BLACK GESTAPO

d. Lee Frost (1975) 

I know what you're thinking: this film would have to be absolutely extraordinary to live up to its jaw-dropping title. It isn't, of course, but it's far from a failure, being a thought provoking allegory about power, corruption and the way they intersect - absolutely.

In a Watts, California, a sidestep away from reality, the Government have decided to 'help' the black population by empowering a People's Army, a do-gooding paramilitary organisation led by the idealistic General Ahmed. It's hard to think of any circumstances in which the formation of a black army would be seen as a good thing by white America, but here it's qualified as part of a more believable policy: the money is both inadequate for what they need and all they get, i.e. the ghetto is left to its own devices entirely and, as a result, is at the mercy of low life scum and crime syndicates, who are bleeding the people dry through drugs, gambling, prostitution, extortion and violence.

Colonel Kojah, a firebrand Peoples Army officer who is frustrated by his leaders pacifism, sets up his own unit, ostensibly to provide an element of security and protection. Pretty soon, they are dressed all in black and wearing SS caps, castrating rapists and running the gangsters out of town once and for all, which is slightly regrettable as the mob boss, played by the film's director, Lee Frost, is probably the best character in the film: a pyjama clad, dog stroking, wig wearing weasel  who, nevertheless, is hard as nails when he needs to be, except when it comes to his girlfriend, who speaks to him like shit.   

Kojah's unit are far worse than the threat they replaced. The officers live in splendour, eating suckling pig by the pool, while the lower ranks are put through a stringent programme of military training. Kojah quickly adapts to the role of Fuhrer, breathing hard with his eyes glistening as his men salute him and chant 'Vengeance! Vengeance!'. He's no long sticking to The Man, however, he's sticking it to everybody: robbing from the very people he claims to protect, replacing one system of violent oppression with another, one criminal organisation with another.

Blaxploitation films are often social issue films before anything else, the social issue being how it feels to be black in a white world. The cornerstone of joy in such films is community and honour, the way people come together to fight back against injustice, to support each other, to hold each other up. The Black Gestapo is a warning from history: beware of big men who are for little men, and seize power to 'make things better'. It always ends in blood.

MEAN JOHNNY BARROWS

d. Fred Williamson (1976)

Towards the end of this intermittently action packed film, Johnny Barrows (Fred Williamson) faces off against a an old enemy: a wiry, greasy, long haired polo neck wearing assassin. They make Kung Fu noises and a pantomimic and clunky fight ensues. The bad guy puts Johnny down and looks around for something to finish him, eventually spying a small rock, which he lifts with both hands as if it weighs a tonne, raising it above his head with enormous difficulty. Johnny reaches under his sweater and dispatches his opponent with a concealed throwing star. It was at that precise moment, about thirty years ago, that my brother and I decided this was one of our favourite films of all time.  

Full of incident and guest stars, spare of plot and sense, Mean Johnny Barrows is essentially a shaggy dog story about a principled action man and highly trained ex-soldier who retains his personal integrity despite homelessness and poverty before eventually accepting a job as a Mafia hit man and taking out the members of a rival syndicate who are selling drugs to black communities. Make no mistake, it’s jarring to see Fred Williamson cleaning a toilet and eating things out of bins but it clarifies why, when he is offered the money and land he needs to make a fresh start, he reluctantly takes it. Williamson is an extraordinary figure in cinema – an actor, writer and director who isn’t very good at any of those things but has had a long career based around his supreme self-confidence and the fact that it is pretty much impossible to dislike him, no matter (or perhaps because of) how ridiculous and puffed up he appears to be. Williamson who, like a number of black male stars of the era*, made his name on the American Football field, is at his daftest in fight scenes, which he either refuses to take seriously or takes too seriously, resulting in  much comedy gurning, silly noises and over-expressive hand gestures.

Along with Stuart Whitman, R.G Armstrong, ex-Tarzan Mike Henry and Elliot Gould(!), there’s the wonderful Roddy McDowall, one of my favourite actors, here playing a weaselly mobster / florist with great humour and his usual piercing intelligence / total bemusement. Post Planet of the Apes, the already expressive Roddy became even more animated, his nose crinkling and forehead furrowing compulsively, as if trying to be seen under heavy make up, whether he's wearing it or not. It makes me like him even more, and I already like him a lot.

I give this film my highest critical and analytical rating: it’s a hoot, and you'll be glad you watched it from the first seconds to the caption on the final frame -

'Dedicated to the veteran who traded his place on the front line for a place on the unemployment line. Peace is hell'.

 *Jim Brown; Rosie Grier; Bernie Casey; O.J Simpson...

VELVET SMOOTH

d. Michael L. Fink (1976)

Blaxploitation essentially presents an Afrocentric world where super hip, super smart, super fly black people easily swat away Whitey's conventions and rewrite injustices for themselves. It's a macho, often unconscionably sexist place, but there is also room for distaff John Shafts: beautiful, intelligent, strong women who can kick arse just as well as their male counterparts. Sometimes, as with the Pam Grier characters Coffy and Foxy Brown, our heroines are driven to action by revenge or necessity; sometimes, like Cleopatra Jones and the wonderfully and even more improbably named Velvet Smooth they're just preternaturally cool and in charge from the get go. 

Velvet (Johnnie Hill, who gives a slightly stilted but appealing performance and only ever appeared on screen in this one film) is a sassy and switched on private eye investigating a hostile and violent takeover of her ex-boyfriends crime syndicate. That's the story, a fluid ounce in a quart pot. Velvet is calm and collected and sleeps with whoever she damn pleases. She has two girlfriends who help her out, and they're a formidable team, so much so that they solve the mystery in about fifteen minutes and then have to hang around for the rest of the movie.

The crime lord is a surprisingly nice guy, who spends his spare time having pillow fights and has a very distracting braided pig tail hanging out of the back of his afro. He's played by a gentleman called Owen Wat-Son, a surname I'm familiar with but have never seen spelled in quite that way before. Wat-Son was also a martial arts instructor, and was responsible for the interminable fight scenes here, where the same dozen guys get beaten up again and again, one after the other*, really, really slowly. Rather cheekily, Wat-Son has a featured fight of his own, which is notable for having most of the action sped up to make him look shit hot, but nevertheless remains more Benny Hill than Bruce Lee.

Clearly filmed on the fly on the streets and in hastily reconfigured and re-purposed borrowed rooms (you can see the light patches where pictures were recently hanging), Velvet Smooth fails to live up to the sophisticated promise of its title in almost every way but has an endearing earnestness about it, as well as a Kojak gag that must have been out of date by the time the film crept into selected cinemas.

* Why do villains never attack en masse? If you greatly outnumber your opponent, it's moronic to give them the advantage of being able to knock you off individually. Pile in!

BARE KNUCKLES

d. Don Edmonds (1977)

Bare Knuckles is sometimes described as a Blaxploitation film, despite the fact that it was produced, written and directed by a white man, and, after about forty minutes, dispenses entirely with its few black cast members and concentrates exclusively on Robert Viharo, a bepermed and moustachioed action hero of obviously Italian descent. But the original poster cannily emphasises the black actors and it does feel like a Blaxploitation film: fast, fun, daft, full of fighting, shouting and running around. At the end, I felt like I'd been watching it for about ten minutes.

Viharo plays Zachery Kane, a principled and unconventional ex-cop turned bounty hunter. In a quick montage, it's also revealed that he is a semi-pro boxer (who trains in jeans and a polo neck jumper), a kung fu expert and that he plays the flute, albeit in a way that produces synthesised electronic tones. He lives on pizza and sleeps in an office plastered with 'Wanted' posters. When a perverted psycho killer starts picking off young women, Kane decides to catch him, partly for the reward and partly because Kane is a good guy with a strong moral compass and incredibly tight jeans.

The killer, revealed early on, is a horrible, incredible creation: a stunted rich kid (in his 30s) who was so disturbed by his Mother's promiscuity that he grew up full of hate and sickness and murder and incestuous lust. Rather like one of the younger Trumps, the only way he can feel whole is to don a leather suit and a ragged gimp mask and stab young women to death, hissing and wheezing in a most disturbing way. He's a really horrible guy, with no redeeming features whatsoever and, when he kisses his Mom and tries to slip his tongue in, you can't wait for Kane to bring him to justice, preferably using a flaming chainsaw.

The last quarter of the film is a chase: by car, by motorcycle, on foot. The finale of the action, like Grease, takes place in a partially flooded storm drain. Unlike Grease, however, death is on the cards for at least one of our combatants. I won't spoil it by telling you which one, other than to say I actually pumped my fist and said 'yes!' when it happened.     

DEVIL'S EXPRESS

d. Barry Rosen (1977)

Another ramshackle, hyperactive, hugely endearing Blaxploitation Kung Fu film, this time with a very welcome supernatural element and the intermittent but powerful presence of Warhawk Tanzania, who should have been a much bigger star because he's fucking awesome, like a black Jason King with mad martial arts skills and even madder hair.

Warhawk plays Luke Curtis, a cool dude on a spiritual quest and a kung fu obsession that takes him to Hong Kong for expert tuition. He takes along his best pal, Rodan, a nice guy who, nevertheless, refuses to take things seriously and, as such, is always getting into trouble, mainly with The Tongs, who want him dead. While in Hong Kong, Rodan discovers a cave in a skull strewn valley. In the cave is an amulet, which he decides to pinch and wear as a medallion. The removal of the amulet unleashes a demonic creature, who follows the two friends to New York and takes up residence in the subway, subsisting on wayward travellers, who get dragged off the platform and torn apart. 

This goes on for a while, and is counterpointed by Rodan and a previously unintroduced friend being chased by The Tongs, who they battle with over and over. Rodan even kills a few, like shelling peas, and with as much thought. Things lose focus here, and become slightly confused. Lots of red paint gets used.

After some time, the two seemingly disparate elements combine when Rodan is chased down into the subway station and is killed by the monster he set free, having his face jammed into an electrical generator. It’s a quite clever twist, and slightly saddening as, for all his idiocy and murder, he was a likeable doofus. This (finally!) brings Warhawk Tanzania into the frame. Out for revenge, he dons a pair of gold lame dungarees and goes down into the subway to kick some ancient demon ass. I’m not making this up. He meets the demon, who manifests itself in a number of ways (including as Warhawk’s barely seen girlfriend but not, strangely, as Rodan, which would have been much more interesting) before reverting to its standard form, a kind of big, ugly pile of aged mince. After a humongous battle, Warhawk uses his hard hands, heavy feet and the groovy oriental amulet to defeat the demon and make New York safe again. Which is a relief, as I really like it there.

Unbelievably, after this starring role Warhawk Tanzania has no further IMDB credits. What sort of world are we living in?