Music defined the era of Blaxploitation filmmaking as much as the garish fashions, punchy, profane dialogue, or lurid, pulpy plots.  Ron O’Neal’s Youngblood Priest would still have been a fly-ass hustler in his Flagg Brothers boots and giant ‘71 Cadillac Eldorado (complete with customized Rolls Royce grill), but it was Curtis Mayfield’s soulful yet gritty soundtrack that made him “Super Fly.”  Richard Roundtree’s hard-chargin’, hard-lovin’, take-no-bullshit portrayal of John Shaft in a time when audiences just didn’t see confident, powerful, sexual Black men on the silver screen, was the pack of dynamite beneath the Blaxploitation revolution, but it was Isaac Hayes’ theme that’s kept the flame burning three decades later.  Just like you can’t think of James Bond without humming the first notes of Monty Norman’s “James Bond Theme,” whenever you think of John Shaft that famous hi-hat and the funky wah-wah guitar riff inevitably comes strutting through your head.

So what would happen if you wrote a Blaxploitation soundtrack but didn’t have a movie to go with it?  Would it still work?  According to the band Cadillac Jones, the answer is “Yes.” In 2006, the Atlanta, GA-based jazz-funk group released the concept album The Big Takedown.  The concept?  The Big Takedown is the soundtrack for a previously unreleased Blaxploitation-era movie.  The band even has a link to the “original movie treatment” posted on their site.  The treatment is a weathered, stained, hole-punched, 3-page document that looks like it was drafted on a real typewriter, reproduced on carbon paper, then run through a mimeograph machine multiple times(You can almost smell the purple ink!), and buried in a stack of old Ebony and Jet magazines for 25 years before it was finally posted on their site.

The “movie’s” plot is a seedy little crime thriller involving Ike Power, a gangster prodigal son returning to a dangerous, corrupt, unnamed city after being away for several years.  He’s returning at the request of his old boss and surrogate father, Earl “Tarzan” Watkins, in order to wrap up some unfinished business.  (I particularly liked the touch that Ike spent his exile with family in Barbados.  It’s a nice unexpected touch that adds a layer of depth to his character.)

The secondary concept behind Cadillac Jones’ concept album is that every song is intended to accompany each scene from the movie, so we get to follow Ike’s journey through this dark criminal underworld with Cadillac Jones right beside him, slinking, grooving, and swinging from one song to the next.  For example, the first cut, titled “Intro” is only 26 seconds long, but it sets the tone of the story by just employing the sound of an airplane landing as the muted cacophony of an airport terminal rumbles in the background.  In short, it tells us Ike Power has arrived.  The next cut, “Narq,” starts off with a “tsah-tsah-ta-tsah” hi-hat reminiscent of “The Theme from Shaft” before a guitar and brass kick in.  ”Narq” then segues into a nice,  jazzy groove that rolls along for the balance of the song.  ”Narq” is obviously Ike Power’s theme, and the band even closes out the album with “Return Of The Narq,” a slower, more haunting adaptation of the opening number, that you could easily see playing over the closing credits of The Big Takedown.

One of my favorite aspects of The Big Takedown is Cadillac Jones’ use of a REAL horn section!  The brass is used to great effect throughout the album, adding rich, brassy, funky flourishes, particularly in the mid-tempo head-bopper “Power.”  ”Ike’s Regret” begins with a mournful baritone saxophone as a subway train rattles in the background.  The sax actually sends you back further in time to a 1950s noir film instead of a Blaxploitation movie.  If The Big Takedown had any drawback it would be scattered anachronistic touches like this or the occasional use of scratching, that pull the listener out of the ’70s era the album is meant to evoke.  When the album’s third song “Tarzan” introduces Beastie Boys “Brass Monkey”-ish scratching early into the cut, I felt like Scott Bakula from Quantum Leap, lurching from the era of bellbottoms and fringed vests to a time of Kangols and dookie rope chains.  

Overall, I felt The Big Takedown was a tremendously successful concept album.  Although I generally prefer my funk a little more propulsive and grimy than jazz-flavored, Cadillac Jones kept me hooked from beginning to end.  The Big Takedown is not available on iTunes, but that’s to the advantage of you and your local record store.  You really need to enjoy The Big Takedown as a cohesive whole with plot in hand, in the song order laid out by the band, because it makes the listening experience even better.  When you do, give me a call.  I’ll bring the popcorn.

- JEP

Gotta give some link love to The Museum of Uncut Funk!  

Described by curator Pamela Thomas, aka “Sister Tofunky,” as “The planet’s first virtual museum dedicated to the celebration and preservation of the FUNK!,” The Museum of Uncut Funk has more galleries than the Smithsonian Institution.  Before you click the link, get yourself a two-day pass and pack a lunch, ’cause you’ll definitely be there a while and you’ll STILL have to come back for more.  

The Museum of Uncut Funk is split into approximately 7 different virtual “galleries.”  The galleries spin off from the main collection.  Each gallery focuses on a different aspect of 70’s Black pop culture, and most combine the blog format with permanent exhibits dedicated to that focus.  My favorite gallery is sort of a hodge-podge, catch-all for Ms. Thomas, entitled “Can’t Get Enough…Of that Funky Stuff Blog,” however I also dug the “Jim Kelly Exhibit,” for its breezy, but informative, multi-media look at the man’s life and career .  Each gallery boasts a wide array of funky memorabilia from Ms. Thomas’ personal collection, like Blaxploitation movie posters, Blaxploitation soundtrack album cover art,  and Blaxploitation-themed comic books.  One of the most interesting aspects of The Museum of Uncut Funk is that every exhibit contains at least one “Where The Hell Did She Get That?” entry.  I thought I knew a little something about Blaxploitation culture, but Sister ToFunky humbles even the most jaded collector with unexpected treasures like the Egyptian poster for Sheba Baby  or original production art from an aborted Hanna-Barbera cartoon called The Blackstones. (Think The Flintstones, but…y’know, Black.)  

Along with the fun, Ms. Thomas’ site includes sobering glimpses of how Blacks were depicted before we had the means and opportunities to control our images with an exhibit showcasing pre-Civil Rights era crate labels that included stereotypical images of  bug-eyed mammies and barefoot pickaninnies toting baskets full of yams.  The Museum is also building exhibits dedicated to Blacks on stamps and currencies from around the world.

The only minor drawback to The Museum of Uncut Funk is that the main gallery pages are embedded with sound files that automatically load when you go to the page.  The sound files are fantastic, tight cuts from groups like The Ohio Players and The Jimmy Castor Bunch, but if your computer loads slowly, it could be the equivalent of going to the museum and waiting in line behind an old lady with six screaming grandkids, trying to pay by check.  You might be in line a while, but it’s definitely worth the wait.

- JEP

Frequent commenter, Rodney Blackwell aka “Rodbuddah,” just posted a review of WORLD OF HURT on his website, Planetgriffin.blogspot.com.

My first review. 

…

I HAVE ARRIVED!

Make sure y’all check out Planet Griffin, and not just for the great review of  “The Internet’s #1 Blaxploitation Webcomic.” 

So what’s Planet Griffin like, you ask?  Is it any good? 

“Is it any good?”  Is an elephant heavy?  Is pig pork?  Of course it’s good! 

Rodbuddah really holds it down for the old school and genre movies and comics over there.  His site was the first place I saw the teaser poster from Stallone’s new movie, The Expendables (which every action fan should be highly, highly anticipating), but I most enjoyed Rodbuddah’s post on “The Next 100.”    It’s a really nice wake up call for the comic book industry and a solid manifesto for aspiring cartoonists out there.  It also nicely encapsulates why WORLD OF HURT is here in the first place.

I’ll see you all tomorrow with the next installment of The Thrill-Seekers.

- JEP

WORLD OF HURT received a favorable review on AintItCool.com!

I’m not even gonna front, but I am really geeking out right now! 

Thanks for the great write-up, Ambush Bug!

- JEP

I had planned to post the review of Booker T. Jones’ new album, Potato Hole, last month, on the week it debuted, but I never got around to finishing the write-up.  I apologize for the delay, but I figured that the damage was minimal, since a webcomic/blog that pays homage to a three-decade old film genre isn’t necessarily dedicated to the most timely observations of pop culture, anyway.

For those of you who may not know, Booker T. Jones gained his fame during the 1960s as part of the in-house rhythm section for Memphis, Tennessee-based soul music label Stax Records.  The rhythm section included Jones on the organ, Steve Cropper on guitar, Lewie Steinberg on bass, and Al Jackson, Jr. on drums.  Collectively, they became the original lineup of “Booker T. & The MGs.”  However, like their house band counterparts at Motown, The Funk Brothers, Booker T. & the MGs not only recorded with the R&B luminaries from their respective labels, but they defined the very sound of their label.  Stax recording artists, and future Rock & Roll Hall of Famers like Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Johnnie Taylor, Isaac Hayes and The Staple Singers all sweated in out in the studio with Booker T. & The MGs.*

Booker T. & the MGs’ also recorded their own songs, and as a group, they scored success with songs like “Time Is Tight,” and “Soul Limbo,” but their most famous hit was undoubtedly “Green Onions.”   Recorded in 1962, “Green Onions” is an evocative, jazzy, acoustic track that manages to be urbane and soulful at the same time.  In “Green Onions,” Booker T.’s cool organ riffs and Alan Jackson, Jr.’s steady, simple snare prowl through your speakers like a down-home version of Henry Mancini’s “Peter Gunn Theme,” punctuated by twangy, bluesy yelps from Steve Cropper’s guitar.  ”Green Onions” was one of the first ringtones I downloaded, and when I gave my Mom her choice of song, she hand-picked “Green Onions” to be the ringtone I hear when she calls me.  (Hi, Mom!)

As a Booker T. fan, I was pleasantly surprised to discover several months ago that Jones would be releasing a new CD this year, but I was  intrigued to learn that contemporary Southern rockers, Drive-By Truckers**, would be backing up Jones and producing the new album, as well.  (Oh, some guy named Neil Young was also playing on the album.)  I’ve had the pleasure of seeing two live performances by the Drive-By Truckers and a solo performance by DBT founding member, Patterson Hood at Columbia, South Carolina’s New Brookland Tavern.  The collaboration seemed like an odd grouping, so I was curious to hear how the album would sound.

The entire album is instrumental, but that’s OK with me, since it’s my impression that Booker T. plays the organ with the inflections and sensibilities of a vocalist, anyway.  Booker T.’s organ music floats and weaves among the guitars and percussion, like an ethereal presence, sometimes high and brassy, sometimes gutteral and churchy, and often elegant.  The first song, “Pound It Out,” sets the tone of the album, and you know from the first notes that The Truckers are in the house, and they’ve come to play.  However, Booker T. is right behind them, and he’s brought his “A” game, too.  To me, this is the song on the album that came closest to feeling like “The Drive-By Truckers featuring Booker T.,” but I didn’t mind, because it’s the hardest rocking song on the album.  The most soulful tune on the album is “Warped Sister,” with Booker T.’s fingers sliding and slurring over the keys like a jukejoint singer just starting to feel his moonshine buzz.  The song rocks along at a nice clip with some fuzzy, snarly guitar work thrown in for good measure.  However, the next cut, “Get Behind The Mule,” is the sinister, bluesy counterpoint to “Warped Sister.”  It’s the same singer, later in the night, singing a dark, measured, conspiratorial tale of pain and loss for the last few patrons in the place, all to a shuffling, steady beat.  Although these were my two favorite songs, the most anticipated cut off the album for most people was Booker T.’s rendition of the 2003 Outkast hit, “Hey Ya!”  The only thing I can say about the head-boppin’ cover is that Booker T., DBT, and Young not only bring the energy, but they bring the only thing that was missing from the Grammy Award-winning crowd pleaser (and the only thing that could replace Andre 3000’s inimitable vocal delivery of lines like “Shake it like a Polaroid PIC-chah!”).  That missing element:  cowbell.  And you can never go wrong with cowbell.  Ever.  The final track “Space City” is a spare, simple tune that feels like it could have been improvised by Booker T.  In this selection, the organ is flat-out church.  It starts off soft and low, like a music director riffing on the organ while the collection plate is being passed around and the preacher delivers the offertory prayer.  Then the song builds in intensity with some beautiful musical flourishes from Booker T., just like that preacher trying to get a few more dollars into the plate, before he dials it back down in the final third, returning to the musical phrasing and themes that started the song. 

My verdict: Potato Hole is a little more laid-back Muscle Shoals than sweaty Memphis rhythm and blues.  If you’re a Drive-By Truckers’ fan, odds are good that you’ll enjoy this album, but if you dig the musical acumen of Booker T. you won’t be disappointed either.  It’s not a party album, but it does make nice driving music.

- JEP

*  The Stax Records 50th Anniversary compilation is a tremendous resource for the history of the label and would make a great addition to anyone’s record collection.

** Coincidentally, the Drive-By Truckers recorded a song called “A World Of Hurt.”  No relation.

Four months into WORLDOFHURTONLINE.COM, and I’m finally posting my first review of a Blaxploitation movie.  This may contain some heavy spoilers, so be warned.

Without a doubt, my favorite Blaxploitation film is Trouble Man. The film continues the fine Blaxploitation tradition of hiring some of the best Soul music and R&B artists of the day to score the movie.  Like Isaac Hayes on Shaft and James Brown on Black Caesar, Marvin Gaye delivered a stand out musical counterpoint to Trouble Man’s onscreen action.  The movie’s title theme song, “Trouble Man,” is a slow burning Soul masterpiece that has been covered by artists like Neneh Cherry and Alicia Keys, and no matter what song list I create, it never leaves my iPod.  Also, I’ll be the first to admit that I shamelessly stole the template for Pastor from Robert Hooks’ portrayal of the movie’s steely-eyed, no-nonsense lead character, Mr. T.  (Robert Hooks’ Mr. T preceded the bejeweled, mohawked , fool-pityin’ public persona of Laurence Tureaud by several years, so I’m inclined to believe he was influenced by the movie as well.)  As the movie’s trailer boasts, Mr. T. is a man who is “street smart and steel hard” and “was a man ever since he was a kid.”   Below is one of the trailers for Trouble Man, courtesy of YouTube.  Many of the lines from the voiceover were lifted from, and re-used, in the original teaser trailer for the soon-to-be release Black Dynamite.

In Trouble Man, Mr. T is an freelance trouble shooter based in Los Angeles, who is hired by two mid-level criminals, Pete Cockrell and Chalky Price, to find out who has been ripping off their floating craps games.  The entire tale is a ruse to eliminate their competition, a crime lord named Big, and frame Mr. T for the murder.  Unfortunately for Pete and Chalky, Mr. T gets wise to them and unleashes Hell on the two crooks, tearing down their organization and leaving a trail of corpses in his wake.

At the start of the film, after returning home from an evening with a lovely young woman, Mr T is greeted at his door by one of Chalky’s men, Billy Chi, a slow-talking, sinister goon who dresses in cast-offs from Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone.  He’s there to deliver a message that Chalky needs to talk to him.  Mr. T doesn’t appreciate the invasion of his personal space and dismisses Billy off with the message that Chalky can “kiss my Black ass.”  (Billy Chi turns out to be an entertaining foil for Mr. T, who, despite his cruel intentions, can never quite get the upper hand on T.  When Mr. T finally comes around to dealing with Chalky, Billy Chi mocks him by saying, “You some kinda ho, baby.  Tellin’ the man to kiss your ass in the mornin’, and workin’ for him at night.”  Mr. T.’s response: a stiff, sharp punch to Billy’s gut and a warning for him to keep an eye on T’s car.  Stone cold, baby.  Stone cold.)

Later that day, Chalky and Pete arrive at Jimmy’s pool hall to speak to Mr T themselves.  Chalky, who is Black, and Pete, who is White,  prove that crime and greed are the keys to racial harmony, because together their growing criminal empire can serve the discriminating gamblers in either community (pun intended).   Chalky and Pete allege that a group of masked crooks keeps busting into the craps games and robbing the gamblers.  They want to hire Mr. T. to find out who is behind the robberies.  Mr. T. agrees to help, laying out a basic plan to surveil their next game as “just another (craps) shooter,” but his price of one night’s take is too steep for the duo.  When Chalky and Pete try to lowball him on the fee, Mr. T refuses to budge on his price, and kicks them out of his Lincoln with the memorable line, “Now get out.  You two are fuckin’ up a perfectly good day.”  You gotta take an icebreaker to find a vein in Mr. T’s arm.

Chalky and Pete’s “problem” turns out to be an elaborate ruse to lure Mr. T into eliminating their only competition in the vice rackets, a crime lord by the name of Big, played by Super Fly and Shaft’s Big Score veteran, Julius Harris.  When Chalky and Pete finally accept Mr. T’s price, the men stage a fake robbery and make it appear as if it was committed by an operative of Big, specifically a big, hound’s-tooth jacket wearing debt collector named Abbey Walsh, whom they had kidnapped earlier in the day.  As the masked “robbers” flee, they switch out one of the plants with Big’s man.  Chalky shoots Abbey Walsh in the back before Mr. T sees the switch or has the chance to stop him.  Chalky and Pete’s men dispose of Walsh’s body, but call in an anonymous tip to the cops that tells a) tells them where to find the body, and b) implicates Mr. T in the murder.

After a series of machinations by Chalky and Pete, Mr. T gets wise to their plan and sets a plan in motion to get his revenge on Chalky and Pete, and claim his fee.  Mr. T stages a one-man assault on the respective hideouts of Pete and Chalky, culminating in a brutal, close-quarters fight in an elevator and a well-staged penthouse shoot-out.  The best part of the finale is, even with police bearing down on him to investigate the gunfire, Mr. T still takes the time to calmly change into a fresh suit before leaving the scene of the melee.  Mr. T is colder than cold.

Although Shaft is the standard bearer for Black action movies of the 1970s, I think Trouble Man is imminently more watchable.  Although Blaxploitation movies get a bad rap for their low production standards, Ivan Dixon’s direction is crisp and economical, and the movie itself is a taut action film with a lean running time.  There are a few clunker moments, like Mr. T’s need to reclaim his gun from the property room of the LAPD before he can exact his revenge, but mostly the story moves along at a nice, brisk pace.  Shaft, as a character, is more approachable than the stoic Mr. T, but T comes closer to the Blaxploitation Hero Ideal.  The Ideal Blaxploitation Hero is a lover and a fighter.  He’s a ruthlessly driven one-man army who always comes out on top.  He’s an independent man who lives a comfortable lifestyle, yet never sweats where his next paycheck is coming from.  Shaft was cast somewhat closer to the hardboiled Raymond Chandler private eye.  As a private detective, Shaft has to be surreptitious, stealthy, and unassuming at times, but Mr. T owns every room he enters the minute he walks into it.  He’s the Alpha Dog, and his bearing and demeanor demand respect and attention.

The movie is chockful of quotable lines and memorable moments.  When Mr. T squares off with a pool shark named Wesley at the beginning of the movie, T inquires if the young man can cover his bets, to which Wesley glibly remarks, “Is an elephant heavy?  Is pig pork?  Then it won’t hurt me.”  I love that line.

As Wesley makes a strong showing against Mr. T, Jimmy, Mr. T’s confidante, whispers, “He’s good, but he ain’t got no cool.”

“Then he’s not good, Jim,” Mr. T replies, in a perfect encapsulation his philosophy:  Mr. T is so damn good at everything he does, because he’s that damn cool.

Trouble Man gets my highest recommendation.  If you’ve got a NetFlix account, don’t bother using it.  You need to BUY this one, Jack!

- JEP

I just wanted to point out that my man, David Walker, is offering a sale on back issues of his magazine, BadAzz Mofo, on his site, BadAzzMofo.com. 

The magazine offers some of the most comprehensive, insightful, and hilarious analysis of the Blaxploitation movement that I’ve ever come across.   People use the term “LOL” a lot on the Internets, but I promise that you will literally laugh out loud on many occasions with BadAzz Mofo.  Throughout the history of the magazine (which, sadly, is no longer being published) I believe David Walker and his crew managed to actually review every single one of the nearly 300 Blaxploitation movies produced.  David scored some fantastic interviews with stars like Gloria Hendry and Fred Williamson.  The intense gauntlet he had to run to score an interview with Jim Brown is like something out of Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, with Brown even growling his version of “You chose…wisely,” before consenting to begin the interview. 

Within the pages of BadAzz Mofo, you’ll also find some exclusive Jim (Grrl Scouts) Mahfood art, music reviews, and discover which asshole from Magnum, P.I. made David’s mother cry.  (His mom, Bonnie, is a real sweetheart, too, which makes his assholitry even more disgusting).  That’s another thing: through the bits of autobiographical information interspersed throughout the magazine, you quickly learn that David is every bit as insane, badazz, and fascinating as the fictional characters he covers, and by the time you finish reading these issues, the term “foot-to-ass,” will be firmly entrenched in your daily vocabulary.  Although BadAzz Mofo the magazine has ceased publication, David regularly updates his site, BadAzzMofo.com with reviews and commentary of pop culture with the same biting, acerbic wit and insight that was a hallmark of the print version.

David’s got a fantastic sale going on right now for a 5-issue combo pack, but supplies are limited, so get ‘em while the gettin’s good!

LINKS:

BadAzz Mofo – homepage

BadAzz Mofo Online Store

- JEP

Today, I was wondering what I would do for my Friday blog.  I actually had a piece on Luke Cage in the pipeline that I needed to finish, but my heart really wasn’t in it tonight.  Thankfully, this week, I received two Blaxploitation movies that I had never seen before: Black Caesar and The Candy-Tangerine Man.  I’d wanted to see both for a long time, but I had to show my respect to Fred Williamson first.  So, while I thought about the gameplan for my Luke Cage article, I popped Black Caesar into the DVD player.  Twenty minutes into it, I thought, “Why don’t I do a liveblog review of the movie?”  I’d never done a liveblog before, but I figured I could kill two birds with one stone.

Therefore, I present to you, Black Caesar, the story of a Black shoe-shine boy who works himself up from errand boy for the Italian mafia, to the boss of the New York rackets, starring Fred Williamson, D’urville Martin, and Gloria Hendry,

WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW.

00:32  - Caption “September 5,1953″

00:42 – Based on the outfits of the bystanders and the principals, I’m not fully convinced.

02:12 –  The kid playing a young Tommy Gibbs, shoeshine boy, looks a bit too much like Chris Brown for me to root for him wholeheartedly.

03:15  -  Director Larry Cohen is doing a nice job of keeping cars and other anachronistic details off-camera with smart shot selection, but it’s not obvious unless you’re looking for it.

04:51  - Nice creepy lighting in the stairwell.

05:44 –  The cop starts roughing up and then frisks Tommy.  Suddenly, there’s the sound of running water and the cop and the kid pause for a moment and look down.  Was that meant to imply Tommy pissed himself?

05:55  -  The cop on the take, named McKinney, is accusing young Tommy Gibbs of skimming some of his mob pay-off money.  Love the righteous indignation from lil’ Chris Brown here.  ”Look you fuckin’ ass, I didn’t take your money.  You don’t get pissed at me!”

06:21  -  They’re fighting and Tommy is down!  The cop wails on him with his nightstick.  Nice use of the trash can lid as a shield, Tommy, but, man, your ground game sucks.  Who do you think you are?  Kimbo Slice?

07:01  -  Tommy’s laid up in a hospital with a broken leg chatting with Joe, his nerdy friend.  Tommy’s going away to jail for a while after he heals up.  Acting’s a little weak here, but it nicely sets up the friendship.  He tells Joe to get laid while he’s away.

08:10  -  Caption: “October 23, 1965″  Fred Williamson’s now playing the adult Tommy Gibbs.  He limps into a barbershop where some mob goon is getting a shave from a Black barber.

08:32 – There’s never a good time to be a bigot, but you really don’t want to launch into a racist monologue while a Black man has a straight razor at your throat.

09:48  - Tommy’s holding the whole barbershop hostage while he toys with his prey.  Williamson is his usual devilish and devious self, but there’s a nice, subtle air of desperation there too.  This dude is hungry to prove himself.

11:41  -  He’s cutting off the ear!

12:00  - New scene.  There goes the ear into the pasta of the mob boss who called the hit.  ”I thought you could use some more MEAT in your sauce.”

13:47 – Tommy lays down a nice rap on why he’d be a perfect contract hit man for the mob.  ”I got a built in disguise.  They never look at me.  They never look at my face, my nose, my lame foot.  All they know is that I’m Black.”  It reminds me of the film Dirty Pretty Things (2002), with its theme of an ever-present, but still unseen, underclass of immigrant servants.

14:10  - Tommy’s always hustling.

14:33  -  Montage of James Brown’s “The Boss” over a sweet montage of Tommy’s rise to power!  Sing it!  ”I’ve paid the cost to be the boss!”  Just noticed “Chairmen Of The Board” on the marquee behind Tommy in the picture below as he surveys his domain.  Nice touch.  Real nice touch.

15:55  -  Love Williamson’s rueful glance at the neon shoe sign.

16:08  -  D’urville Martin as a phony, corrupt preacher, Reverend Rufus.

17:47  -  Gibbs has got himself a shiny new mob lawyer and he’s laying out his plan to consolidate his power by stealing the McGuffin some mob ledgers.

18:15  -  More James Brown incidental music is always welcome.  In the early 1990s, Das EFX jacked this instrumental for their debut song, ”They Want EFX.”

18:58  - Ladies and gentlemen, the lovely Ms. Gloria Hendry.

20:57 – Tommy rubs out the mob accountant, two gangsters and takes the ledgers.  ”You know what this is?  Power.  Political power!”

23:22  - The tension between Gibbs and McKinney, now a police captain, who crippled him as a kid, is really powerful.  Great stuff by Williamson, lulling him into a false sense of security. “I want him nice and fat before I kill him.”

25:59 – Tommy buys the lawyer’s apartment, clothes,  and everything in it, including his maid,  out from under him.  His wife seems haughty, highly medicated, and slightly attracted to Tommy, despite her better judgment.

27:47  - Just snatched the leopard shawl off the shoulders of the lawyer’s wife on their way out the door.  Lady, he said EVERYTHING!  Awesome, sometimes subtle, socio-political subtext throughout!  There are a lot of dog whistles for Black folks.

30:01 – Sweet twist with the maid.

34:46 – Tommy can lay a trap like a spider.  Most of the time, the last thing his victims see is his smile, but a surprising bit of mercy for the old mobster who took a chance on him.  Not much, but some.

39:06 – There goes the competition and one delicious looking turkey.  Tommy and his boys literally turned the pool into a bloodbath.

41:07 –  ”Everybody’s a liberal nowadays, McKinney.  Get with it.”  *Sigh*  How times have changed.

43:55  -  ”No” means “No,” Tommy.  Remember that.

45:10  -  The great Julius Harris as Tommy’s estranged father.  He was a really underestimated character actor.  I didn’t realize how much range he had.  For the first time, Tommy seems rattled.

49:41  -  Gloria Hendry is RIPPED!

52:35  -  D’urville Martin’s been playing a crooked preacher, and you get the feeling that this is the first time he’s had to pray and really mean it.

55:54  -  Re: The lawyer’s wife being attracted to Tommy.  I was right.

56:41 – Uh-oh!  Tommy made Joe promise that he’d get laid, but I don’t think he meant like this.

102:01 – Well I’ll be.  There really is a horse and buggy drive-by shooting in this movie.

102:29 –  Even the baby’s smart enough not to trust McKinney.

104:43 – Great framing with that shot.  Williamson could have used it to get himself cast as James Bond.

105:01 -Gloria Hendry’s way hotter with her natural hair.  She’s got fantastic skin, too.

106:29 – I wish movies today were ballsy enough to embrace nudity.

108:03 – Evocative use of the hand-held camera.

111:58 – That is one shoddy hit.  It’s like they’re hunting deer with a bow.  I guess they’re counting on Tommy bounding off into the brush where they’ll recover the body on they’re own sweet time.

113:34 – Tommy just garrotted (yes, that is a word) one of the would-be assassins with his tie.  Even with a bullet in his gut, Tommy Gibbs is still one bad dude.

115:45 – Love how Tommy incredulous is once he realizes that Rufus has actually turned into a real man of faith.

119:41 – Is she really going to let her husband walk into a trap?

123:40 – Finally the stand-off with McKinney.  Anytime a villain tells the protagonist to kneel,  it never ends well for them.  Just ask Zod.

125:43 – Shoeshine box-fu.

128:16 – Very powerful scene with Tommy painting McKinney in blackface and pistol-whipping him. A lot of raw, genuine emotion from Williamson here.

129:56 – Whereas Curtis Mayfield’s score for Super Fly was compared to a Greek chorus, providing a counterpoint to the action, James Brown’s score for Black Caesar underlines the scene in very blunt terms.

131:44 – The mighty Tommy Gibbs brought low by common teenage street thugs.  Meanwhile, the valued ledgers that everybody lied, fought, and died for are left scattered in the trash, their significance, or ultimately, their insignifance, exposed and ignored by the hoodlums.

CONCLUSION: This was a really good movie.  It was solidly acted throughout, and the director, Larry Cohen, was willing to take some chances that really paid off.  This is truly Fred Williamson at his best, because he was called on to bring sympathy to an often unsympathetic character and he knocked it out the park.  Despite his easy smile, there’s a lot of sadness and hunger for power and respect that drives him. Also, Fred Williamson has charisma to burn.  If you could turn it into an alternative energy source, you could light up Las Vegas for a year.  Black Caesar comes highly recommended.

- JEP

As I’ve said before, despite the theme and subject matter of the webcomic, WORLD OF HURT, I try to keep my blog a fairly upbeat.  I talk about things I like and enjoy, because I want to share a more positive experience with my readers.  However, there occasionally comes a time when I must depart from my desired path and get a little critical.

Recently, I discovered Obama Action Comics!, a webcomic by Jason Buckley.  Buckley describes it as a “blaxploitation webcomic featuring an Obama action figure.”  Now anybody who knows me knows that I’m a bleeding heart liberal and two of my biggest passions are comic books and politics.  If you check my Facebook status from today, you’ll find me waxing on about creating a Thundarr, the Barbarian comic, and admonishing Sen. Harry Reid to pull the seniority and chairmanships of any Democrat that would support a Republican filibuster of the healthcare reform bill.  Now, it would seem that this would be the perfect webcomic for me, especially since Buckley is a fellow progressive.  Sadly, as promising as the idea is, the execution leaves a little to be desired.

Now this may seem like a bit of territorial pissing, since I have “The Internet’s #1 Blaxploitation Webcomic,” a tongue-in-cheek title I bestowed on WORLD OF HURTwhen I believed there were no other Blaxploitation-themed webcomics on the internet.  Since then, I have discovered John Aston’s gritty and innovative Rachel Rage, and Maurice Fontenot’s humorous Ghost Pimp.  I have corresponded with and befriended both creators and have actively supported and promoted their work.  Obama Action Comics’ creator, Jason Buckley also seems like a guy with whom I’d have a great time.  We seem to share the same liberal philosopy.  I even support Buckley’s outrage over President Obama’s frustratingly glacial progress, or outright reversal, on some of his campain promises, but in terms of “Blaxploitation” and “webcomics,”…Dude, you’re doing it wrong.

There’s nothing inherently “Blaxploitation,” or humorous, about a Black man cussing or threatening violence.  The best kind of celebrity satire plays off or, or exaggerates,  the audience’s established perceptions of that person, and Jason Buckley’s depiction of Barack Obama as a violent, angry Black man is merely a caricature of a stereotype.  This Barack Obama is every Samuel L. Jackson and Dave Chappelle soundbite wrapped up in a presidential seal.  Buckley himself states,  ”I doubt [Barack Obama] goes around pistol whipping right wing talk radio douchebags, let alone referring to them as douchebags. Even in private, he probably has a very clean mouth.”

The image of the first Black President of the United States threatening to “choke a bitch,” even presented satirically from a fellow progressive, just feeds into the paranoid fantasies from the conservatives about how threatening Black men are.  It is only because these fantasies are so powerful, insidious, and deeply rooted in the fabric of the American subconscious, that people could even entertain the notion that Barack Obama would want to kill their grandmothers via health insurance “death panels.”  The humor is occasionally short-circuited by Buckley’s use of conservative frames to portray his subjects, such as the impression of Vice-President Joe Biden as a man who must be muzzled.

In terms of the webcomic goes, it’s a fumetti.  Buckley admits that he is using borrowed images, which he reuses liberally (no pun intended) throughout the course of the strip.  That makes it basically the photographic equivalent of a sprite comic, which are generally held in lesser regard in the webcomics community, because a) you’re merely re-contextualizing images that someone else took the time to create, and b) the relatively low level of skill required to do so.

I honestly believe Jason Buckley has a solid premise here, and I cannot find any fault with his passion for his work or subject matter.  A serial editorial webcomic that speaks painful truth to power about a president you want to believe in would be a fresh and welcome voice in the webcomic community.  However, Obama Action Comics! seems a little obvious and facile in its humor, and when you have to read the author’s blog notes to divine whether his intent was to support or vilify his subject, it is questionable whether the jokes are hitting their target.

- JEP

Similar entries: “Barack-sploitation“

Last week, friend of WORLD OF HURT, raconteur, entrepreneur, podcaster, talent wrangler, noted satirist, and fellow Blaxploitation fan, Chris Sims ran a series entitled “Dracula Week” on his hilarious and always informative blog, The Invincible Super-Blog (The “The” is mandatory).   I was traveling late last week, so I missed his review of the Blaxploitation film, Scream, Blacula, Scream.  I’m passing this along to you, so you don’t make the same mistake.  Enjoy!

- JEP