Ourweekly columnStaff Pickstakes you back to a time when video stores reigned supreme andthe "Staff Picks" section was the placetofind outwhat films were worthy of one's time.Of course, our version ofStaff Pickshas a decidedly skintillating angle, as we suss out the films from a particular subgenre are the best to find great nudity. This week, we dig into the collision of two of our favorite genres to create that glorious subgenre known as Blaxploitation Horror Cinema!
While Blaxploitation didn't really explode until the 1970s,the genre dates all the way back to the 1930s when films first began targeting the African American market. Most examplesfrom the early days of the genreare either despicably racist in their pandering attempts to connect withthe market or have been lost to the sands of time. Melvin Van Peebles was really the first filmmaker to reclaim the subgenre for the African American community by producing low-budget films with anti-establishment and, more crucially, anti-caucasian sentiments. His1971 flick Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song is the generally acceptedstart of the modern wave of Blaxploitation films, which were typically action-oriented films about bad ass black dudes sticking it to the man.
As is natural within any movement in film, it soon expands to encompass other genres and thusly create its own subgenre. Beginning with William Crane's 1972 gothic Blaxploitation horror flick Blacula, the Blaxploitation Horror subgenre was born, soon expanding to other classic monstersand well-worn genre tropes. There were the mad scientist flicks like The Thing with Two Heads, Blackenstein, Dr. Black and Mr. White, and The Watts Monster, as well as the werewolf picture The Beast Within, ariff on The Exorcist titled Abby, and eventually the haunted house movies like The House on Skull Mountain.
It's a surprisingly robust subgenre, though it seems that over time, only the heavy hitters like Blacula and Blackenstein have entered the pop culture lexicon. If we're being honest here, fans of Blaxploitation cinema as a whole will find that there really aren't any outright terrible examples within the Blaxploitation Horror subgenre. The low production values and overall aesthetic are part of the charm in Blaxploitation cinema, so while many of these aren't objectively "good" movies, they're all a solid watch so long as you know what you're signing up for.
Other essential examples of the subgenre which either have no nudity or for which we don't have content includeWilliam Crane’s Blacula, Scream Blacula Scream, and Dr. Black and Mr. White, William Girdler’s Abby, Paul Manslansky’s Sugar Hill, Cliff Roquemore’s Petey Wheatstraw, Chester Turner’s Black Devil Doll from Hell, James Bond III’s Def by Temptation, Rusty Cundief’s Tales From the Hood, and Ernest Dickerson’s Bones. Now we turn our focus back to the beginning of modern Blaxploitation cinema to find our first sterling example of Blaxploitation horror...
Ganja and Hess (1973)
While many of the best examples of the subgenre lean heavily on comedy, 1972's Ganja Hess—aka Blood Couple—is one of the few films that take its premise seriously in the same way caucasian-based horror takes itself seriously.Like Rudy Ray Moore would do two years later, the production company approached a serious playwright and director (William Gunn) to craft a horror movie for the black community. Gunn didn't like the idea of doing a "black vampire" movie, but decided to use vampirism as a metaphor for the rampant addiction issues he saw in the inner city.
Duane Jones—who made a big cultural splash five years earlier with a starring role in George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead—plays anthropologist Dr. Hess Green, who is doing research into an ancient African culture known for sucking the blood their victims. One night while working in a mansion, he is attacked with an African ceremonial dagger by his own assistant (writer/director Gunn), who then kills himself. Hess wakes up with an insatiable desire for blood, fully unaware that he is now the walking dead himself.
When the assistant's wife Ganja (Marlene Clark) comes looking for her husband, she and Hess begin a torrid love affair. When she discovers her husband's corpse frozen in Hess' home, however, she reacts not how one might imagine, but instead asks Hess to marry her and turn her into a vampire as well. The two then begin a tandem act of seducing young innocents and bringing them back to their house to feast on them. Marlene Clark has a number of nude scenes in the film, showing off her breasts multiple times throughout...
After the film flopped at the box office, the film was diced to ribbons by its producers who thought Gunn's film was too serious and too concerned with its metaphorical messaging. They produced a new cut for home video focusing more on the violence and sex, which is where the title Blood Couple came from, though Gunn disowned this version. His cut was rediscovered by genre enthusiasts over the years and was eventually shown at New York's Museum of Modern Art, where its reputation as one of the better examples of the subgenre first emerged.
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Blackenstein (1973)
One of the best known Blaxploitation flicks period, Blackensteinis another in a long line of films from the era which have survived thanks to name recognition alone. Hell, it's a great title, though one wonders why they stopped at just Dracula and Frankenstein. Where's The Blummy or The Blerewolf or The Blunchblack of Blotre Blame? Credit to The Simpsons for that last one.I kid, of course, but seriously, someone make The Blummy. It can't possibly be worse than Tom Cruise's Mummy from a few years back.
Blackensteinis somehow more ridiculous than the previous year's Blacula, centering around Vietnam vet Eddie Turner (Joe De Sue) who survives stepping on a landmine, but who has lost his arms and legs. His fiancée Dr. Winifred Walker (Ivory Stone, great name) thinks that her former mentor Dr. Stein (John Hart), who has just received the Nobel Prize for "solving the DNA genetic code" could help Eddie get back on his feet, literally. We all know the title of the film, however, so you can imagine where all of this is heading. Eddie gets arms and legs, but is turned into a mindless zombie, killing and often devouring innocent people outside the walls of Dr. Stein's Los Angeles castle—not a typo.
Ivory Stone goes briefly topless in the film when she is startled by hunky lab assistant Malcomb, who attempts to assault her, but is soon thwarted by the return of her newly-limbed lover Eddie...
The film was made for around $80,000 and went on to gross $2 million in theaters before turning into a cultural phenomenon in second run theaters and, eventually, home video. It's not great, but Blacula doesn't have nudity and wecouldn't possibly do this list withouta monster movie, so it's here.
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Welcome Home Brother Charles (1975)
While not a straight horror film like the others we're discussing today, this one has a ridiculous plot straight out of the horror films of the time. Welcome Home Brother Charles centers around the title character (Marlo Monte), who is wrongfully imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. While locked up, the evil white prison staff conduct various medical experiments on the poor man, eventuallyendowinghim with a monstrously enormous penis. Upon his release, he then sets out to get revenge on the racist cop, prosecutor, and judge who locked him up in the first place, first seducing and banging their wives before doling out the kind of justice one might expect to find in a porno parody of another movie, strangling the men with his penis.
Reatha Grey certainly doesn't seem to mind Brother Charles' new superpower, baring her breasts before getting down with him and his Frankenpenis...
We also get some bonus boobage from Holiday Marble as a stripper at a club where Brother Charles goes to meet a woman...
DirectorJamaa Fanakaspecialized in prison-based Blaxploitation films, directing other such classics like Black Sister's Revenge and the Penitentiaryseries, the first film of which is still regarded as the highest grossing independent film of the 1980s. Sadly he passed away in 2012 at the age of 69.
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J.D.'s Revenge (1976)
Easily the most notable cast of any of the films we're discussing today belongs to this 1976 classic starring Glynn Turman (Cooley High, The Wire), Joan Pringle (The White Shadow), and future Oscar winner Louis Gossett, Jr. Turman plays alaw student named Isaac who, while undergoing a parlor hypnosis game, becomes possessed by the spirit of J.D. Walker, a pimp murdered in the 1940s. With a new body to inhabit, Walker's spirit is on a quest for—you guessed it—revenge, with Isaac's host body proving suitably amenable to the task at hand.
The bodyswapcraze wasn't quite at its peak when this flick was made, but it definitely became the most prominent example within the Blaxploitation genre. It's also got the most skin of the vintage flicks we're discussing today, thanks to the impish pimpish behavior that Isaac begins adopting as he continues to be possessed by J.D. After all, he'd been dead for over thirty years, he really needed to get it wet in addition to all the revenge and what not. Joan Pringle, playing Isaac's wife, briefly bares her breasts twice, once during a tender sex scene with Isaac and again when she is savagely attacked by a hoodlum. Let's try a little tenderness, shall we...
Isaac also beds topless beauties Alice Jubert and Barbara Tasker later in the flick...
The film has one of the more preposterous happy endings of any film of the time, but it's a note of optimism not often found in this particular subgenre, so it's something of an anomaly in that regard. Beyond that, the production values, direction, soundtrack, and performances are all solid, making this one of the best Blaxploitation flicks, regardless of subgenre.
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Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014)
Okay, so Blaxploitation experts may consider this one a bit of a cheat since the film is a remake of Ganja Hess, but it's fascinating to see how a much more seasoned director deals with the same content. Spike Leepartially funded the film using Kickstarter—one of the first major directors to turn to crowdfunding—and adapted William Gunn's screenplay himself, giving Gunn a co-writing credit. Here Ganja Hess are played, respectively, by Zaraah Abrahams and Stephen Tyrone Williams, with their dynamic remaining exactly the same as it was in the original.
Hess' first victim is played by Felicia Pearson, whom he kills and drains of her blood, though he gets a momentary scare when she turns out to be HIV-positive, though it's shrugged off when his condition prevents him from obtaining the virus...
Another victim is played by Jeni Perillo, who also shows off her sensational pair while lying dead in bed...
Zaraah Abrahams herself has several nude scenes in the film, including what ends up being the encounter that gives Ganja the change of heart about her lifestyle.She and the gorgeous Naté Bova have a skinsationally sapphic sex scene that lasts nearly five full minutes...
Just like the original, the film ends with Ganja on the beach about to be attacked by her most recent victim, Bova, sending the film out on a spectacular nude high note...
Perhaps the strangest thing about the film is that its soundtrack was composed by Bruce Hornsby, formerly of Bruce Hornsby and the Range, who seems about as far away from Lee's circle as one can get. It's a pretty great soundtrack, however, and with Lee's steady hand in control, the film manages to be a perfect modern counterpart to the original.
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