The Unseen #23: Black Mama White Mama

Why’d I Buy It?: It’s a Roger Corman Women in Prison movie, written by Demme, shot in The Phillipines (AKA the place you go when you don’t have enough money or dignity to make a movie in America) starring Pam Grier and Sid Haig in what basically amounts to the sleaziest possible remake of The Defiant Ones.

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: I just recently picked this up at a closing Hollywood Video, so in all fairness I watched this basically ASAP.

How was it?: This is one filthy fucking movie.



Things start out rapidly with Grier and White Mama being shipped to a Phillepino prison. The movie doesn’t waste any time jumping straight to a shower scene. Then ups the ante by having a lesbian guard masturbate while she watches them.

Yeah its that kind of movie.

Anyway the Lesbian guard has Grier brought to her quarters, with none of the staff minding because apparently you’re allowed to do that (Its not even like she’s the warden). Grier isn’t down with this turkey’s jive, so the guard starts smacking her around with a leather glove shrieking orgasmicaly.

Yeah its that kind of movie.

Somehow this leads to a rivalry between Grier and White Mama and its not long before their tearing out their clothes and getting disciplined by being sent to the box. Where they’re stripped and forced to writhe their sweaty naked…

Like I said, its that kind of movie.

Anyway, it turns out White Mama belongs to a revolutionary group (Because it’s the seventies) and the prison, apparently vested with the authority to do its own counter terrorism missions decides to use the Mama’s as bait to draw out the revolutionaries. Which they do. Resulting in a massacre which leaves virtually all the prison guards dead and the audience wondering if perhaps this could not have been planned out better.

But the actually cops and army show up driving off the revolutionaries, and leaving the Mama’s to escape and cross miles of harsh terrain. Which they do with style.

THIS IS THE FIRST TEN MINUTES OF THE MOVIE. I haven’t even gotten to the part where they start beating up Nuns yet.

So everyone is after the Mama’s including Sid Haig. Haig is in proto Captain Spaulding mode, as a foul mouthed CW obsessed gangster who loves fucking around with cops and double teaming his business partner’s fair daughters, almost as much as he loves chasing Pam Grier. All whilst rocking a handlebar mustache and hanging with Doberman Pinchers. I kind of fucking love him in this movie.



The film is Skeevy to the point of actually being skuzzy. You might feel the need to take a shower afterwards, but you won’t hate yourself in the morning. Everything from its bizarre grim ending, wall to wall nudity and violence, and righteousness of Pam Grier seem teleported in from another dimension where everything is awesome.

Black Mama White Mama is everything you could ever want from an exploitation film. Copious amounts of violence and nudity, a bevy of jaw dropping “I can’t believe I just saw that in a film that’s not snuff” moments, all topped with a fuck it attitude towards convention that is genuinely invigorating.

Jackie Brown

(If you happen to be in SLO come out and watch some Jackie Brown at The Palm tonight)

Watching Jackie Brown today is like watching a film from the filmmaker Tarantino could have become. While I feel using the term maturation does disservice to the movie’s Tarantino has made since then, all of which I love (yes even Death Proof) there is no denying that Jackie Brown is a very adult work, while Tarantino’s other films are fueled by a more anarchic adolescent sensibility. It’s a peek down the road not taken.

Which isn’t to say that there’s not a whole lot of Tarantino’s trademark irreverent humor, intextuality (“Killer had a Forty Five THEY want a Forty Five.”) deliciously rich dialogue and key little moments (“Is this the Delfonics?). But it all feels different somehow, like a seventies crime film, something like The Friends Of Eddie Coyle or Charley Varrick. Low key, grungy and very human.


Of course part of that has to do with the fact that Jackie Brown is based off of one of Elmore Leonard’s, the king of Seventies Crime Fiction, Novel’s. The other part of it has to do with the fact that half of Tarantino’s excellent cast could have stared in any of those seventies films. Robert Forester, Pam Grier, and Robert De Niro (Maybe the last cinematic evidence of him giving a fuck, this or Ronin I go back and forth) all do amazing work. Particularly Forester in an understated, somehow heartbroken performance. Forester isn’t any kind of badass. He’s just a guy who knows how to handle himself. He uses his competency like an armor, but somehow remains endearingly vulnerable. He’s just such a hangdog you can’t help but feel for him.

The movie of course belongs to Grier. Who brings to Brown a sense of compelling sadness and weary, along with her trademark sexiness and cool. There’s a real sense of soul to Jackie. She’s someone whose missed a lot of chances in her life and senses this might be her last one. Even getting killed is preferable to missing another shot.

The rest of the cast is fantastic as well. Samuel Jackson, is fantastic as Ordell, a sentient ball of jovial malevolence. The pleasure that Jackson gets from the role and the pleasure Ordell gets from himself are inseparable. And when he starts to really lose his shit as the film goes on, he becomes a genuinely menacing figure.

The rest of the cast is great too. Particularly Bridget Fonda as an aging Sex Kitten, and Michael Keaton as a DEA cop. Hell even Chris Tucker Rises to the level of tolerable.

The plot of Jackie Brown is purposefully low stakes. A couple hundred thousand up for grab after a misplaced baggie of Cocaine gives the police leverage over the titular character, a low level runner for the weapon’s dealer Ordell Robbie. Ordell uses the services of Bondsman Max Cherry to get the witnesses against him sprung from the police, then executes them. Together Cherry and Brown devise a plan to rip off both the Feds and Ordell. People start to lose their shit, people start to die.

Tarantino shoots the whole thing in a natural sunny California bright light. Jackie Brown doesn’t look like a crime film. Even De Palma’s Scarface had more scenes shot in the shadows then this. There’s none of the mad plotting of Tarantino’s other films. It’s as he describes it, a hang out movie, kind of like a crime movie directed by Richard Linklater. Except you know not terrible like The Newton Boys was.

Jackie Brown may be a divergence but it is by no means minor. Simply put there are very few films so purely pleasurable to watch.