Darktown Strutters
(1974)
Starring: Trina Parks and Roger E. Mosley
I love my friend Al.
Not only is he a man of remarkable insight and wisdom, but he's one
of the few gay men I know who can tolerate my taste in cinema. Better
yet, he's one of the few gay men I know who seems to genuinely enjoy
my taste in cinema. So I look forward to our Friday night socials where
we get
to share our latest cinematic discoveries/obsessions. He tolerates
every offering
I throw towards him with good grace. Even when the films are absolutely
horrific, as they sometimes can be, he comes through it quipping
resolutely with a
smile. Hell, he even seemed to enjoy "Supersonic Man," which I
considered borderline watchable at best. Sometimes when a film is
genuinely enjoyable, he manages to distill it to its very essence with
a single insightful sentence in a way I didn't think to, or even would
never have thought.
It's for this reason, you'll probably be reading a lot more of My
Friend Al in these pages, 'cause he watches a lot of these films with
me. And sometimes he offers a quotable that I have to reiterate here in
these pages. It is for this reason I must tip my homburg to him.
On a recent Friday, I offered "Darktown Strutters" for our evening's
viewing. It had been in the queue for a while and he sort of
pooh-poohed it for a long time, so I didn't tell him what I was putting
in the tape player.
It turned out to be one of the most delightful surprises in a long,
long time.
It was also the first "blaxploitation" film the two of us ever watched
together. It's also so wildly different from any other "blaxploitation"
film you'll ever see, it's rather fitting that it should be the first
one I'd review.
For those of you too young to remember the '70's that have not yet
attended a film history class, or if you've just been living under a
rock for the last 30 years, I suppose I shall have to explain
"blaxploitation." It all started back in 1971, with Melvin van Peebles'
independently financed "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song." Bearing the
memorable tagline "Rated X by an all-white jury!" it was a cathartic
mix of violence, sex and a hair-raising "Kill Whitey" attitude. More
importantly, it was a film made by a black man, starring a mainly black
cast and made for black audiences. It also made
a lot of money with very little initial investment.
Exploitation studios such as American International Pictures and Avco
Embassy stood up and took notice, and the "blaxploitation" genre was
born.
Of course, few of these films had such good intentions as Van Peebles
did with "Sweetback," as the better-known "blaxploitationers" such as
"Shaft," "Superfly" and the popular vampire flick "Blacula" were loaded
to the gills with stereotypes. The average film in this genre seem to
exist in a world riddled with pimps, whores, drug-dealers and
gun-toting gangsters. Whites hardly fared better, with notably some
pretty vile gay stereotypes in films such as "Blacula" and "Black
Shampoo." Still, such films made lots of money, filling the grindhouses
nearly every night.
Naturally, the genre was ripe for parody. Enter "Darktown Strutters."
It's rather become a cliché to say that a film like this could
never be made today, but the cliché does have a ring of truth
about it. Following in the wake of "Blazing Saddles," "Darktown
Strutters" attempts to be a wacky comedy about racism. It's true, such
a film would probably not be considered acceptable to make today. That
wouldn't stop some people, though I guarantee you that if someone did
make a film like this today, it would be a lot more mean-spirited.
In case there were any doubt in your mind as to the tone of this film,
its makers have set out to announce it immediately. We open on a
close-up of a motorcycle wheel in motion as the following text appears
on the screen: "Any similarity between this true life adventure and the
story 'Cinderella'...IS BULLSH!T!" Then a man's head, appearing to be
dressed as Sir Walter Raleigh (well, what with the feathered hat and
ruffled collar, you tell me
what you think he looks like) appears in a circle to the right of the
text,
proclaiming, "I didn't know that!" Cue funky theme music. Here we get
our
first glimpse of the titular heroines, zooming down the highway on
their
mega-cool three-wheeled motorcycles. They seem to have come fresh from
raiding
Nona Hendryx's wardrobe. Seriously, their extreme 70's polyester
outfits
with combination helmets/headdresses are truly a wonder to behold.
Scant
seconds into the film, and I'm already in love with it. They pull up to
a roadside/seaside take-out eatery, passing some white guys in military
drag along the way, then strut up to the counter and order sodas and
lemon meringue pies. One of the buzz-cut dudes disrespects Our
Heroine's (whom we later learn is named Syreena) bike, which leads her
to walk right up
to him and demand, "Strut YOUR ass out of MY saddle!" He continues to
disrespect her, which leads immediately to a fast-motion pie
fight/conflict (complete with goofy piano music) which ends with
Disrespectin' White Guy #1 landing on an old, discarded toilet seat,
falling over unconscious as a toilet-flushing sound is heard.
Don't worry, it gets better.
After the opening credits, featuring loving shots of our vivacious
bike-riding ladies through splatter-shaped windows (très 70's!),
they're tailed by a cop car featuring a comically huge domed red light
that covers the entire roof of the car and a weird
Theremin-through-an-Echoplex siren. Our Heroines pull over, and out of
the car stream some wacky comic white-guy cops. Well, most of them,
anyway. Comic Fat Guy Cop seems to be so big, he
needs help getting out of the car, and no one remembered to help him.
He
awkwardly gets into a position to where his butt is pointing towards
the
camera, the camera zooms in so we get a screen completely filled with
Fat
Guy Ass, and then we hear a fart sound dubbed in on the soundtrack...
I know, I know. Trust me, it gets better.
One of Syreena's soul-sisters asks to see Fat Cop's driver's licence,
while at the same time the other cops ask for Syreena's driver's
licence. And if you could see the way she whips out her driver's
licence...well,
let's just say she's the Queen of Cool. She definitely wins the Lady
Prezmyra Award for Coolest Chick in this film. She's the rôle
model
for black teenage girls and drag queens the whole world over. It turns
out
she's looking for her mama. This may seem a minor point (indeed, I
didn't
catch it upon first viewing), but it becomes a major plot point ere
long.
Anyway, this goes on while in the background some soul brothers in loud
red outfits rob a bank. Syreena gets the wonderful line, "Watts is a
shooting gallery and you're the ducks!" Naturally, this all leads to a
high-speed chase, which is curtailed when the police crash their car
into the bank robbers' car. The lead bank robber says, "Oh man, you
better have insurance!"
Cut to a close-up of a giant, rotating pig sculpture. A sign below it
reads "Sky Hog: The Original Hog Heaven." Syreena and her cohorts pull
up to the eating establishment as we pan across some other signs...
"Commander Louisville Cross says: Dine at the sign of the SWINE!"
"Free Watermelon with every BUCKET!"
"SKY HOG says: MY RIBS ARE BONE SUCKIN' GOOD!"
OK, take a quick guess. What real-life fast-food place could they
possibly be referring to. Hint: it's not Arby's. We pan across some
comic hillbilly types cooking the barbecue as wacky banjo music plays.
Our distaff bikers are soon joined by their goofy male counterparts.
They're led by a hunky guy named Mellow. He looked sort of familiar,
and I couldn't quite put my finger on why. A troll over to IMDB
revealed that he's played by Roger E. Mosley, T.C. from TV's "Magnum
P.I." Unsurprisingly, he tries to put the moves on Syreena, and equally
unsurprisingly, she blows him off. This leads into a race, once around
the police station. But before they do, our gals have to boogie down to
Syreena's "Superfly"-soundalike theme song...
It's now ten minutes into the film. It was around this time my friend
Al quipped, "It's impossible to watch this film with your mouth not
open." Truer words were never spoken.
Anyway, the race begins on a questionable note when Mellow peels out on
his bike as Syreena speeds off down the hill. Even more questionable is
the zoom in on the Sky Hog sculpture with pig sounds dubbed in. (huh?)
From
here, we cut to the police station, where the Goofy Squad we met
earlier is having their car cleaned by a group of cool doo-woppin'
brothers in
matching red-and-white pin-striped suits (one of whom is laying back on
the trunk and playing with a bowling ball...double huh?) Mellow and
Syreena
zoom past and are tailed unsuccessfully by a couple of Keystone Kops
leading
horses. (Okay, at least that sorta made sense.) On the way to her
victory,
Syreena runs afoul of some motorcycle-riding klansmen, and reports her
find
to her sisters.
Though Mellow lost, he decides that Syreena's all
right, and they all have a big party back at his place. Various party
gags follow, then Mellow leads Syreena into "The Rack," his bachelor
pad. The lead-up features an annoyingly spastic biker named Wired* in a bit that seems to go on forever. Now behind
closed doors, Mellow turns into Ultradork. Now wearing a goofy,
feathered hat, he
does pratfalls, makes awkward passes and generally does everything he
can
to turn Syreena off. All the while, ersatz Hawaiian music plays. (???)
In
a fit of passion, he tackles Syreena, throwing her down onto the bed
which quickly collapses. Then, accompanied by cartoon noises (and
Syreena's irritated protestations, we see his clothes fly up; first his
shirt, then his trousers, then his stupid, feathered hat. She manages
to pull herself free of his
grasp, stands bolt upright and proclaims, "If you EVER try to rape me
again,
I'm going to break anything that hangs, dangles, or swings!"
Hmmm...must remember that line for the next time drunk guys get fresh...
Mellow pouts like a little boy (even sucking his thumb!), explaining
that the guys will want to see the scratches. With that, she grabs him
by
the hair and has her way with him. While they're fooling around, the
Goofy
Squad breaks in, attempting a drug bust.
Later on, Syreena pulls up to a ramshackle dwelling which turns out
to be the abode of her baby brother, Flash. Flash is a kung-fu warrior
in a fighting gi festooned with bananas. (!) Flash fills her in on
Cinderella's (their mom's) whereabouts. She was working at the Cross
Foundation (as in Commander Cross, as in owner of Sky Hog) and just
disappeared one day going to work. She's been gone at least ten days.
Flash tried to find her, but was arrested for filing a false report.
The two of them catch up on old times, which results in a friendly
kung-fu sparring match that destroys the entire shack.
From there, it's off to a series of zany episodes as Syreena follows
the trail of clues. Her first stop, an old-style Southern mansion, the
location of the Cross Foundation, where Louisville Cross himself (who
bears a striking resemblance to a certain well-known fast-food magnate.
I don't think I
need to tell you to whom I refer.) is holding a press conference.
Syreena
arrives in nun drag (!) and immediately gains admittance into the
mansion.
She presses Lorelei, the elderly maid, for information on Cinderella's
disappearance. If Lorelei looks at all familiar to anyone, you must
have watched an appalling amount of television in the 70's too, she's
played by Zara Cully, Mama
Jefferson from TV's "The Jeffersons." From her, she learns that
Cinderella
was organizing an abortion clinic. Inexplicably, their conversation is
briefly interrupted by a man in a rabbit suit toting a giant carrot!
Syreena's next stop, the police station, which she infiltrates in cop
drag. We pan across some wacky looking prisoners on the way to another
appearance of Le Squad Goofie. They're planning tactical maneuvers on a
wall map when a red light and a siren goes off. It's the "N-----
Alarm"!
Syreena confers with an undercover cop in a red-spangled cocktail dress
and blackface. (!!) He's apparently on the lookout for a white, female
rapist who preys on black gay men. (!!!) Finally, someone who knows
something
about the missing people, and about Cinderella's disappearance in
particular.
But El Squad de Goofy arrives to gun down the blackface drag cop, which
leads to a hilarious parody of the "It was...it was..." [death rattle]
cliché.
From there, Syreena goes on to her grandfather's secondhand shop, who
refers her to the detective Philo Raspberry. So Syreena dresses up in
her fanciest threads, now apparently raiding Sarah Dash's wardrobe, and
heads off to the hip nightclub where Philo holds court. Philo is an
overweight parody of Shaft, Superfly et al. and is surprisingly not
played
by Rudy Ray Moore. The two exchange pleasantries, including a
jaw-dropping
line from Syreena, "It's just like rape, you gotta ask for it!" Then
Philo
cuts through the crap with a jaw-dropper of his own: "Let's knock off
this
Lauren Bacall sh!t! We know how you're supposed to act."
It was at this point we had to stop the film because we were laughing
so hard, we missed the next couple of lines of dialogue.
He then plants a slimy one on Syreena's luscious lips. After that, he
gives her his "special" drink, which she tastes and promptly spits back
in his face, tells him off and storms out. But a hooker was mightily
impressed with Syreena's performance, and tells her everything she
needs to know.
Well, at least she gives her another lead: Cinderella was a caseworker
for
a former hooker named Lixie.
With this new information, Syreena decides to...take a break at the
carnival? What the hell? Well, it does give Mellow more of an
opportunity
to court her in a less dorky way, and it gives them an opportunity to
kick
some Klansman ass. Later that night, they're serenaded by a very cool a
cappella vocal group, in one of my favourite moments of the film that
doesn't
involve gaudy clothes, gaudy sets or humourous dialogue. There really
is
something honest and magical about this scene. It's a peek in on a bit
of
culture that I fear now, sadly, has died (I'm not one to point fingers,
but I do fear that rap music is in part to blame). It does, however,
prove
one important maxim (Straight men, get out your pencils and note-pads,
this
is important information): gals turn to butter for guys who can sing
real
sweet.
Anyway, back on the trail again, Syreena goes to visit Lixie's old
pimp, but he's not very cooperative. So she has to call in the
big guns, one of Mellow's fellow bikers named V.D., who can apparently
infect on contact (What's he got? Cooties?) and cure with an oversized
syringe full of soapy water. The pimp spills it, saying Lixie's fallen
in with a cowboy dealer. "Deals cowboys?" says Syreena, "Shouldn't be
too hard to find."
The "cowboy dealer" turns out to be a guy in a loud white cowboy outfit
that looks like he'd be more at home at the disco than on the range.
When we first see him, he's snorting the barrel of a gun! He's riding
an ice-cream vendor's bicycle, selling "Pot-Sicles" to three
neighbourhood kids who
try to hold him up, and talk alternately a la "Huey, Dewey and Louie."
Lixie, we learn, lives back at the freezer. Not only that, but she
lives
among frozen marijuana plants in an igloo! Lixie (clad in shocking pink
furs) tells her that she went to a place for runaway girls (run by a
white
man, natch), where she was drugged and impregnated. She managed to
escape
and see Cinderella about an abortion, who went to investigate the
runaway
house...and never returned.
Unsurprisingly, this leads back to the Cross Foundation. Syreena has
Flash and Mellow work over some guy who was involved in the runaway
house (and looks and sounds like a cross between Sherman Helmsley and
Bill Cosby) and he spills the beans. Syreena decides the time has come
for some "righteous action," and speeds away on her bike, tailed by the
Klansmen who kidnap her and take her back to Cross' mansion.
Well, I mean, that's where she wanted to go anyway. Anything to speed
the plot along...
Cross himself greets her, dressed in the craziest outfit yet: a sort of
superhero getup consisting of a pink leotard shot with silver
lamé, silver gauntlets, white underpants, a cape and pig ears!
He orders his
black domestics, led by a Hattie McDaniel look-alike ("The costumes
were
my idea!" crows Cross) to bring in some buckets of his ribs, then on
the
stage behind them, a minstrel-show starts!
At this point, not even with a powerful hydraulic jack could my jaw
be picked up off the floor.
After a brief round-the-table chase scene, Cross brings Syreena down
into the cellar, where a huge dungeon is constructed. Here he shows her
his prisoners, prominent figures from the black community. He then
leads her into his lab, where he shows his master plan, a cloning
machine named "Alice." "Alice" is a miracle of plywood, cardboard,
aluminum, blinking L.E.D.'s
and Christmas lights, old Army Surplus gauges, day-glo paint and
dry-ice
fog. With the help of "Alice," he hopes to clone the prominent black
figures
and, in turn, have complete control over the black vote, thus placing
his
political aspirations in the bag.
Because Syreena is a "dangerous fanatic," she's imprisoned. She doesn't
stay there long, though, as the Hattie McDaniel-manqué arrives
with the keys to the cell, saying that Cross stole his recipe from her,
and
asks her to tell the world. As she makes her escape, a rather familiar
musical riff began.....
Now, here's where my wry attempt at MST-ing was foiled by the sheer
insanity of this film. I sang "Some people are made of plastic..."
seconds
before someone on the soundtrack began doing the same! That's right, it
wasn't a song that sounded like The Dramatics' "Whatcha See Is
Whatcha
Get," it actually was The Dramatics' "Whatcha See Is Whatcha
Get"!
Well, you coulda knocked me over with a feather! The closing credit
proclaiming Stax/Volt responsible for the soundtrack clued me in after
the fact. Anyway, Syreena passes by the Dramatics performing live (all
right, lip syncing)
in their own cell, made up to look like a variety show set complete
with
a backdrop of glitter streamers! She pauses to boogie down to their
by-this-point
three-year-old hit (didn't they have any new material to promote?),
then
they point her to the exit.....
....but before she can get to the exit, she hears a familiar voice.
Yep, there's Cinderella, shackled to the wall and dressed like Snow
White.
(?????) She tries to talk her angry daughter into some Gandhi/Martin
Luther
King-like passive resistance, but Syreena will hear none of it ('cause
if there's no big confrontation at the end, there's no point in having
a
movie now is there?). She gives her mother a peck on the cheek and
takes
off, forgetting to free her in the process! An extended chase scene
follows,
Syreena (or, a resonable stuntwoman facsimile thereof) pursued by the
Klansmen
through a probably-now-defunct motocross park.
Naturally, this all leads to a spectacular showdown at the Cross
mansion. I don't need to tell you that the good guys (and gals) win,
but I'm deliberately leaving out some stuff. Trust me, even at this
late moment, this film still manages to surprise (and befuddle).
"Darktown Strutters" makes absolutely no-bones about not taking itself
seriously. The comic tone of the film is way, way over the top. And it
stands out in another way, how many other blaxploitationers can you
name with
a female lead? Trina Parks is an absolute delight as Syreena. She
didn't have much of a career (from "Diamonds Are Forever" to this, with
very little afterward), which is a shame, because her presence is a
very special one. What she lacks in acting skill she more than makes up
for with attitude, which in a rôle like this is really all that
matters. Plus, she looks great even in the most ridiculous yellow Qiana
outfits she's forced to wear.
The real joy, however, is the look of this film. It's almost
stereotypically 70's. Not just the girls' crazed outfits, but
hairstyles,
set design, everything seems to scream out "This is 1974!" The
set
design in particular is a real wonder. Looking something like a wild
blaxploitation
carnival, the sets are truly a marvel, these guys worked wonders with
plywood,
aluminum and day-glo tempera paints. This film should be forever
preserved
in a jar of formaldehyde to retain it's '74 freshness.
All this considered, it's a bit sad that the film never found a bigger
audience. When it flopped in '74, its distributor launched a new
advertising campaign, retitled it "Get Down And Boogie" and reissued it
a year later. It still didn't fly. A real pity, as this is really
something unique and different. Perhaps the time has come for "Darktown
Strutters" to find an audience.
In short, this is an ideal midnight movie. Cult film programmers, take
note.
Second Opinions: Brains on Film
IMDB Entry: for Darktown
Strutters
Buy It: Check for availability of the VHS edition over at
Amazon.com using the link provided
Click on Syreena to return...
©2003 by Progbear
*played by one Christopher Joy, who seemed to milk
this shtick for all it's worth...one of his few other big screen
appearances was in a Cheech & Chong movie, for example. Back