Blaxploitation Week: Cleopatra Jones

How do my readers?  Greetings to Day 2 of Blaxploitation Week and this time around we are not gonna wait for the man of action to rescue the day.   This time we need a foxy lady of 6’2” butt kicking ferocity to handle the scum of the Earth and we are going to find her employed by the DEA perhaps???  Yeah her link to the government is sketchy at best but by God she is stomping a mud hole into narcotics and crime waves.  This is Cleopatra Jones.

Claim check this!!

Doodlebug:  Hair’s like a spoiler.  You treat it good and it treats you good.  Ain’t that right honey? You hear what I am saying” Yeah, you got to hold it, caress it and love it, And if your hair gets out of line you take a scissor and say, “Hair, I’m gonna cut you.”

From the biker films of the 60’s to TV Movies, actor/director Jack Starrett (Run, Angel, Run, Nam’s Angels, Slaughter, The Gravy Train, Starsky and Hutch and Survival of Dana) takes actor/writer Max Julien (Thomasine & Bushrod and Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold) screenplay and gives it life with the leading lady herself Tamara Dobson (Fuzz, Cleopatra Jones, Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold, Murder at the World Series, Jason of Star Command and Chained Heat) with our opening scene she is commanding a napalm strike on a huge acreage of poppy fields in Turkey thus putting a huge stop gap on heroin flow via the villainess drug lord Mommy (Shelly Winters of A Place in the Sun, The Night of the Hunter, Lolita, Alfie, Touch of a Stranger and Stepping Out).

Now that Mommy is out a little over a hundred million dollars she calls in her markers to her bought police and has Cleo’s boyfriend Reuben Masters (Bernie Casey of Guns of the Magnificent Seven, Black Gunn,  Maurie, Sharky’s Machine, Spies Like Us and On the Edge), who runs B&S House, a half way house for recovering addicts to look the fool when one of his reformed addicts has a big ole baggie of smack in his pocket.  Convenient for a pat down, don’tcha think? 

NEVER TOUCH THE HAIR!!!

Cleo flies back after a mission well done (burnt to the ground really) and beats the crap out of the cops that were responsible for the raid.  They flip on Mommy ASAP but that is nowhere near enough payback for Ms. Jones.   She proceeds to raise hell in Mommy’s operations, illegal and legal and driving those sizes 9’s in the behinds of Mommy’s lickspittles.

And this would not be a true 70’s action film without a good car chase and showdown.  Ms. Jones’ ride is a tricked out black and silver 1973 Corvette Stingray with a T-bar panel in the roof so she does not squash her afro.  That and machine gun headlights, some serious suspension and brakes to outdrive Bullit, our lady is hell on wheels and packs a Colt 1911 .45 to distribute justice.

I had just a few points I wanted to make.   I noticed a flub during the chase scene that the Mustang trailing her had no hubcaps one scene and then the next a hubcap goes flying off one wheel but magically there were three caps remaining.   Continuity director was asleep for a few shots here and there I guess.   The role for Cleopatra Jones was initially written up for Vonetta McGee (The Big Bust Out, Blacula, Detroit 9000, Foxbat, Repo Man and L.A. Law) and no offense to the lovely lady I feel Ms. Dobson brought her “A” game.   

The violence level is actually pretty mild with the Kung Fu beatings and some shoot outs it doesn’t look like Reservoir Dogs.  The language will make you cringe given most exploitation film show the racial tensions better than most films and yes my readers that infamous “N-word” is used like a comma so heads up there.   Still, all in all I rather enjoyed seeing the movie.

You sassin' me? Best not.