Blaculas, Voodoo and Hair Grease: a review of blaxploitation horror films on theGrio TV – TheGrio

Last week I binge watched theGrioTVsmarathon of blaxploitation Pam Grier moviesand realized that I know nothing about blaxploitation films and that Pam Grier was pretty amazing. This week, the trek down memory lane continues as theGrio TV had me review Blacula(1972),Scream Blacula Scream(1972),Sugar Hill(1974) and the truly disturbingJDs Revenge(1976).

Full disclosure, I know as much about Black horror films as I do about blaxploitation films in general, which is little to nothing, and most of what Ive seen I didnt like. However, if the purpose of a horror film is to scare you, shock you, disgust you and sometimes make you want to stop watching, then all four of these films succeeded but perhaps not in the way that any of them intended.

Blaxplotiation and horror films are a strange mash-up because arguably the two genres have different purposes. Blaxploitation films were all about centering Black love, action, pathos and showing Black folks with agency. Most horror films are about alackof agency: being stalked or assailed by some force beyond the characters control, not to mention that in most horror films, Black folks barely survive the opening credits let alone get centered in the story. Black Horror, like the Shudder Networks recent anthology seriesHorror Noire,is predicated on the ideathat Black people have a unique way of experiencing horror and powerlessness, so you cant just switch out a group of white teens for a group of Black teens running from some maniac with a chainsaw and get the same results.

So how do the four blaxploitation horror movies on theGrio TV fare in this tension between genres? The Blacula movies are mostly just a Black face on a white story and character, with a lot of bad make-up, chiseled cheek bones and cheap special effects.Sugar HillandJDs Revengeare totally Black stories that couldnt be told without Black folks in the 70s. Yet, JDs Revenge, the scarier and more memorable of the two, is more disturbing for its domestic horror and convoluted plot than the supernatural.

BlaculaandScream Blacula Screamare best viewed back to back not because youre going to miss some critical plot, but because you have to mentally prepare yourself for how ridiculous these movies are. If you stop, go to the fridge or check your laundry, you might start to wonder why youre subjecting yourself to three hours (both movies clock in at about 90 minutes) of dreck.

Blaculastarts in 1780 where Nigerian Prince Mamuwalde (played by William Marshall) decides to travel to Transylvania to seek Draculas help to end the transatlantic slave trade. Why would Dracula care about the slave trade? What would he even be able to do to stop it? Mamualdes plan makes about as much sense as Martin Luther King Jr. asking Magneto for help with Civil Rights, or Nelson Mandela asking Darth Vader to stop apartheid. If you need a superpowered villain to fight your battles, shouldnt you pick someone who can show up at a daytime rally?

Turns out, not only will he not help Mamuwalde, but Dracula is a racist and habitual line stepper, first offering to buy Mamuwaldes wife Luva (Vonetta McGee) as a sex toy and then turning the Nigerian prince into Blacula and trapping him in a coffin for 200 years. When Blacula wakes up in the 70s, he kills a bunch of people, falls in love with a woman who he thinks is the reincarnated version of his wife Luva and does a horrible job of hiding the fact that hes 200 years old. When his plans for true love go awry, Blacula decides to take a sun bath and burns to a crisp.

InScream, Blacula Scream, hes brought back to life by a really problematic andracist depiction of Voodoo, creates a vampire army (apparently the clearest sign that youre a vampire is ashy skin and more pronounced cheekbones) and tries to force a totally underused Pam Grier, who plays a voodoo priestess, to cure his vampirism. Again Blaculas best laid plans dont work out and he dies. Again. Sort of. But, the movie ending is clearly a set up for a trilogy.

I was fairly familiar with the Blaculaconceptbefore watching these movies because its been spoofed for decades. The Simpsons has a scene called Blacula Meets Black Dracula, Jefferson Twilight from the Venture Brothers wasa Blacula hunter, and evenSNL has done skits about it.

In fact, while we know that TChalla the Black Panther was createdbeforethe Black Panther Party, Blade, the Marvel vampire hunter, was created a whole year after Blacula and the blaxploitation era was clearly an inspiration for the character. Even the notion of vampirism being associated with slavery in comic books likeHarriet Tubman Vampire Demon Slayerand Rodney Barnes fantastic seriesKilladelphia (seriously go check it out), was likely influenced by Blacula. Are these two movies good? Theyre good in that same way that your Grandmas greasy, cholesterol filled collard greens with bacon are still tasty even though your kale-eating, gluten-free self knows better.

Sugar HillandJDs Revengeare completely different kinds of horror films. Theyre more steeped in a cultural and problematic vision of Blackness. Sugar Hill is basically what would happen if Michonne fromthe Walking DeadusedDr. Facilier from the Princess and the Frogto create a zombie army in order to get revenge on some white people. Its a skippable film. JDs Revengeis another beast entirely.

Out of context, the scene above from JDs Revenge is almost funny: the horrible dialogue, the Anchorman level sexism, and a knife fight so unbelievably bloody that Im sure every ketchup packet available was used. ButJDs Revengeis not a funny film at all. Its cruel and disturbing and dark.

A young Glenn Turman (Colonel Bradford in A Different World, or Marty Kaans Dad in House of Lies) plays Isacc Hendrix, a cab driving college student with a wonderful live-in girlfriend, Christella (Joan Pringle). After a party trick gone wrong, Isaac is possessed by the spirit of 1940s gangster JD Walker who slowly takes over Hendrixs life in order to get revenge on a local popular preacher, Reverend Elijah and his brother Theotis. The brothers are semi-reformed gangsters. Elijah became a man of the cloth while Theotis continued their criminal empire. Both men are responsible for the death of JD and his sister some 30 years earlier. At first glance,JDs Revengefeels like a horror film similar toGet Outor the recentCandymanreboot, where the scares come from watching a man lose control over his own body. Thurmans transformation from nice college student to sadistic criminal is some of the best acting Ive seen in a blaxploitation film.

The problem is, even though JD has a legitimate beef with the Bliss brothers, once he possesses Isacc he spends most of his time torturing women for no reason. While possessed by JD, Isaac brutally beats and rapes his girlfriend multiple times. And this isnt implied violence every sick and violent act is shown. As bad as those scenes are, watching Isaac try to woo her back because he cant remember anything he does when JD takes over plays out like a grotesque cycle of domestic abuse. And did I mention that Isacc as JD has sex with his own niece? And that at the end of the movie, Isaccs rampage of rape and violence is forgiven because everyone, from the cops to his girlfriend, finally believes that that he was possessed by a hustler from the 1940s whos finally left his body? Yeah, this movie is a mess.

Credit theGrio TV with its bold counterprogramming this weekend. Most people would probably rather curl up with a formulaic Lifetime Christmas Rom-Com than a 4-hour marathon of violence, Voodoo, rape, and gunplay interspliced with the casual use of slurs like nig**r and fa**ot, but maybe people are just built different. If youre up for a night of blaxploitation and all that comes with it, and are looking for a horrifyingly deadly night instead of a Christmas-y one, then these four movies are the prefect way to spend an evening.

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Blaculas, Voodoo and Hair Grease: a review of blaxploitation horror films on theGrio TV - TheGrio