief and Fred Williamson. It turns out Dr. Wu (Roger Yuan) is running things from Kung-Fu Island but later BD attacks the White House (“the honky house!”) and has a nunchucks battle with Richard Nixon (James McManus)! The ghost of Abe Lincoln saves him! With characters named Bullhorn and Cream Corn and a hilarious scene where a bunch of guys trying to figure out if “Anaconda Malt Liqueur” shrinks dicks! 

White was a co-scriptwriter and the director Scott Sanders later worked on the animated series based on the movie.

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Pam Grier!

SHEBA BABY-1975-Beleaguered former cop now a P.I. Sheba Shayne (Pam Grier) leaves Chicago for Louisville, Kentucky to help her father (Rudy Challenger) and his partner Brick (Austin Stoker) who's loan business is being threatened by gangsters (“Do they have a fight on their hands”). After barely surviving a car explosion, Sheba forces info from an informant by pushing his face into a bucket of chlorine. After getting a lecture from Brick about taking the law into her own hands they have sex. The whole thing seems to be run by Pilot (D'Urville Martin) and the duo bust up a meeting but he gets away. Later after her dad is killed she gets info at gunpoint from a comic pimp (“How can you look so fine and be mean to me?”) in a car wash. After a chase through a carnival it's revealed that Pilot is just a lackey. The real boss is a white guy named Shark (Dick Merrifield) who has a party on a yacht that Sheba infiltrates and winds up having her cover blown after a cat fight. She escapes and eventually fights Shark killing him before he kills her.

 Grier was in BUCKTOWN and FRIDAY FOSTER the same year. Director William Girdler made THE EXORCIST influenced ABBY the same year he worked on SHEBA. Unfortunately after making only 4 more movies he was killed in a helicopter crash while scouting locations in the Philippines. Stoker was also in ABBY and had a voice role in the animated RETURN TO THE PLANET OF THE APES the same year.

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Worth It!

DON'T ANSWER THE PHONE-1980-In this psycho-slasher horror flick the underrated Nicolas Worth plays Kirk Smith a deranged Vietnam vet/photographer who strangles women then takes pictures of them. He even calls a radio psychiatrist (Flo Gerrish) and talks with a Hispanic accent. Later he later convinces a prostitute to call the station and while she's talking to the doctor he kills her. James Westmoreland and Ben Frank play two wise ass detectives trying to solve the murders. I think they were trying to imitate Starskyand Hutch but they are more like Dumb and Dumber.

Worth (who died in 2007 at age 69) gives a tour de force performance, crying, laughing and talking to himself in a mirror. In a stand-out scene he talks to his "father" about how he beat up a pimp. The rest of the acting (made up mostly of TV actors and actresses) isn't as interesting and the story is quite sick (most of the victims die topless) and drags when Worth's not around but his performance makes it worth seeing. (No pun intended)

This was the only movie made by director Robert Hammer. The worst part is that while Smith is a crazed vicious killer the two cops act like jerks and aren't very likable.

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He's Tight, Together and Mean!

WILLE DYNAMITE-1974-Serious (but sometimes unintentionally funny) “blaxpoltation” film in the world of pimps and hookers.

Roscoe Orman (later a regular on SESAME STREET) is the title character an outrageous vicious pimp with a menagerie of women working for him. Diana Sands (in her second to last movie) co-stars as a social worker trying to put him out of business. Thalmus Rasulala is her district attorney boyfriend who tries to help. Meanwhile 2 cops (George Murdock and Albert Hall) try to nail him. 

Unlike a lot of other films like this the story doesn’t glorify Willie but the kind of happy ending ruins it. His pimp clothes are really something though!

Director Gilbert Moses made THE FISH THAT ATE PITTSBURGH and did a lot of TV.

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