Vonetta McGee

  • Shaft in Africa (1973)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Second viewing, On Cable TV, December 2022) I remember watching Shaft in Africa on VHS sometime in the early 2000s, but can’t find any review of it. Oh well, here goes: For one thing, this is a clear case of peak-blaxploitation filmmaking, with the id so close to the surface of the film’s text that it becomes remarkable by itself. (That scene with a prim white woman getting excited at the sight of sweat-covered black men… good for you, blaxploitation. That’s black gaze right there, and it’s awesome.)  This third instalment in the Shaft series plays up the black-is-cool ethos of the subgenre to the hilt, and essentially transforms its protagonist into a superhero. The decision to take the story outside American urban areas is provocative (clearly influenced by the return-to-Africa movement) but ultimately doesn’t quite serve the character very well: John Shaft is a creature of American cities, and while having him bust an international human trafficking ring, then deliver a blistering speech about colonialism to French interlocutors is interesting, it doesn’t necessarily fit with the rest of the series. (Although, considering that the second film ended with an exploding helicopter, did the series even have a consistent tone?)  At least the film is watchable—Richard Roundtree is as cool as ever (although more self-conscious about it) and Vonetta McGee is an exceptional beauty. Amusingly, I would recommend watching all three films of this original trilogy one after another—they’re so different that they won’t all blend together.

  • Thomasine & Bushrod (1974)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2022) Both obvious and transgressive, Thomasine & Bushrod is a film that would benefit from being more widely known. Existing at the intersection between Blaxploitation, revisionist western and the New Hollywood standard of criminal-lovers-on-the-run, it feels at once like a far more modern film than it is, and yet a film that could only come from the 1970s. Much of the story can be fairly summed up as “black-cast Bonnie and Clyde western” and that’s already intriguing enough. It gets better once you realize that the film was directed by Gordon Parks, Jr. (of Superfly and Three the Hard Way fame), that it’s written by co-lead actor-producer Max Julien, and that its viewpoint character is clearly the woman lead played by the magnificent Vonetta McGee. As I write this, the hottest black-cast film of 2021 is The Harder They Fall, which prides itself on being a revisionist black western with strong female roles – so it’s interesting to dig back fifty years and find another very similar film that doesn’t often show up in discussions. Now, let’s be honest — Thomasine & Bushrod is more interesting than good: Despite the overt progressive intentions of the film, the execution often falls back on obviousness, formula and last-minute reversion to tradition. The film’s stated intention to steal from the rich white in order to give back to the poor black is undermined by a moralistic ending that harkens back to the requirements of the Production Code, and also makes the film undistinguishable in this regard from many, many other outlaw-lovers-on-the-run films brought to screens around that time. The film itself does remain worth a watch, though – it still feels daring, McGee looks superb and the film occasionally gets a great moment or two. Thomasine & Bushrod is certainly worth adding to anyone’s deep knowledge of 1970s cinema, just as Blaxploitation was momentarily opening a few unusual doors for black representation in film.

  • Blacula (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, March 2022) As with many blaxploitation classics, Blacula seems disappointing today: it has a lot of potential, a great premise, plenty of swagger and distinctive characters, but falters in its execution with low production values, muddy cinematography, awkward staging and a poor sense of space and time. Still, the result is a lot of fun if, like me, you’ve got the Bram Stoker plot outline memorized backwards and forward. Setting its action in 1970s Los Angeles, Blacula runs through the usual genre elements, but the twist of placing it among the black community makes it distinctive enough in the vampire pantheon. The cross-hybridization also works the other way, bringing an element of genre horror into blaxploitation and adding depth to its otherwise crime-dominated nature. Director William Crain gets a few breaks in starring the superb Vonetta McGee but it’s not quite enough: The concept and the legend are better than the execution—Blacula is still worth a look, but it’s certainly ripe for a remake.