I said last month that my Blaxploitaudient series has thus far neglected the actual inspiration for doing this series, which was watching Elvis Mitchell's documentary Is That Black Enough for You?!? at the end of 2022. Beyond that movie being the direct impetus for starting this series, I wanted to watch movies that I'd actually learned about from that movie, and so far, had not.
So this month I got the list of all the movies mentioned in ITBEFY?!? (because of course that exists online, dozens of times over probably) and went through them to find good candidates. Not all the movies mentioned qualify as blaxploitation movies, of course, because some are mentioned as points of contrast with blaxploitation, jumping off points for blaxploitation, or historical context of regrettable depictions of Black people on screen.
Among the actual list of blaxploitation movies, though, I wasn't able to find, at least by checking their titles, a couple movies I remembered by the scenes Mitchell showed from them, which suggested to me they might make fruitful material for this series. In fact, of the 11 titles where I chose to go in for a closer look, there were no slam dunk candidates. Or rather, I should say, there were no slam dunk candidates that felt like they were offering me something distinctly different from the films I've already seen. While I understand stories of women and men wreaking righteous revenge on pimps and drug dealers is the bread and butter of the genre -- and I do already have one more film in the pipeline that would be described this way -- I felt there was more to be gained from finding something a little different.
Which is how I landed on Eddie Romero's 1973 film Black Mama, White Mama, the second of eventually three films in this series that will feature Pam Grier. (I've been trying not to duplicate too much -- which is why I haven't watched a Shaft sequel or another Rudy Ray Moore film -- but Grier is basically synonymous with blaxploitation, and she's really good.) When I saw that this was a prison movie in which the titular characters spend much of the running time chained to each other, I thought, "Well that's something I haven't seen yet." And that title? I couldn't ask for a better encapsulation of the essential confrontational nature of blaxploitation, even if it accounts for only 50% of the title.
This is clearly an exploitation film, as there's a lot of nudity, and the prison setting -- which is at least the initial setting for the action -- is ripe with exploitation sleaze. I'm not sure if it's a totally a blaxploitation film, though, since Grier is essentially the only Black character in it. When I checked its bonafides on Wikipedia, the site says Black Mama, White Mama contains "elements of blaxploitation." I agree that it does, and that's good enough for me when I've been looking for a slight change of pace from the Foxy Browns and Cleopatra Joneses I've been watching.
Another thing that makes the film distinctly different is its setting. The prison is not in America, but rather, in an (unnamed?) Central or South American island nation, meaning most of the cast we see is not white or Black but Latino. (I'll say Latino rather than Latinx because that's what it would have been in 1973, or maybe even Hispanic.) Actually, now that I check Wikipedia again, I see it was shot in the Philippines, which explains the Asian features of some characters. As we know, the Philippines is a blend of Asian and Latin culture, though I doubt the film is actually supposed to be set there, as a specific location is besides the point of the story.
There's some real tawdriness here. The movie takes a long and lingering look on a prison shower scene, in which we see both of our leads (the other is Margaret Markov) bearing all, as well as many others who won't appear in the movie very long. What's more, a prison warden type watches them through a peephole where she masturbates. You don't see a close-up of a hand on a crotch or anything, but I was surprised to see the movie go as graphic as it did in the scenes of her pleasuring herself.
We learn that people seem to be in this prison for all sorts of reasons. Grier's Lee Daniels (not the filmmaker) is there for what she calls "a parking ticket," though it's hard to say whether it's an actual parking ticket or something equally insignificant and she's speaking metaphorically. I suppose it's also possible she's vastly underselling the significance of her crime. I don't believe the movie ever clarifies. (Oops, I shouldn't forget that Wikipedia is my friend. It says she's a prostitute, which could explain the "elements of blaxploitation" Wikipedia also talks about -- and indeed does not seem like sufficient reason to be shipped off to a prison on an island nation.)
However, Markov's Karen Brent is an actual revolutionary -- the contrast with Lee's crime is hardly charitable -- and this forms much of the basis of the story. When the two women escape, chained together, it is because they are freed by Karen's fellow revolutionaries, who stage a shootout on the road with prison officials and other members of the corrupt entourage of the island bigwig, as the prisoners are being transported. This bigwig is also regularly seen being ministered to in various ways by topless women. Yes, this movie wanted to deliver on the promise of its advertising.
There are some funny bits as the two escapees make their way through the countryside. (The revolutionaries just created a diversion, and they are going to rendezvous later.) For example, they disguise themselves as nuns after subduing the actual nuns, presumably in a fairly gentle manner. There's a sense that this sort of thing is supposed to be the overriding tone of Black Mama, White Mama.
However, the movie stops being such a "good time" as it approaches its climax, with another big shootout involving the revolutionaries and the corrupt bigwig and his henchmen. In fact, without saying too much about what happens, one has to question if they had a good sense of where they wanted this narrative to go and whether the materials to get you to that point really support that goal. This isn't a good enough movie to be a serious consideration of anything involving revolution, so it's right to wonder if they would have been better off sticking to the lighter tone and sense of the triumph of good over evil that prevails in most other blaxploitation movies. (But then, this might not be actual blaxploitation, right?)
I also hoped they would play the relationship between Lee and Karen for more tension. There's a sense that these two are supposed to be rivals, but it's not convincingly established. We do get one or two true exploitation moments when they slap the shit out of each other, but that's dropped pretty quickly, which is kind of a disappointment considering the dialectic established by the title.
Next month for Halloween I will watch the horror movie Ganja & Hess, if you want to play along with this series for at least one month.
