Blaxploitation Films

Book excerpt: Fully updated to include Baadassss and The Hebrew Hammer and to cover the deaths of Isaac Hayes and Rudy Rae Moore In the early 1970s a type of film emerged that featured all-black casts; really cool soul, R 'n' B, and disco soundtracks; characters sporting big guns, big dashikis, and even bigger 'fros; and had some of the meanest, baddest attitudes to shoot their way across the screen. An antidote to the sanitized "safe" images of blackness that Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby presented to America, these films depicted a reality about the world which African-American audiences could identify with, even if the stories themselves were pure fantasy. This guide reviews and discusses more than 60 Blaxploitation films, considering them from the perspectives of class and racial rebellion, genre, and Stickin' it to the Man. Subgenres covered include Blaxploitation horror films, kung-fu movies, westerns, and parodies.