It’s a triple feature! Yaaaay! These are some of my favorite movies ever:

Uptown Saturday Night

1974

This flick was unique because it was atypical of the other movies in the genre because whereas the other flicks were pretty much about down with whitey and killing, the man, this one was about two average guys (Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby) who got caught up in drama when their wallets get stolen at a seedy nightclub they were visiting–one problem–one of the wallets contained a winning lottery ticket so they went on a hunt for their rightful property. And that’s what happens when you go uptown Saturday night, lol. It was directed by Sidney Poitier. Uptown got soooo popular that it spawned two spin-offs that did equally as well.

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I didn’t do one last week so why not get a bit of a jump start, a couple of hours ahead of time? Today’s feature is a unique double feature becuase one flick is about the making of the other. It’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, 1971.

Produced, written and directed by Melvin Van Peebles, this film is considered to be the flick that started the “blaxploitation” genre. Although techincally, blaxploitation movies previously existed (The Big Doll House and When Cotton Comes to Harlem–to name a few) this was the most paramount and controversial, rendering it an almost unheard of (at the time) “X” rating. It’s the tale of Sweetback (who earned his name at 13 while losing his virginity to a grown woman–a prostitute who came on to him) played by Melvin’s son Mario, who saved a Black Panther from the cops by killing the harassing office, then going on the run from “The Man” and successfully getting away. The tagline for this flick is “The film the man doesn’t want you to see.”

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Black Caesar, 1973

Plot: Foine a$$ Fred Williamson stars as Tommy Gibbs a man raised in the ghetto who grows up to become Harlem’s top kingpin. Angry at the racist society around him…

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