1966 early blaxploitation movie
Rating: 10/20
Plot: Well, it's sort of on the poster up there. A light-skinned black man infiltrates the KKK in order to get revenge after his young daughter is firebombed to death.
Maybe this is just the white guilt speaking, but I thought the ending of this was very unsatisfying. I know that, at least on a cinematic level, the way the entire plan nearly falls to pieces at the end adds some dramatic tension and some suspense, but it was all so clumsy. I wanted blood. I wanted the bad guys to suffer. And I wanted more of those bastards to meet an undoubtedly very disappointed maker.
This is also known as I Cross the Color Line, by the way. And look at this poster:
That looks like an entirely different movie, one that focuses on sexy Andrea who, even though she's an important enough character, is not really a main character. She might be the worst actor in the thing though. Her "Little Mary? Not Mary!" overreaction after the main character gets the bad news about his daughter being set on fire is the type of thing you probably shouldn't laugh at. Later in the movie, she gets to play drunk. She's played by Rima Kutner, and this was Rima Kutner's only role.
Ted V. Mikels is not known as a great director. And this isn't a good movie. But it's an interesting movie and a movie that's sort of daring for the mid-60's, pre-blaxploitation and a couple years before MLK Jr. was assassinated. The conflict's stirred up once segregation is made illegal. That's not popular with Southern whites ("Black boy, you done tored it!" is one of my favorite lines in this), and the Ku Klux Klan reacts with their general intimidation tactics, a lynching and murder, and then a firebombing that goes either horribly wrong or horribly right depending on who you ask. There's social commentary there, probably because you can't make a movie where a black guy becomes a member of the KKK without some sort of message, but the whole thing is so clumsily delivered. A couple cops talk very briefly, almost like it was a scene added during post-production to give the whole thing more of a message, about how they're making a big mistake "not treating these. . .people like human beings." There's the main character, played by Richard Gilden who wasn't really in anything else of note unless playing a "Hebrew in Dathan's Tent" in The Ten Commandments is notable, who alternates between complete rage and something very different at the end. I'm not sure what his plans were exactly during the climax of the movie, but it seemed like he was leaning toward compassion to me. There were also a pair of guys who represented more of a violent response to racism and inequality. I never caught the main guy's name, but his mute sidekick muscle was called Barnaby. The speaker sure did try to Act (with that capital-A) the hell out of that role though. Notice the bravado when he gives a pep talk in the bar. I was actually pretty close to pausing the movie to go outside and kill a white person or two myself. Anyway, they represent the more Malcolm X philosophical approach to Civil Rights, I suppose, but their story doesn't end well at all. So there's probably a bit of a message there, but it, like the rest of this thing, is a little muddied. Gilden's not 100% hero in this. There's a terrifically awful scene after he gets the phone call about his daughter being killed where he starts choking his blonde girlfriend while saying, "White! White! White! White! White!" It actually made me laugh out loud and pee a little bit. After that, he runs down a tunnel while the dialogue from the previous scene is repeated, all echoey. It's trippy stuff. "You know who did it? The Klan! The Ku Klux Klan!" I'm never sure exactly how the guy's wig works, but the character was smart. And when he said, "Hang onto your socks, Chuck!", you knew he had white-guy talk down.
If he's not 100%, that's fine because the villains are 100% bad. The KKK violence in this is pretty harsh like KKCaricatures,. They sure like burning their crosses, and there's a tiny burning one and a quick zoom after a quartet of Klansfellows shoot down a character. And then they firebomb the wooden puppet version of the little girl. It's harsh stuff. I actually learned a lot about the KKK from this movie. For example, they like their K-words nearly as much as burning crosses. They use words like klavern, konklave, kludd, knights. I'm surprised that the subtitle after the initiation scene said "congratulations" instead of "kongratulations" actually. Turns out, they have a very formal initiation process. And they have the title of Grand Cyclops which helps make John Goodman's character in O Brother, Where Art Thou? make more sense. Well, makes him something other than an allusion to The Odyssey anyway. The Klansguys say things like, "A hangin's more excitin' than throwin' a bomb," and they say them in cartoonish voices that sound like they belong in a Disney movie. And one chubbier Klansman gets really excited following the initiation sequence and starts shaking enough to make me wonder if he was related to Chris Farley. Anyway, I was a little shocked with how hard it seems to be to even get in the Klan.
My favorite character was played by Whitman Mayo of Sanford and Son and D.C. Cab fame. He was Mr. Rhythm in the latter. Here, he plays an old man even though he was only 36 when this was released. He was Redd Fox's old friend in Sanford and Son, too. He's a bartender in this, and gets to be a bad ass. Samuel L. Jackson should play Alex in the remake. "Now I'm gonna ask you kindly to get your motherfucking ass out of my motherfucking bar."
Man, is the opening to this something else. The credits appear over a shot of a cross burning while the type of theme song you'd expect to hear in a 50's Wild West film plays. "The Ku Klux Klan killed my little girl," croons the singer, poorly. "So he'll get vengeance as the first black Klansman." It's really a beautiful thing. This ends with a pretty terrific ending, too, the guy wandering up a hill in a forest before there's a halcyon shot of clouds and a John F. Kennedy quote that I didn't bother reading.
This movie would have been a little more violent if it had appeared in the 70's. The white bastards would have gotten theirs a decade later. Still, I'm glad I watched this rather unusual film, probably Ted V. Mikels' best movie.
Anybody else watch it?
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