If you thought the likes of Dolemite, Shaft, Cleopatra Jones, Truck Turner, Sheba Baby and Trouble Man were of a dubious quality, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
This November we’re showing Jim Kelly’s Black Samurai which, despite the presence of midget hit men and a killer vulture, is not regarded as one of the high points of the blaxploitation genre. However, it is by no means the worse…
5. Blackenstein (1973)
And you thought we were going to choose Blackula…
“Loosely” based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Blackenstein holds the distinction of being one of the worst and least scary horror movies of all time. The plot revolves around a black Vietnam veteran who undergoes unusual “DNA” surgery to reattach his lost limbs, but of course it all goes wrong and it isn’t long before he’s on a murderous rampage!
4. Disco Godfather (1979)
Sucking the last breathes out of the genre, Disco Godfather sees a retired cop (Dolemite’s Rudy Ray Moore) become a DJ – until his nephew overdoses on ‘angel dust’ forcing him to take to the streets to “personally come down on the suckers that’s producing this shit!”
3. Black Samson (1973)
He’s a nightclub owner who beats people with a massive stick (Oooh eeeer) and has a pet lion, but this film is nowhere near as ridiculous as it should be.
2. The Thing With Two Heads (1972)
You can imagine the pitch: “Hey, people like The Defiant Ones, but what if the racist and the brutha had to share the same body!”
1. Black Gestapo (1975)
Almost the pick for November, Black Gestapo sees a revolutionary leader opt for a more extreme option after members of his neighbourhood are terrorised by racists. As you do, he looks to the Nazis for inspiration. Starring Charles Robinson, the film is also noticeable for an eye-watering castration scene!
Check out:
Three The Hard Way (1974)
One of the main inspirations for Black Dynamite (the funniest film of the last decade), this sees Jim Kelly, Jim Brown and Fred Williamson team up to take down a neo-Nazi sect that want to poison the country’s water supply and kill all black people!
Those honkies be trippin’!
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