Review: "SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAAD ASSSSS SONG" is Still Beatin' Some White Ass

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 184 (of 2004) by Leroy Douresseaux

Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song (1971)

Running time: 97 minutes (1 hour, 37 minutes)

Rating: MPAA – X; re-rated R in 1974 

EDITOR/WRITER/DIRECTOR: Melvin Van Peebles

PRODUCERS: Jerry Gross and Melvin Van Peebles

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Bob Maxwell

COMPOSERS: Earth Wind & Fire and Melvin Van Peebles

CRIME/DRAMA/ACTION/THRILLER

Starring:  Melvin Van Peebles, Simon Chuckster, Hubert Scales, John Dullaghan, Johnny Amos, Mario Van Peebles, Megan Peebles, and Max Van Peebles

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song is a 1971 action-thriller, drama, and crime film from writer-director Melvin Van Peebles.  It is considered a seminal black exploitation film or “blaxploitation” film, being one of the first that kind.  The film focuses on a Black man who goes on the run after brutally beating two police officers, with help from other marginalized people and outsiders.

After saving a black protester (likely a Black Panther) by brutally beating the two cops who were brutalizing the protester, Sweetback (Melvin Van Peebles), an apolitical sex performer goes on the run from the white pigs and other white law enforcement types.  He heads for Mexico with help from the black community and disaffected Hell’s Angels, and he also meets many unique characters on the way to freedom.

Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback Baad Asssss Song is considered by many people to be the film that ushered in the blaxploitation film wave.  With its emphasis on fighting “the man” (the white power structure, in particular corrupt city officials and policemen) and graphic and gratuitous sex, the film is the prototypical blaxploitation film.  However, there is likely no other film like this one in its portrayal of police corruption and the of the racist attitudes that prevail among white law enforcement officials.

Structurally, the film has a bare and simple plot, and the script is absent of story and character development.  In a many ways, the film itself is more impressionistic than literal, while the theme is literally against white oppression and (evil) white cops.  Van Peebles in collaboration with Earth, Wind, and Fire, the R&B group who would go on to have huge crossover success on the pop charts provide a constant musical backdrop for the film.  So sometimes, this movie seems like an overly long music video.  In spite of its narrative shortcomings, Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song is bold stroke in using film to not only communicate messages and ideas, but to also be used as a means of protest.  The film is the work of an artist/firebrand; one must open up to feelings, experiences, emotions, and thoughts that are alien in order to get to the art, and when you get it, Sweetback will be like nothing else.

7 of 10

B+

★★★½ out of 4 stars

EDITED:  Sunday, July 14, 2024

NOTES:

2020 National Film Preservation Board, USA:  National Film Registry

The text is copyright © 2024 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this site or blog for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

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Review: Steven Spielberg's "Duel" (Countdown to "The Fabelmans")

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 46 of 2022 (No. 1858) by Leroy Douresseaux

Duel (1971) – TV movie
Running time:  90 minutes (1 hour, 30 minutes)
MPAA – PG
DIRECTOR:  Steven Spielberg
WRITER: Richard Matheson (based on his short story)
PRODUCER:  George Eckstein
CINEMATOGRAPHER:  Jack a Marta (D.o.P.)
EDITOR:  Frank Morriss
COMPOSER:  Billy Goldenberg
Primetime Emmy Award winner

THRILLER/ACTION

Starring:  Dennis Weaver, Jacqueline Scott, Eddie Firestone, Lou Frizzell, Lucille Benson, and Carey Loftin

Duel is a 1971 action-thriller and television film directed by Steven Spielberg.  The film is based on the short story, “Duel,” which was first published in the April 1971 issue of Playboy Magazine.  It was written by Richard Matheson, who also wrote this film's teleplay (screenplay).  Duel the movie focuses on a business commuter pursued and terrorized by a driver in a massive tanker truck.

Duel was originally a “Movie of the Week” that was broadcast on ABC November 20, 1971.  Duel was the first film directed by Steven Spielberg, and it is considered to be the film that marked young Spielberg as an up and coming film director.  Following its successful air on television, Universal had Spielberg shoot new scenes for Duel in order to extend it from its original length of 74 minutes for TV to 90 minutes for a theatrical release.  This extended version of Duel was released to theaters internationally and also received a limited release in the United States.  The theatrical version is the subject of this review.

Duel focuses on David Mann (Dennis Weaver), a middle-aged salesman.  One morning, he leaves his suburban home to drive across California on a business trip.  Along the way, he encounters a dilapidated tanker truck that is driving too slow for David.  He drives his car past the tanker, but a short while later, the tanker speeds up and roars past David's car.  After David passes the tanker again, the truck driver blasts his horn.  That sets off a cat and mouse game in which the tanker's seemingly malevolent driver pursues David's car and terrorizes him.  And nothing David does can help him to escape the pursuit.

I think that the mark of a great film director is his or her ability to get the most out of his or her cast and creatives and a maximum effort from the film crew.  Duel is a display of excellent work on the stunt performers and drivers.  Together with the camera crew, sound technicians, and film editor, they deliver a small screen film that offers a big cinematic duel between a small car and relentless tanker truck.

Dennis Weaver delivers a performance in multiple layers as David Mann.  Weaver makes Mann seem like a real businessman type, a cog-in-the-machine and ordinary fellow just trying to make it in the world.  Weaver does not seem to be acting so much as he is living and fighting for survival.

Behind all this is the young maestro, Steven Spielberg.  It is not often that TV movies get the cinematic treatment, but I imagine that the original production company, Universal Television, was quite pleased when they first saw this film.  It is genuinely thrilling and unsettling, and the truck driver (played by stuntman Carey Loftin), who is unseen except for his forearm and waving hand and his jeans and cowboy boots, can unnerve like the best horror film slasher killers.  The way that dilapidated tanker truck moves makes me think that it was a precursor to the shark in Jaws, which would become Spielberg's first blockbuster theatrical film just a few years (1975) after the release of Duel.

Richard Matheson's script for the film seems to want to make the viewer really wonder about the driver.  Is he evil... or a maniac... or demented prankster?  Why does he focus on David Mann?  Has he done this before?  What is his endgame with David?  Does he want to kill him or just punish him.  Does he want to torment David before he crushes him and his car beneath his tanker truck's wheels?

Steven Spielberg brings those questions to fearsome life on the small screen and later big screen.  He makes Duel work both by scaring us and David with the big bad truck and by fascinating us with all these questions concerning the trucker's motivations and David's fate.  Hindsight is just as accurate as foresight in the case of Duel.  Steven Spielberg was great, practically from the beginning.

7 of 10
A-
★★★½ out of 4 stars

Friday, August 12, 2022


NOTES:
1972 Primetime Emmy Awards:  1 win: “Outstanding Achievement in Film Sound Editing” (Jerry Christian, James Troutman, Ronald LaVine, Sid Lubowm Richard Raderman, Dale Johnston, Sam Caylor, John Stacy, and Jack Kirschner – sound editors); 1 nomination: “Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography for Entertainment Programming – For a Special or Feature Length Program Made for Television (Jack A. Marta)

1972 Golden Globes, USA:  1 nomination “Best Movie Made for TV”


The text is copyright © 2022 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this site or blog for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

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Review: "Dirty Harry" is a Famous Mediocre Film (Remembering Don Siegel)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 126 (of 2005) by Leroy Douresseaux

Dirty Harry (1971)
Running time: 102 minutes (1 hour, 42 minutes)
MPAA – R
PRODUCER/DIRECTOR: Don Siegel
WRITERS: Harry Julian Fink & R.M. Fink and Dean Reisner, from a story by Harry Julian Fink and R.M. Fink
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Bruce Surtees
EDITOR: Carl Pingitore
COMPOSER: Lalo Schifrin

DRAMA/CRIME/THRILLER

Starring: Clint Eastwood, Harry Guardino, Reni Santoni, John Vernon, Andy Robinson, John Larch, and John Mitchum

The subject of this movie review is Dirty Harry, a 1971 crime film from director Don Siegel. The film stars Clint Eastwood in what would become a signature role for him, that of San Francisco Police Department Inspector Harry Callahan A.K.A. “Dirty Harry.” Dirty Harry would yield four sequels, beginning with 1973’s Magnum Force. Writers Jo Heims contributed to the story and John Milius contributed to the screenplay, but respectively did not receive screen credits.

After a decade of political assassinations, the Vietnam War/conflict, social upheaval, rising crime rates, etc., perhaps America was ready for Dirty Harry, the police thriller starring Clint Eastwood in his seminal role as Inspector Harry Callahan, also known as “Dirty Harry.” Harry is a tough-talking, streetwise, pop-a-cap-first homicide detective who is a far-right wet dream. In this first film in the (thus far) five-part “Dirty Harry” series, Inspector Callahan must learn the identity of a rooftop sniper known as the Scorpio Killer (Andy Robinson), who has killed two people. Scorpio eventually buries a young woman alive and threatens to let her suffocate if the city of San Francisco doesn’t pay him a $200,000 ransom. Harry is determined to nail the killer – even if he has to break some police rules and violate some inconvenient Constitutional rights.

The film plays loosely and sloppily with police procedures and what are the rights of criminal suspects and the accused, doing what most films do – change real life facts for dramatic impact. The screenwriters (and for all I know the director and star) go to ludicrous extremes to show that murderers can get away with murder if an aggressive cop doesn’t get a warrant or read some criminal “his rights.” When Clint Eastwood says the word “rights,” it’s like he has fecal matter on his sneaky tongue. Less than a decade later, presidential candidate and later President Ronald Reagan (via his speechwriters and puppet masters) would play up the idea that criminals had more rights than victims to good effect, as the U.S. public just sits back and watches the country increasingly become a police state.

As for the film, it’s neither a good police procedural nor an effective right wing political screed simply because the script is garbage in spite of its good central concept. The characters (with such well-thought out monikers as The Mayor and The Chief) are wispy, and Harry, except for a few revealing moments, is little more than a cipher. In fact, it is Andy Robinson’s intense, passionate, and crazy performance as Scorpio that gives life to the cop/suspect dynamic. Eastwood handles his half of the cop/villain conflict with his signature acting style for this film – a snarl and half-whispered lines delivered through bad teeth – lines that usually end with the word “punk.” Don Siegel’s direction doesn’t help much; the first half of the film is a listless detective film, while the second half struggles drunkenly to be a good police thriller, which it occasionally is.

Although Eastwood’s best work as an actor is in westerns, a genre for which he seems tailor made, Dirty Harry is the role for which many film fans still fondly remember him. However, this first Dirty Harry film is little more than a cultural curiosity and a sign of its times. Except for a few moments that stand out as exceptional, Dirty Harry is a famous, but mediocre film.

4 of 10
C

NOTES:
2012 National Film Preservation Board, USA: National Film Registry

Review: "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" Has Great Songs (Happy B'day, Gene Wilder)

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 91 (of 2005) by Leroy Douresseaux

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)
Running time: 100 minutes (1 hour, 40 minutes)
DIRECTOR: Mel Stuart
WRITER: Roald Dahl (based upon his book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)
PRODUCERS: Stan Margulies and David L. Woper
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Arthur Ibbetson
EDITOR: David Saxon
Academy Award nominee

FANTASY/MUSICAL/FAMILY with elements of comedy

Starring: Gene Wilder, Jack Albertson, Peter Ostrum, Roy Kinnear, Julie Dawn Cole, Leonard Stone, Denise Nickerson, “Dodo” Nora Denney, Paris Themmen, Ursula Reit, Michael Bollner, Diana Sowle, and Aubrey Woods

The subject of this movie review is Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, a 1971 musical fantasy film starring Gene Wilder. The film is an adaptation of Roald Dahl’s 1964 novel, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Some of the late-author Roald Dahl’s works have been adapted to screen. Perhaps, the best known of these films is Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, taken from Dahl’s book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It’s a nice movie for children, and two things that certainly make the film worth watching are Gene Wilder (who received a “Best Motion Picture Actor – Musical/Comedy Golden Globe nomination for his performance) and the songs, which received an Oscar nomination for “Best Music, Scoring Adaptation and Original Song Score.”

In the film, the best candies in the world are the chocolate confections of the Wonka Chocolate Factory, owned by the mysterious and reclusive Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder). One day Wonka announces that five lucky candy buyers who find a golden ticket in their Willy Wonka candy bars will be able, with one guest each, to tour his factory. One of the hopefuls is Charlie Bucket (Peter Ostrum, in his only film role), a boy from an impoverished family. When he finds the last golden ticket, he takes his Grandpa Joe (Jack Albertson) as his guest on the factory tour. Of the five children who find the golden tickets, Willy Wonka has his eyes on Charlie, most of all.

The songs in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory are great, especially “The Candyman” (which became of a staple of Sammy Davis, Jr.’s stage show, although the filmmakers declined to allow Davis to play Bill, the candy store owner who first sings the song in the film) and also the Oompa Loompas theme. The sets look cheap (even for the early 70’s) and are only mildly imaginative in their design. Ultimately, this is a curiosity piece for adults, but a fun and fanciful flick for pre-teen children.

5 of 10
B-

Wednesday, June 8, 2005

NOTES:
1972 Academy Awards: 1 nomination: “Best Music, Scoring Adaptation and Original Song Score” (Leslie Bricusse, Anthony Newley, and Walter Scharf)

1972 Golden Globes, USA: 1 nomination: “Best Motion Picture Actor - Musical/Comedy” (Gene Wilder)

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Review: Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" Still Great 40 Years Later

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 145 (of 2005) by Leroy Douresseaux

A Clockwork Orange (1971)
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: UK
Running time: 136 minutes (2 hours, 16 minutes)
MPAA – R (original rating – X)
PRODUCER/DIRECTOR: Stanley Kubrick
WRITER: Stanley Kubrick (based upon the novel by Anthony Burgess)
CINEMATOGRAPHER: John Alcott
EDITOR: Bill Butler
Academy Award nominee

SCI-FI/DRAMA

Starring: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Sheila Raynor, Philip Stone, Adrienne Corri, Mariam Karlin, Michael Bates, Warren Clarke, James Marcus, Anthony Sharp, and Godfrey Quigley

The occasion upon which a film surpasses its source material both in terms of quality but in its points, ideas, and implications is indeed rare. That the late Stanley Kubrick’s (1928-1999) A Clockwork Orange is one of those occasions is so astounding because its source material, the novel by the late British novelist and critics, Anthony Burgess (1917-1993), A Clockwork Orange (1962), is itself an important work of fiction.

In a near future, gangs of amoral young boys roam the streets of England beating each other and searching out victims for robbery and rape. Alex de Large (Malcolm McDowell), a teddy-boy hooligan who wears a derby as part of his gang costume, stomps, whomps, steals, sings, and tap-dances while he violates others. A leader of a gang of droogs (his mates), Alex accidentally kills a woman at the beginning of a planned night of violent debauchery, and his droogs turn on him leaving him wounded for the police. While in prison, Alex volunteers for an experimental program that, through drugs and video shock therapy, brainwashes him to feel intense nausea and an urgent need to die, whenever he has ideas about sex and violence – an experiment which raises hard questions in a society rife with criminal violence and political corruption.

In A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick used vivid sets, music, words, and feelings to create a tour de force of pointed social satire. The innovative way of using light and flamboyant color cinematography to heighten the intensity of the violent scenes made A Clock Orange highly controversial when it was first released in 1971. Although the film is marked by good performances, one of them being particularly good, that of Malcolm McDowell as Alex, A Clockwork Orange is completely and totally Stanley Kubrick’s film. His presence, his touch, his demands, his direction, and his will bleed from the pores of every frame.

Kubrick also wrote a great script. Not only are particular words important, but also their placement and context within a given line of speech, how the actor delivers them and when determines the character, setting, and plot down to the smallest details. Words are as brilliantly, visually descriptive as the sets, lighting, and photography. What we hear in the words and how we hear and perceive them are as important as what we see.

The film may be the best English language satirical film ever made. A Clockwork Orange examines the family unit, crime and punishment, how governments often shape law enforcement so that it serves their interests rather than that of the public good, and examines free will among others things. Perhaps, the film saves its most pointed commentary for the struggle between the selfish individual unit and group unit that demands conformity. It’s a war of clumsy skirmishes and bloody battles, but there is no end to this conflict. There aren’t any answers, easy or otherwise. Because Kubrick tackled such ideas about society and individual freedom with such visual originality, A Clockwork Orange remains one of the great works in cinematic history.

10 of 10

NOTES:
1972 Academy Awards: 4 nominations: “Best Picture” (Stanley Kubrick), “Best Director” (Stanley Kubrick), “Best Film Editing” (Bill Butler), and “Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium” (Stanley Kubrick)

1973 BAFTA Awards: 7 nominations: “Best Art Direction” (John Barry), “Best Cinematography” (John Alcott), “Best Direction” (Stanley Kubrick), “Best Film,” “Best Film Editing” (Bill Butler), “Best Screenplay” (Stanley Kubrick), and “Best Sound Track” (Brian Blamey, John Jordan, and Bill Rowe)

1972 Golden Globes: 3 nominations: “Best Director - Motion Picture” (Stanley Kubrick), “Best Motion Picture – Drama,” and “Best Motion Picture Actor – Drama” (Malcolm McDowell)

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Review: A "Summer of '42" For All Seasons

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 78 (of 2010) by Leroy Douresseaux

Summer of ’42 (1971)
Running time: 104 minutes (1 hour, 44 minutes)
MPAA – R (later PG)
DIRECTOR: Robert Mulligan
WRITER: Herman Raucher
PRODUCER: Richard A. Roth
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Robert Surtees
EDITOR: Folmar Blangsted
COMPOSER: Michel Legrand
Academy Award winner

DRAMA

Starring: Jennifer O’Neill, Gary Grimes, Jerry Houser, Oliver Conant, Katherine Allentuck, Christopher Norris, and Lou Frizzell

Summer of ’42 is a coming-of-age drama released in 1971. An eventual Oscar-winner, the film is based on the memoirs of screenwriter, Herman Raucher, specifically the summer of 1942.

The film is set on Nantucket Island (off the coast of New England), where 15-year-old Hermie (Gary Grimes) is spending summer vacation with his parents. Joining Hermie on the island are his best friend, Oscy (Jerry Houser) and his second best friend, the introverted nerd Benjie (Oliver Conant) – the Terrible Trio. They spend a lot of time playing and hanging out on the beach, where one day they spot a young soldier carrying his new bride (Jennifer O’Neill) to a house on the beach. The boys are struck by the bride’s beauty, especially Hermie, who is unable to get her out of his mind.

The boys’ afternoons on the beach bring them into contact with scantily-clad girls, and their thoughts turn to sex. Oscy is obsessed with losing his virginity, and though Benjie is scared off by the idea of sex, Hermie and Oscy try to learn everything necessary to lose their virginity. Meanwhile, Hermie strikes up a friendship with the young bride after her husband leaves the island to return to military service. It is a relationship that will change his life.

Neither idealized nor romanticized, Summer of ’42 seems natural in its depiction of teens dealing both with the pangs of adolescence and the first stirrings of adulthood. Instead of being sentimental, Raucher’s script focuses on the details and moments through which the audience will understand the boys’ thoughts and feelings and perhaps recognize them as similar to their own experiences.

Director Robert Mulligan captures the nuances and subtleties of Raucher’s script, but also zeroes in on the youthful exuberance and rascally nature of his ostensible leads, Gary Grimes as Hermie and Jerry Houser as Oscy, which certainly further endears the characters to the audience. Both Grimes and Houser give pitch perfect performances, especially Grimes, who gives Hermie an impressive range of emotions. Grimes and Houser make the characters’ mixed-up emotions and ignorance about the facts of life seem both absolutely real and perfectly normal.

Summer of ’42 is a superb coming of age story that no one who enjoys stories about growing up should go without seeing. Even after four decades, this World War II era story seems authentic and timeless.

8 of 10
A

You can buy the Summer of '42 Blu-ray or novel at AMAZON.

NOTES:
1972 Academy Awards: 1 win: “Best Music, Original Dramatic Score” (Michel Legrand); 3 nominations: “Best Cinematography” (Robert Surtees), “Best Film Editing” (Folmar Blangsted), and “Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced” (Herman Raucher)

1972 BAFTA Awards: 1 win: “Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music” (Michel Legrand) and 1 nominations: “Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles” (Gary Grimes)

1972 Golden Globes: 4 nominations: “Best Motion Picture – Drama,” “Best Director - Motion Picture” (Robert Mulligan), “Best Original Score” (Michel Legrand), and “Most Promising Newcomer – Male” (Gary Grimes)

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

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Review: "THX 1138 Director's Cut" is a New Look at Early George Lucas

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 188 (of 2004) by Leroy Douresseaux

THX 1138 – The George Lucas Director’s Cut (2004)
Originally released as THX 1138 (1971)
Running time: 88 minutes
MPAA – R for some sexuality/nudity (Director’s Cut)
EDITOR/DIRECTOR: George Lucas
WRITERS: Walter Murch and George Lucas; from a story by George Lucas (based upon his screenplay for the short film)
PRODUCERS: Lawrence Sturhahn
CINEMATOGRAPHERS: Albert Kihn and David Meyers

SCI-FI

Starring: Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasence, Don Pedro Colley, and Maggie McOmie

THX 1138 was filmmaker George Lucas’s first feature length film, and he based it upon a short film he made while in film school, THX 1138:4EB. The film is set in a 25th-century totalitarian state that has stripped mankind of any individuality. People are numbered drones who are encouraged to work hard, be safe, watch out for their fellow workers, and consume. The state religion is a kind of therapy in which pre-recorded voices push mantras about “the masses.” There is a government-enforced program that uses sedating drugs to control the populace. The state is always watching people through cameras and monitors, and when a citizen opens his medicine cabinet, a voice suggests which drugs he should take. To not take drugs earns a citizen immediate notice and is a serious crime.

When the title character, THX 1138 (Robert Duvall), stops taking the mind-numbing drugs, he irrevocably changes his life. He has sex with his mate (who is more like a platonic roommate), LUH 3417 (Maggie McOmie), and sexual intercourse is a felony. After LUH 3417 is impregnated by their intercourse, the couple is throne in prison, and THX, his mind clear now that he is drug free, looks to escape the system.

THX 1138 was originally released in 1971, but in September of 2004, THX 1138 – The George Lucas Director’s Cut was re-released theatrically in a small number of cities (reportedly 20), and that re-release is the subject of this review. While some may consider the film’s look and the way it delivers it themes to be dated, the film is actually timeless. Political states ostensibly exist to protect the populace, but they do so mostly by controlling some or all aspects of citizens’ lives. An ideal situation is that the state interferes as little as possible, if at all, but the truth of that matter is that many states grow more controlling as they grow older, or if some disaster, man made or natural, causes so much havoc and destruction, that the state has to take total control to bring things back to some state of normalcy.

Lucas makes all of this feel real; the drama is palatable, and the fear of retribution from the state is a threat even the audience can feel. The threat of punishment from authority and the portrayal of an omnipresent society in which privacy is almost nonexistence is chilling. The film’s lone flaw, a serious one, is that it seems alternately too dry and too cold. The ideas behind the story, the production values, and the atmosphere are dead on, but the execution is often flat. The almost symbolic ending precariously straddles the fence of being appropriate or clumsy. Still, for lovers of that sci-fi sub-genre, dystopian futures, this is a good bet.

6 of 10
B

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