"The Mack"(1973)d/Michael Campus

Long before the advent of blaxploitation films or Wings Hauser, pimpin' remained as difficult as it had ever been, with hookers' general inability to get a hustler's money straight, resulting in many of these fancy trick bitches coming down with an acute case of foot-up-yo'-ass disease and rightfully GODdamned so, if I may be so bold.In 1973, a player's dilemma was finally committed to celluloid in the form of tonight's review, a surprisingly effective film that transcends the sub-genre limitations in sporadic instances, making it highly watchable for both exploitation fanatics and general film buffs alike.'Intense' and 'passionate' aren't usually commonplace words when describing B-movies about small-time crooks in Oakland, but you'll hear those and others tossed around a lot when Mack comes up in cinema convo, due in part to a potent supporting cast made up of comedic great, Richard Pryor, genre vet Carol Speed, Roger E. Mosley of 'Magnum P.I.' fame, B-movie staples, Juanita Moore and Don Gordon, as well as a smattering of real-life pimps and hustlers like Frank Ward, who was gunned down shortly before the film's release.Of course, the spotlight here is on Max Julien, who gives a tour de force performance as Goldie, mixing sleaze with sympathy in creating one of the most compelling characters in cult cinema history while inspiring future directors like Oliver Stone and entire generations of hip hop artists to follow, and even helping design some of the outrageous threads worn in the movie.The final draft of the script was also written by Julien, Pryor, and Campus, though screenwriter Robert Poole allegedly wrote the first treatment on toilet paper while in prison(!).Tonight's review goes out to reader Floyd, who's seen just about every blaxploitation flick ever made, and whose own pimp cape has stayed wrinkle-free as long as I've known him.Dig it, baby...

Pimpin' Hint # 7:Avoid crooked honky cops at all times.
After finding himself suspended upside down in a car wreck looking up at two mocking cops(Don Gordon, William Watson) when a botched drug deal turns into a fire fight, Goldie(Max Julien) is given a five year bed at the state pen, where he damned near goes stir crazy.Having served his sentence, he finds himself on a charter bus back to Oakland where he reconnects in a billiard hall with street guru, Blind Man(Paul Harris), who helps him to get back on his feet by introducing him to the mackin' game, convinced that Goldie could potentially be the coldest pimp there ever was.Goldie meets childhood sweetheart, Lulu(Carol Speed), at a nightclub where she admits to having become a prostitute in the years since, beseeching him to become her pimp.After leaving the bar, he's leaned on again by the same two badged bigots from earlier, there to remind him they plan on remaining a thorn in his side.He then tells Mama(Juanita Brown) that he's gotta face the man the only way he knows how, the nefarious and illegal exploitation of women for money, vowing to move her out of the ghetto once he's amassed the ends to get it done.He meets up with his brother, Olinga(Roger E. Mosley), who's since become a black nationalist that pulls drug addicts off the street and rehabilitates them into soldiers for the cause, but spares him the news of his forthcoming new business venture.Goldie listens to pimp braggadocio at the barber shop to strengthen his own game, which he lays on Lulu, who becomes his bottom bitch, with partner-in-crime, Slim(Richard Pryor) along for the ride.Cue: funky montage of Goldie rolling in long dollars as he gathers his eclectic stable of money hos, that includes Chico(Kai Hernandez) and Diane(Sandra Brown), while moving his mother into a new place and doling out cash to kids on the street for going to school.We then see Goldie congregate his bitches into a local planetarium, where he laughingly indoctrinates their minds in the ways of gash fo' cash with projected views of space and a microphone with echo.A sweet mack, indeed.

Big Pimpin'.It's the toughest job you'll ever love.
Once Goldie's rolling in a pimped out '71 Eldo and rocking a matching brown velour derby and pimp cape to boot, he's instantly set upon by the street's bottom feeders; The Fat Man(George Murdock), a white heroin kingpin Goldie once worked for that's been losing addicts to his brother's racial rhetoric, Hank and Jed, the two corrupt cops with a hard on for Goldie, who murder a black detective that uncovers their shady side deals, rival Pretty Tony, when his apex hooker jumps ship to Goldie's stable in front of all the hustlers(Goldie memorably remarks:"We can handle this like you got some class, or we can get into some gangsta shit."), and even Olinga, who righteously denounces his brother's gaudy lifestyle.What's a hustler to do, except attend the Player's Ball where he rejects another work offer from the Fat Man before being awarded "Pimp of the Year" by his ridiculously garbed peers.It isn't long before the streets of Oakland are littered with overdosed hos, executed mothers, and whacked main men, so naturally, Goldie responds with repeated cane-sword-ass-stabbin', dynamite teethin', cop headshots(while Olinga C.T.F.O.'s the partner), and overdosed syringe retribution on all the cats what's done him wrong, culminating in a touching bus station farewell from his brother, when he's forced to split town due to the incredible amount of heat he's just brought down upon himself.Cue the funk, baby.

Pimpin' Hint # 43:Use a planetarium light show to effectively blow your bitches' minds.
Besides playing L.S.D.-soaked Elwood in Wop fave Psych-Out(1967), Julien can be seen in Ted V. Mikels' The Black Klansman(1966) and The Mod Squad tv series.He also wrote Cleopatra Jones(1975), for then-girlfriend, Vonetta McGee, though Tamara Dobson ended up winning the role.His long-time friend, Richard Pryor, was frowned upon by the film's producers for his legendary behavior on the set of 1968's Wild in the Streets, where he took a piss on Shelley Winters(!!).Director Campus, who helmed the minor sci-fi movie Z.P.G.(Zero Population Growth) in 1972, claims Pryor rarely showed up straight on the set, if at all.Mosley's Olinga character was based on Black Panthers Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, both of which were real-life friends of Julien's.Apart from his long run opposite Tom Selleck, Mosley would appear on television shows like Night Gallery, Starsky and Hutch, Kojak, and The Love Boat.Ms. Speed, would score acting credits in blaxploitation fare like Jack Hill's The Big Bird Cage(1972), Savage!(1973), Dynamite Brothers, Abby, and Disco Godfather(all 1974).On the scale, Mack rates a pimpadocious three Wops, as a top rate genre flick, probably the best of it's kind, were it not for a director named Van Peebles and a film project he'd completed in 1970, but that's another movie, another entry, baby.Highly recommended.

Real hustlers aren't afraid to rock a mink bowtie to the Player's Ball.

"Abby"(1974)d/William Girdler

Our main course this evening, a delightfully rotten and rare blaxploitative Exorcist rip-off from the man responsible for The Manitou(1979) and Day of the Animals(1977), the late William Girdler.Served upon a gilded platter for your unwavering approval then, a golden turd known as Abby, the only Exorcist clone to ever be pulled from the theaters, after AIP maven Sam Arkoff caved to pressure from a Warner Brothers lawsuit, even after a similar suit against Film Ventures' Beyond the Door(1974) proved ineffective.As a result, Abby plummetted from a profitable first theatrical run to an urban legend of sorts, rarely seen but often discussed.Luckily for proponents of such fare, the movie finally turned up as half of a budget double feature dvd with Magdalena(1974), yet another Exorcist rip-off, from a company called Music Video Distribution in 2007.Granted, the print stinks, but then that's a vast improvement over the shoddy eye-straining, tenth generation, ghostly VHS-ripped bootlegs that had floated around for ages beforehand.Girdler might have had himself an original horror movie on his hands had he chosen to explore the possibilities of the actual Nigerian Yoruba religion, or its trickster deity, Èsù, but he went for the quick, exploitative buck instead, as was par for the course of his entire filmography.Lovers of inept schlock can rejoice over his hasty decision to copy Friedkin's hit, as his total failure on every level is often unintentionally hilarious stuff, making for a pretty good time for anybody interested in watching it.Like trying to reproduce the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with a chunk of drywall and a paintball gun...

Who's a black archaeologiss wiff a pith helmet dat juss don' miss?Garnet Williams(William Marshall)!Can you dig it?
We meet Dr. Williams(William Marshall) as he's rappin' with his students in a park about an upcoming trip to Nigeria, and learn through badly delivered dialogue that some of his students have been grooving on the Yoruba religion of that region themselves, recently.To compliment his doctorate and his PhD(!), the funky world-travellin' humanitarian/archaeologist receives a going away present from the group:a hulking silver cross necklace that's just outta sight,baby.Cut to a Nigerian cave where Williams-in-pith helmet discovers a hollow ebony vessel decorated with carvings of the deity Eshu, which the doctor recognizes by "hair in the shape of a cock's comb" and the "erect penis"(!!).He unwittingly opens it, unleashing the contents upon he and his hapless colleagues, when a vengeful wind machine throws them around the cave amidst a frame-flash of a nappy headed, green latex grillpiece, all sneering away an' sheeeit.Meanwhile, Dr. Williams' son Emmitt(Terry Carter),a minister,and his wife, Abby(Carol Speed) are moving into their new home, bequeathed to his church, with the help of Mama(Juanita Moore), her brother Cass(Austin Stoker), a detective, and Emmitt's deacon, who's a dead ringer for Urkel from 'Family Matters'.Through lots of God-inspired banter, we learn Abby is a certified marriage counselor, on top of being involved in a youth program, and junior choir work.Hurry up and possess this bitch, Eshu, before I toss my cookies.A cold wind blows through that night, shaking the furniture and slamming doors.The next morning, Abby's shower takes on added sexual dimensions, as we see her shadow enveloped by a massive phantasmal apparition.The entity toys with her in the laundry room, and again while she and her mother prepare some chicken(It's Kentucky, what did you expect?) for a social function at the church.The bloody poultry suddenly turns her on(!!!), and she's soon writhing about, flicking her tongue around and slashing her own arm with the knife.

I'll give you a few moments to fully drink this screenshot in...
Emmitt takes notice of Abby's behavior, when, clad in a towel and trying to initiate some in-out with his spouse, a gruff unfamiliar voice tells him that she isn't his ho, and then she pulverizes his junk with a well-placed kick, bouncing on the bed and laughing as he writhes in pain on the floor.During a pre-marital counselling session, she's overcome again by the demon, tearing open her dress in front of the uninterested-looking couple, and exclaiming, "I’m gonna take ol’ long George upstairs and fuck the shit outta him!”, and when Emmitt drags her upstairs(“My God, Abby! Whatever possessed you to do a thing like that?!!?”,he says with a straight face), she tosses him on the bed, slapping the piss out of him and laughing maniacally, before raping him off-camera.After Abby is hospitalized for testing(you know, the same ones Linda Blair had to undergo a year earlier), Dr. Williams returns from Nigeria, causing the young woman to break out of the hospital, bitchslapping anyone who gets in her way("I'm goin' home, bitch!" she exclaims, as she throttles a nurse).After throwing Emmitt and his dad into the walls at the homestead, Abby takes her husband's car and drives downtown, looking to score some real action.The minister runs out into the road and carjacks an older white woman(!), which the detective Cass somehow sweeps under the rug.Abby sataically seduces some soulless homeboys at a disco(and a white guy whose A game consists of W.C. Fields impersonations...seriously), as evidenced by Emmitt's car rocking rhythymically with smoke billowing out of the windows when the preacher and cop finally locate her, and Dr. Williams preparing for the inevitable exorcism right there at the discotheque(!!).Garnet's giant silver cross causes the woman to flee in slo-mo across the dance floor, dripping white foam, levitating, and sprouting furry eyebrows.Williams notes that she is possessed by a minor deity impersonating Eshu, and throws on a daishiki, mixing christianity with Yoruba to cast out the demon, ultimately causing the disco ball to explode(!!!) as her body is freed and the demon is trapped inside the wooden vessel.Abby and Emmitt embrace, despite the fact she's forgotten to take her possession eyebrows off.We then see the couple leaving on vacation, apparently free of criminal charges for the murders Abby committed earlier in the film(not to mention the priest's carjack).Nice.

"I’m not your ho! Shit, you ain’t got enough to satisfy me!” jeers a possessed Abby(Carol Speed).
Marshall will be best remembered by genre fans for his participation in Blacula(1972)and its sequel, Scream, Blacula, Scream!(1973).Girdler followed this one up with Asylum of Satan(1974),and his second foray into blaxploitation, 'Sheba, Baby'(1975), starring Pam Grier(generally believed to be her worst effort of the era, well done, Billy!).Though Abby only scores one wop on the ratings scale due to its clearly visible ineptitude, it's never boring, and there are a lot of laughs to be had should you choose to check this one out for yourselves.Worth a look.

Nigerian sex demon or Lou Ferrigno after a night of base-piping. You decide, baby.

"Disco Godfather"(1979)d/J. Robert Wagoner

Alright you no business, born insecure, junkyard rat soup eatin' muthafuckas, it's been a while since we've taken five on the black hand side of cult films, and really, who better to examine than Rudy Ray Moore, the late King of Party Records?If you've never seen one of his movies, you're in for a Rudy awakening.Tonight we'll examine what I consider to be his funniest(unintentionally in some scenes, as always), most outrageous vehicles in his ghetto oeuvre of low budget action comedies.In his flicks, you can always count on Moore to sport some atrociously dated threads, tacky enough to make a 70's pimp blush, horribly amateurish delivery of outrageous dialogue, visibly obvious stunt doubles, and enough hammy lens-mugging to send the portly William Shatner lumbering for his attorney.In other words, a helluva good time to be had by all!
Tonight's review is a cautionary tale concerning the dangers of smoking PCP-dipped sherms, which according to director Wagoner, will cause users to somehow experience the same hallucinations(I've done angel dust a couple of times in my formative years, and not once was I shot multiple times by black dudes in basketball uniforms or machete-slashed by an interpretive dancer in witch makeup...maybe it's a black thing,huh).Added to the cast of Moore usuals this time around is a hasty cameo by Carol Speed of "Abby" fame, who flubs most of her lines like a trooper here.Let's get to it, fellas.Put yo' weight on it!

Tucker(Rudy Ray Moore) puts his WEEEEIIIIGHT on it.
After Tucker Williams(Rudy Ray Moore) retires from the police force, he takes up residence at the Blueberry Hill discotheque as the "Disco Godfather"(logical next career move), where he mixes n' matches old rejected Star Trek costumes with gaudy jewelry and silver platform loafers and screams for local boogiers to put their weight on it, until his nephew Bucky gets caught up with a devastating new drug on the streets...angel dust.The young man stumbles into the disco,disrupting those getting down and hallucinating that he's playing basketball until his uncle gets wind of it and dramatically asks him,"BUCKY!What has you HAD!"The next morning, Tucker visits the local PCP unit, where a doctor(Jerry Jones) shows him the permanent damage smoking wack-dipped sherms has on a brother's brain, man.One woman served her four month old baby to her family on a silver platter, claiming her ham was crying and messing up her party(!).They visit Bucky in the hospital, while he's imagining a witchy woman lopping off his forearm with a machete, and the mother(Lady Reed) of one dusted girl is told they'll be introducing electroshock therapy as treatment."Oh no! Ain't nobody shockin' mah baby!"Tucker then pays the police a visit and tells the suckup detectives of his plans to rid the streets of the killer drug.Tucker's assistant, Noel(Carol Speed), then tells a reporter, "As you can see, to be a member of the disco squad of the Godfather's, you have to get funky and get down.(!)"Tucker then shows up and turns the interview to the subject of angel dust, which leaves her vowing to post the scoop on the front page.Imagine that, a nightclub owner that's anti-PCP.He's then jumped in his office by henchmen of Stinger Ray(James H. Hawthorne), the despicable afro-headed son of a bitch that's behind the wack attack.Cue the embarrassingly dated roller disco sequence at the club.

"Names! NAMES! I want names, you stupid son of a bitch!"
At a public "Attack the Wack" rally organized by Angels against Dust, Noel tells the crowd, "we wanna wack the attack!".Eh, close enough, honey.Undercover detectives foil an attempt on Tucker's life at the disco by Stinger's thugs, and afterwards the Godfather crashes a player's ball at Meat's pad, dumping an lp cover worth of nose candy on the floor to emphasize his seriousness.Then someone interrupts Tucker's lovemaking session with a dead, gutted cat nailed to his front door.After a raid turns up zero shermans, a pow wow with Lt. Hayes(Frank Finn) reveals a leak on the force.Bucky's homeboy, a street level sherm dealer, spills to Tucker that Stinger paid him five bills to turn the aspiring young disco dancer/basketball star on to angel dust.Detective Killroy(!) turns out to be the leak, and he dices himself up with a butcher knife in the bathtub to the horror of his white girlfriend.Not satisfied to wait for the arrest warrant, Tucker infiltrates the PCP factory his doggone self(in a green and yellow jogging suit,stocking cap, and canvas hi-top Converse sneakers, naturally), and with the help of a passing martial arts expert/jogger(!!)(Howard Jackson), he dispatches the sons of bitches guarding the operation.While Bucky and the cops are rushing to the rescue and Stinger Ray is destroying evidence, Tucker finds himself hogtied with a gas mask full o' wack on his grill.Whacked out on dust, he breaks lose, hallucinating the same damned things everyone else who's messed with the drug has.He stumbles upon Stinger making a hasty retreat, and in the throes of a mind-blowing trip(dig the crazy ambitious black light-ish animation here, kids!), he chokes the criminal out as the cops make the scene.The lawmen try to subdue the Godfather, who's having trouble discerning reality from his hallucinations, as he screams us right into the end credits.

Boy, coke parties are a lot different in the ghetto...
Moore would enjoy a career rebirth in the nineties, doing voice work for video games, cameos in rap videos, and successful convention appearances right until his death at age 81 in 2008.He would follow Godfather with a small cameo in Jamaa Fanaka's Penitentiary II in 1982.The doe-eyed Speed who made a name for herself in blaxploitation classics like Black Samson(1974),The Mack(1973), and the aforementioned Girdler ethno-exorcist clone, Abby(1974), would sadly drop off the radar completely after this role.Also notable is an uncredited cameo by Keith David, of The Thing(1982) and They Live(1988),as a disco patron.Though his movies are laughably inept from a technical standpoint, you can't help but think that Moore had a lot of love for his people and community, as is evident here, and that's something all of us should be cool with.Godfather puts its weight on the rating scale, and scores itself a solid two wops.The disc is available through Xenon Video, so dig it, man!

"Angel duss factory?Well let's kick ass then!" "I can dig it!"