Sweet Sweetbacks Baadassss Song – 1971
Director
Melvin Van Peebles

Writer
Melvin Van Peebles

Cast
Melvin Van Peebles
Simon Chuckster
Hubert Scales

Review by Wayne Malin

Badly dated,

Angry film about a black man who kills a white cop and is on the run from the cops for the entire film. Along the way he kills other people (all white) and has numerous sexual encounters.

I saw this years ago at a revival theatre. I had heard it was an excellent, graphic and powerful film about racism. For the record I’m a white guy. What I saw was a dull, stupid, plot less, badly done movie with inaudible dialogue and scenes constantly going in and out of focus. The film makes it clear that white men are all racist jerks and have no problem with killing black guys. And white women should just be used for sex. This attitude might have seemed revolutionary in 1971 but it comes across today as sexist, racist (against white people) and more than a little questionable. This film might actually have been disturbing if it had been better made. The acting was lousy I think… the technical aspects of the film were so bad that it’s really hard to give an totally accurate judgment of it.

And the stupid tag line “Rated X by an all white jury” is ridiculous. Let’s see…it opens with a young black kid (about 12) stripped down and forced to have sex with a woman. THAT alone should give it an X. And there’s plenty of nudity and sexual acts shown graphically.

After about 75 minutes of this I walked out of the theatre. I was just so bored and annoyed I couldn’t stay till the end. A lousy, disjointed period piece. Skip it.