This Monday was an exciting night for us because of the triumphant return of Adam's Grandma! Grandma hadn't been doing too well lately but she was feeling well enough to come join us in torturing ourselves for amusement tonight so we also have the return of her concise reviews.
With a title like "Black Gestapo" and the fact that we are sincerely lacking in blaxploitation movies ("Disco Godfather" is all we have since "Black Ninja" is more like neo-blaxploitation) there was no way we could resist this one. In Watts, LA, all the shops run by black people are terrorized by white gangs so the black people formed their own people's army to try to clean up the streets. The well-meaning general of the army is asked by one of the colonels if he could start a small team to actively protect the city and he offers his tentative approval, warning them to not go too overboard. How will they protect the city, you ask? Murdering all the mod members and becoming the new drug pushers, pimps, and extortioners of the businesses enabling the people to be comforted by the fact that life is equally as terrible as before but now it's not because of racism. The team create new black uniforms, adopt swahili names (even though swahili is mostly spoken in a specific part of southeastern Africa and they probably aren't all descended from swahili speaking lands), and curiously proudly wear the mantle of the black gestapo, forgetting entirely that the gestapo hated black people. The movie wants this parallel to be even clearer with superimposed images of the Nazis marching and "Sieg Heil" sound bites. Meanwhile, the message finally gets back to the general that everyone hates the people's army because they think they are all gestapo members and he realizes that the only way to end the suffering is to murder the gestapo . . . like they had done to the white mobs. The general does this while camouflaged in a black gestapo uniform and it makes one wonder if the circle of oppressive reign really has ended.
I guess you could say this movie was trying to make a political statement about oppression or how being a jerk is not restricted by race or, as Adam put it, "Malcolm X was wrong" but most of the movie was an excuse to show naked chicks in beds and lots of violence. The camerawork and editing were bad even for the 70s and we could barely hear parts of the dialogue because the sound was so poor. We did get one really solid stunt with a car rolling down a hill so we know where the half of the budget that didn't go into costuming went. Whatever happens after the end of the movie is a question some might want answered but here's what I want to know: what did they do with all those black SS uniforms after the movie was done? Think on that.
Quotes:
(on television)
"I was hoping to get a celebrity to tell you about kidney disease."
"I don't want you to think that I don't like you . . . I just think you're a stupid fuck."
Adam's Grandma's Review: "Bad movie. Bad bad bad."
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