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Darktown Strutters
Get Down and Boodie!
USA 1975
produced by Gene Corman for New World
directed by William Witney
starring Trina Parks, Edna Richardson, Bettye sweet, Shirley Washington, Roger E.Mosley, Christopher Joy, Stan Shaw, DeWayne Jessie, Norman Bartold, Charles Knapp, Edward Marshall, Dick Miller, Gene Simms, Milt Kogan, Sam Laws, Frankie Crocker, Della Thomas, Ed Bakey, Fuddle Bagley, Frances E.Nealy, Raymond Allen, Alvin Childress, the Dramatics, Barbara Morrison, Charles Woolf, Oaky Miller, John Gary Williams
written by George Armitage
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
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Syreena (Trina Parks) leads an all-female. all-black biker gang (who
roam the streets on motorized thricycles), and they are always on the run
from the cops and the Ku Klux Klan alike - but this time around, Syreena
has come to town with a mission, to find her missing mother Cinderella
(Frances E.Nealy), who has run an abortion program for black women until
she just vanished into thin air. Doing some investigation, sometimes
helped by her kung fu savvy brother Flash (Gene Simms), Syreena stumbles
upon a plot to abduct prominent black people from all over the town, and
one name comes up time and again, that of Commander Cross (Norman
Bartold), a self-proclaimed black people's friend who's really a white
supremacist backing the Ku Klux Klan. He manages to capture Syreena
though and can't help but gloating about his plan: To use a cloning
machine to replace all black leaders with replicas more sympathetic to his
cause. But since Cross has black servants, they instinctively side with
Syreena and help her escape - and she comes back not only with her gang
but with a whole army of blacks, and they conquer Cross's estate like
nobody's business and also free Syreena's mum. And in the end, everybody
is witnessing the birth of the first and last clone Cross's machine will
ever produce: Cross himself. And since Cross the clone is nicer than the
real Cross, they have the real one tarred and feathered and party with the
clone. Admittedly, this synopsis doesn't sound like much, just
like a rather typical blaxploitation flick with elements from the biker
and science fiction genre thrown in just for good measure - but then
again, the mere plotline as such doesn't even begin to describe this piece
of utter wackiness that is full of bizarre, almost surreal costumes, where
people tend to break out into song-and-dance routines at the least fitting
moments, where slapstick is used to bring racial agendas across, and where
action scenes are more inspired by popular vintage cartoons and the Keystone
Cops than by genre standards of the 1970's. That said, Darktown
Strutters most certainly has its shortcomings, especially some of the
humour misfires horribly, but that does not make it any less of a very
unusual viewing experience, and most certainly the weirdest blaxploitation
ever committed to film.
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