I promise I am not stalking Antonio Fargas.
The actor, who is still alive at age 77, might think otherwise after I have now watched four movies in this series in which he appears. I had thought it was three, but looking at his IMDB page to remind me which three, I see that it was actually four: Shaft, Foxy Brown, Car Wash, and now Cleopatra Jones.
I guess his prominent appearance in blaxploitation movies really explains why he appeared in the spoof of a blaxploitation movie I saw when I was just a teenager, that being I'm Gonna Git You Sucka!
Cleopatra Jones has been linked in my mind with Foxy Brown all year, given that they both derive their titles from the first and last names of their heroines. Until I watched Cleopatra Jones on Tuesday night, I didn't realize how much deeper their link actually runs.
Not only are both movies about an ass-kicking woman who is trying to bust up the drug trade, but the central drug ring in both movies is run by a psychopathic woman who presides over a stable of henchmen for whom she is sort of a mother figure. In Foxy Brown it was the imperious Katherine Wall (played Kathryn Loder), while Cleopatra Jones' evil matriarch is much more screamy in nature and is played by Shelley Winters. To underscore the idea that she's a matriarch, she even goes by the nickname Mommy.
While I would have assumed that Foxy Brown was the forerunner of these two movies, simply because it's more iconic, Cleopatra Jones actually came out a year earlier, so if anyone borrowed someone's structure from somebody else, it was Foxy from Cleopatra.
The titular ass-kicker here is played by Tamara Hobson -- a name I did not know -- and she's actually a special agent, almost more of a James Bond than a cop who wants to clean up this city. And she's got the Bond-like set pieces to match. Not quite our introduction to her character, but very early on in the movie, she emerges from a luggage carousel to take by surprise the thugs who are laying in wait for her. Some of her moves may be a bit goofy -- or maybe that's just the way director Jack Starrett shoots them -- but she gets the results. That's right, asses kicked.
She also has a dynamite car chase through the concrete basin of the Los Angeles River, an iconic cinematic location if ever there was one, in her slick Corvette, a signature item. This one is shot really well. It involves strategic splashing of the water to blind the people who are trying to shoot her from behind, and it would stand tall next to other 70s car chases. Maybe not The French Connection, but others for sure.
The plot itself is fairly standard according to what I've come to expect from the movies I've seen so far in this series. Because she has rogue methods, Cleopatra has a bit of a love-hate relationship with the police. The "little guy" she's trying to save is a low-level gangbanger type whom some corrupt police try to frame with drug possession, when really, they are in cahoots with Mommy and her minions.
There are two other familiar faces here that I should point out. One is Bernie Casey, a guy I recognized from way back in my movie viewing history, though I had to look him up to remember where. He played U.N. Jefferson in Revenge of the Nerds, and it made me realize I should really watch Revenge of the Nerds again. He's also in I'm Gonna Git You Sucka!, not to mention Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.
Then there's Esther Rolle, Florida Evans from Good Times. I'm pretty sure I saw every episode of Good Times by the mid-80s but then never another one after that. Another thing to revisit. Unfortunately she's just in one short scene, so it's effectively a cameo.
I wouldn't say there are any real surprises in the way anything in Cleopatra Jones plays out, though it's probably worth taking a moment to touch on how race is portrayed in the film. Maybe only a moment is necessary, because there isn't a lot of time devoted to it. I think Cleopatra calls Mommy a "crazy honky" at one point, but the n-word isn't used back toward her or anyone else in this movie, if I remember correctly. I think the only person who says it, and only once, is another Black character.
Okay, on to August.
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