Sunday, March 29, 2009

Slaughter Times Two


I loved the so-called blaxploitation films of the seventies when they were in vogue. At the top of this cultural phenomena were three iconoclastic or iconic works by Black directors in 1971 and 72: Sweet Sweetback's Baddass Song, Shaft,and Superfly. There are elements in each of these that were appropriated in a series of films targetting black audiences by both low rent studios like American International that were quick to turn around films and larger studios who looked at the large urban audiences opened up by these films as a means to continue to stay in business.

These films featured were tougher than tough action heroes, lots of sex and skin, the world of pimp and drugs, racist, immoral and inept white gangsters and cops, and if good fortune would have it a chart making soundtrack album by a popular soul artist. Nearly forty years later, they are cultural time capsules with a fair amount of entertainment value.

A couple years back I indulged in a Fred Williamson double feature of Black Caesar and its sequel Hell Up in Harlem. Thanks to Comcast On Demand, I recently got to watch another athlete who went to the movies Jim Brown in his turn at the box office during this trend in two American International Films: Slaughter and Slaughter's Big Rip-Off. Hell, I can't always be watching Criterion subtitled films.

Both Slaughter films are about Jim Brown being a bad ass ex-Green Beret with a mission of revenge. In Slaughter from 1972, the year after he avenges the murder of his parents at the bequest of some treasury agents. For some reason they end up in Mexico where they encounter the lamest bunch of bad haircut syndicate gangsters and Stella Stevens. Stevens, no longer a playmate and rat pack counterpart, is featured in several nude scenes with the former number 32 for the Cleveland Browns. Slaughter is basically a pretty sloppy gangster film but there is a kind of shaggy quality about it that makes it sort of fun.

Then there is Slaughter's Big Rip-off which followed a year later set in LA. There is still gangster revenge plot, but this time the king pin is Ed McMahon with his hair parted in the big silver framed eye glasses and a psychotic hit man who would be at home in the Dirty Harry movies whose first hit was an underwater strangulation with a beach ball.

Rip-off also features a lot more urban trappings: pimps, coke, and a black cop played by a very skinny Brock Peters who is definitely above board. They hired James Brown to do the soundtrack this time out and there are some tasty grooves going on in some of the sequences. There are a few cool oh shit moments, but Rip-off with its high body count and much more choreographed fight sequences doesn't have the same kind of raggedy ass charm as the first. Sometimes a bit of polish reveals how then the substance truly is.

But still...you can imagine the tinny speaker on the window of the car during the final shoot out inform you that the snack bar is closing in five minutes. Or towards the end of the movie you wonder how you are going to clean the generations of sticky soda from the soles of your shoes. In conclusion, I say appreciation of cultural artifacts of another time is not a bad way to spend part of one's spring break.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:12 PM
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