Blaxploitation

Undercover Brother

  • Title: Undercover Brother
  • IMDb: link

Wayback Wednesday takes us back to 2002 to a film spoofing the blaxploitation movies of the 1970s. Eddie Griffin stars as a “Soul Train reject with a Robin Hood complex” and fashion three decades out of style whose actions earn the attention of The B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D., a secret organization fighting for the Afro-American Way, who enlists the vigilante’s help in proving The Man is behind the sudden change in behavior of presidential candidate turned fried chicken aficionado General Warren Boutwell (Billy Dee Williams).

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Big Doll House

  • Title: Big Doll House
  • IMDb: link

Big Doll House movie reviewThrowback Tuesday takes us back to 1971’s Big Doll House. Produced by B-movie legend Roger Corman, the film kicked-off a jungle subset of the women-in-prison genre starring Judith Brown, Roberta Collins, Pam Grier, Brooke Mills, Pat Woodell, and Gina Stuart as inmates in a prison of an unnamed tropical country run by an evil warden (Christiane Schmidtmer) and overseen by the Nazi-like torturer Lucien (Kathryn Loder). Collins, Grier, and Brown would all return for the similarly themed Women in Cages released the same year.

Pushing the boundaries of what was allowed in the loosened ratings of the time, the independent film follows the basic format of the exploitation genre putting the women in various compromising positions guaranteed to get their clothes off such as strip searches, group shower scenes, catfights (one even in mud), lesbian and bondage scenes, and torture. We also get a revolution and escape plot, which would become part of the sub-genre, culminating in the group’s attempt to escape the prison during the movie’s climax. Although not the main character, the film is notable for launching Grier’s career in this genre and blaxploitation films.

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