Above: a promo image of actress Tamara Dobson made for her trailblazing role in the blaxploitation classic Cleopatra Jones. See another nice image of her here.
When you dance with Dobson it's to the death.
You can't predict when it'll happen. You can only hope not to be there when it does.
We’re back to blaxploitation today. We screened the Fred Williamson actioner That Man Bolt last night, and you see its poster above with Fred in dual mode—in a tuxedo, and in a martial arts gi. Range, baby. Our range runs from t-shirts and shorts to t-shirts and jeans, but with good accessories. Williamson plays Jefferson Bolt, an ex-Special Forces captain-turned-industry best international courier, who’s strongarmed into carrying a million dollars from Hong Kong to Mexico City via Los Angeles.
Naturally, the moment he sets off people are trying to relieve him of the money, which he carries in a briefcase chained to his wrist. These aren’t ordinary thieves. It doesn’t take Williamson long to figure out that he’s being double-crossed. At first he thinks the million dollars is counterfeit, but he won’t know for sure what’s happening until after using fists, feet, and whatever happens to be handy to defeat the villains and get to the center of the plot.
There are several attractions to That Man Bolt. The most important is its ample budget. Location shooting took place not only in Hong Kong and Los Angeles, but Las Vegas, where Bolt is forced to make a detour. Another notable aspect is the film’s wide canvas and spy movie feel. Even more value is added by co-stars Teresa Graves and Miko Mayama, playing Bolt’s serial love interests. And lastly, there’s fair to decent action on land and water, including an extensive car chase that’s better than the usual fare.
You get the feeling Bolt was to be a recurring character, though it never happened. Even so, as blaxploitation movies go, That Man Bolt is a cut above. It has scope, good direction, humor that works, decent acting in parts, and a main character you can appreciate, mostly due to Williamson being a good screen presence. While many blaxploitation movies come bearing social commentary—which we consider indispensable to the form—Bolt mostly avoids it. That works out fine in this case, but let’s not make a habit of it. That Man Bolt premiered in the U.S. today in 1973.
Do you think about sex all the time? It's okay. That's how you're wired.
This photo shows U.S. actress Tanya Boyd, who was among the best elements of films such as Black Shampoo, Solomon King, Black Heat, and of course, Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks, as well as an enhancement to television shows like Good Times, What’s Happening, and the epic mini-series Roots. She’s seen here in a shot from around 1973 that makes us remember, like every good Freudian, that sex is really at the root of everything. Mid-century crime writers understood this, which is why, while all appetites are indulged rampantly, from the craving for drink to the obsession with money, sex is nearly always the catalyst for rash action. In essence: Do this insane thing and you’ll get laid. Accumulate riches and you’ll get a Boyd of your own.
Of course, women could refuse to be impressed. In that way they’re all-powerful, but like the gods of Olympus, rife with human flaws. You’ve surely wondered, if women were able to en masse deny sex to destructive men, whether about 75% of the nonsense that goes on in the world would come to a screeching halt. It’s a trite if enticing thought, but—hah hah—it could never happen because women are voraciously sexual too. It’s a cosmic chicken-egg riddle. Around and around we go, gravitationally locked binary entities, hurtling through a deep void. Amazing, isn’t it, what a single photo of Boyd can make a brain do? Well, the sophomore philosophy discussion group is over for today. We’re out. Feel free to ponder an additional time-stopping image of her here.
There, that's better. Now you can see me perfectly.
This is probably the best known shot of U.S. actress Brenda Sykes, but she’s under-documented considering her beauty and show business résumé. She launched her career on television, including the soap opera One Life To Live, before appearing in a dozen or so motion pictures. We’ve seen her in Black Gunn, Mandingo, and Cleopatra Jones, plus she’s featured in nice promo images here and here. She’ll probably turn up again. There’s never a date on this shot when you see it online, but figure it’s from around 1971.
When the door Slams you can't depend on anyone but yourself.
Jim Brown went from an NFL career to become one of the most popular blaxploitation screen stars of his era, and The Slams, for which you see a promo poster above, proves it. This was the second Brown movie to hit U.S. screens in a month, coming today in 1973, hot on the heels of Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off, which had premiered on August 31. Unlike that film, in The Slams Brown is on the wrong side of the law. He’s thrown in supermax after a robbery and violent doublecross. $1.5 million in cash and a shipment of heroin are missing, and the prison authorities, the police, the mafia, and Brown’s cellmates all want a piece. He actually threw the heroin in the ocean, but the money is secreted away.
Brown is facing one to five years inside, which he figures he can do easily, but the mafia—who he robbed of the cash and drugs—wants him dead. He’s attacked even before he’s placed in his cell, and the bad guys keep coming. But Brown is saying nothing about the money. It’s the only thing keeping him alive. He could potentially leverage everyone’s greed into release, protection, or anything else he wants, but his plan is to do his time, get out, recover the cash, and disappear. But his timeline changes—urgently—when he learns from the prison television that the place he hid the money is going to be demolished. Escape becomes his only choice.
Low budget ’70s action movies rarely weather well, but we thought The Slams was actually rather good. Better acting would be helpful, but on the whole Brown is about on par with everyone else in terms of thespian talent, and he brings an intangible extra to the screen—charisma. His physicality works in his favor, and his cool delivery of dialogue provides gravity. Being a vintage movie, the language is off the charts incendiary, with n-bombs and f-bombs (not fuck—the other kind) flying left and right, so viewers who might be sensitive to that should take a pass. Otherwise, we recommend The Slams for blaxploitation fans, and give it a cautious thumbs up for fans of ’70s actioners. It premiered today in 1973.
Whatever Lola wants Lola gets—except a decent script and a sufficient budget.
A low rent poster usually indicates a low rent movie. The poster you see here for Lola Falana’s crime drama Lady Cocoa, which premiered today in 1975, is obviously underwhelming. Sometimes, though, digging into the dusty archive of cheap cinema yields forgotten gems. But not in this instance. You know you’re in trouble with Lady Cocoa right from the opening theme, which is a sort of mash-up between a disco song and, “Pop Goes the Weasel.” Literally, that’s the chorus. We’ve come across some terrible theme songs (who can forget the indelible strains of “Flare-Up”?—but this one might take the booby prize.
Falana plays a Reno gangster’s girlfriend who’s spent eighteen months in prison for reasons that are obscure, possibly because she’s insanely annoying. She’s released into protective custody when she finally decides to testify against her man. She doesn’t seem to understand the gravity of her decision, but there’s a reason for that—she has no intention of testifying. She just wants out of the joint for a while. She has total confidence her boyfriend will intuit this, but she’s wrong—kingpins don’t become kingpins through trust. He sends assassins to perforate her, and the movie becomes a standard witness protection actioner. While this basic plot has been done many times, it has rarely been done with dialogue so poor.
Gene Washington: “I remember when I got it in Nam.”
Falana: “Nam?”
Gene Washington: “Yeah. Vietnam.”
Let’s fix that exchange of dialogue for them:
Gene Washington: “I remember when I got it in Nam.”
Falana: “It?”
Gene Washington: “Yeah. Syphilitic meningitis.”
See? Much better. Poor Lola never had a chance in this one. But there are a few items of note. Falana, who’s really cute even playing a grating harpy, spends a lot of the movie in a towel and flashes a backside that’ll leave a permanent impression. Late in the program she and co-star Gene Washington share a real-deal hot tango of a tongue kiss, which is something you rarely see actors do. And one of the assassins is played by Joe Greene, as in Mean Joe Greene, as in the Pittsburgh Steelers. If he’d sacked the producers before they had a chance to make the movie, Hollywood would have given him an honorary Oscar. No such luck.
Despite your ample sexual charms I’m irrationally annoyed I have to bodyguard you.
Still hate me?
Abso-goddamned-lutely.
You sure?
I can’t even budge I’m so filled with loathing.
What if I let you slowly rub this lotion all over me, we enjoy some leisurely oral sex, then fuck like beasts?
Then again, I’m only human.
I hear they made a black panther movie. And it's not about me. How weird.
Above: a 1974 photo of Pam Grier from Players magazine, wearing a leather outfit from her movie Foxy Brown. Not much to be said here except that she looks her absolute best.
She's a rare example of prey that's more dangerous than her predators.
Above is a fun pressbook cover for the legendary Pam Grier’s classic action movie Foxy Brown, a tangled tale of drug dealers, crooked cops, loan sharks, and narcs, which premiered in the U.S. today in 1974. When pressed against the wall Grier gets just as vicious as her screen foes. She even sets one guy on fire and runs another over—with a plane. There are no holds barred in blaxploitation cinema.
Below we also have various lobby cards from the film. These are interesting because they’re made from production photos that you don’t typically see online. It’s too bad Grier’s blaxploitation/action phase was short, because she was good in the films, even when the films weren’t good enough for her. But every artist seeks to hone their craft, so we imagine she got tired of such roles. That’s okay—her output, though limited, is always fun to re-watch.
As a side note, the hazards of blogging during the unethical digital age are amply illustrated here. Users on both Alamy and Getty attempt to assert copyright on these items, but movie promos are made for non-copyright holders to publicize the works depicted, and despite claims to the contrary individuals can’t hold copyright on them. There are probably hundreds or thousands of these reproductions out there, all individually possessed, so a specific person claiming copyright is nonsensical on the face of it. Only the issuing studio holds copyright.
Even so, we occasionally get threatening e-mails from digital photo resellers. They’re AI generated and automatically sent, which means they’ll only increase in number as time goes by. We have a form e-mail we send back demanding proof of copyright. We never get a reply to it. Shockingly. We’ll say this though—one day corporate greed will kill the blogging culture the same way it’s killed most everything else. But that day isn’t today. Read what we thought about Foxy Brown here.
Grier is ready for a battle royal.
Above you see a rare Thai poster for Pam Grier’s 1975 detective thriller Sheba, Baby. The text refers to Grier as the “queen of hearts,” and the “queen of private eyes,” which we think is rather nice. But why stop there? Since the distributors at Go Brother Film were so eager to crown her, let’s cover all bases and go with the Queen of Thailand—with respect to Suthida Bajrasudhabimalalakshana. The poster has a date of some sort, but we can’t interpret it. Since the movie didn’t make it to Europe until late 1976 at the earliest, we’re inclined to think the date refers to a Thai premiere in ’77 or ’78. There’s also a signature that we can’t read. It’s a shame not to be able to give the artist credit, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. Read more about Sheba, Baby here, and see a cool Egyptian promo poster for it here.
I give up. Short of developing superpowers I'll never get this hair under control.
This unusual image of U.S. actress Marlene Clark was made for her 1974 movie The Beast Must Die, which is not to be confused with the 1952 Argentinian thriller released in the U.S. under the same name. The ’74 movie isn’t a remake. It’s a blaxploitation horror flick. We won’t say much about it since we’re planning to discuss it in detail. We’ll just note that even seeming like she just rolled out of her lair—uh, we mean bed—Clark looks great.
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HISTORY REWIND
The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1966—Missing Nuke Found
Off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean, the deep submergence vehicle Alvin locates a missing American hydrogen bomb. The 1.45-megaton nuke had been lost by the U.S. Air Force during a midair accident over Palomares, Spain. It was found resting in nearly three-thousand feet of water and was raised intact on 7 April.
1968—My Lai Massacre Occurs
In Vietnam, American troops kill between 350 and 500 unarmed citizens, all of whom are civilians and a majority of whom are women, children, babies and elderly people. Many victims are sexually abused, beaten, tortured, and some of the bodies are mutilated. The incident doesn’t become public knowledge until 1969, but when it does, the American war effort is dealt one of its worst blows.
1937—H.P. Lovecraft Dies
American sci-fi/horror author Howard Phillips Lovecraft dies of intestinal cancer in Providence, Rhode Island at age 46. Lovecraft died nearly destitute, but would become the most influential horror writer ever. His imaginary universe of malign gods and degenerate cults was influenced by his explicitly racist views, but his detailed and procedural style of writing, which usually pitted men of science or academia against indescribable monsters, remains as effective today as it was eighty years ago.
2011—Illustrator Michel Gourdon Dies
French pulp artist Michel Gourdon, who was the less famous brother of Alain Gourdon, aka Aslan, dies in Coudray, France aged eighty-five. He is known mainly for the covers he painted for the imprint Flueve Noir, but produced nearly 3,500 covers during his career.
1964—Ruby Found Guilty of Murder
In the U.S. a Dallas jury finds nightclub owner and organized crime fringe-dweller Jack Ruby guilty of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald. Ruby had shot Oswald with a handgun at Dallas Police Headquarters in full view of multiple witnesses and photographers. Allegations that he committed the crime to prevent Oswald from exposing a conspiracy in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy have never been proven.
- FEATUREd PULP
Uncredited cover for Call Girl Central: 08~022, written by Frédéric Dard for Éditions de la Pensée Moderne and its Collection Tropiques, 1955.
Four pink Perry Mason covers with Robert McGinnis art for Pocket Books.
Unknown artist produces lurid cover for Indian true crime magazine Nutan Kahaniyan.
Cover art by Roswell Keller for the 1948 Pocket Books edition of Ramona Stewart's Desert Town.
