Cotton Comes To Harlem
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Movie Reviews of Cotton Comes To Harlem
Movie Review: Awesome
Summary: 5 Stars
"Coffin Ed & " Gravedigger Jones are at it again. Another Blockbuster fromthe "70's. Dig The old cars" A must have & follow up to " A Rage In Harlem" Redd Foxx makes a appearance as " Uncle Bud"Movie Review: Great African American Movie
Summary: 5 Stars
A must see, funy, dramatic and a joy to watch, over and over agian. WOW! Made in the 70's, Awesome.Movie Review: Solid, fairly light early blaxploitation piece helps get the genre going
Summary: 4 Stars
This 1970 Ossie Davis film is sometimes considered the first real entry in the "blaxploitation" genre. That's debatable - there are several other films from 1968-70 that seem to bear many of the genre tropes, but not being familiar with most of the other examples yet, I can't really argue the point. In any case COTTON DOMES TO HARLEM is certainly a prime example of this kind of film as it struggled to find an identity - how black should it be? How violent? How sexy? How serious/funny? COTTON seems to tread the middle ground in most of these areas, mostly for better but occasionally for worse.
The film begins with unorthodox New York City police detectives Gravedigger ("Digger") Jones (Godfrey Cambridge) and Coffin Ed Johnson (Raymond St. Jacques) casting a wary eye on the proceedings of a benefit for voluntary repatriation to Africa in Harlem, lead by the magnetic Revererend Deke O'Malley (Calvin Lockhart) which gets broken up - just after the money ($87,000) has all been collected - by armed men firing into the crowd. The men grab the dough and escape, and the Reverend disappears too in another car. The cops pursue, and we have a short but fairly exciting car chase that ends in - believe it - the bad guys' cars blowing up, and the cops hitting a watermelon stand. Along the way we find a drug addict wandering out into traffic and just missing getting hit, and a black conman stealing furs from a Jewish street vendor. Way to hit up those stereotypes, Ossie & company...
The detectives think O'Malley is behind the disappearing money himself; Coffin Ed in particular harbors a violent hatred for the guy. Various encounters with a stranger old guy (Red Foxx) who has a bale of cotton for sale, white mafiosi, the typical hard-ass police captain (John Anderson) who threatens to take our heroes' badges at least a couple of times, and the preacher's very, very fine mistress (actually referred to multiple times as a "stone cold fox") Iris (Judy Pace) make for a pretty entertaining, if ultimately disjointed action-comedy. There's a serious story going on about how black people are often their own worst enemies, allowing people like O'Malley to bilk them on false promises - and there's just a little bit of exploration of the problems of being black cops in a crime-ridden black community - but the film isn't really interested in dealing with the social issues. Certainly it's not as interested as it is in showcasing some great outfits on Ms. Pace, the detectives and the pimp-like O'Malley; the great often-unclothed body of Ms. Pace; and the pretty damn awesome music by Galt MacDermot which oscillates easily between low-key R&B, a funky sound that's not quite the "typical" blaxploitation vibe, and even for a scene or two a country-folk-rock groove.
All in all then, it's a lot of fun, though it might have been a little more memorable had it actually taken itself and the material (a screenplay by the director and Arnold Perl, based on a Chester Himes novel) a little more seriously. And frankly, the whole repatriation-to-Africa theme seems pretty weird for a film set in 1970 - the novel it's based on was set significantly earlier, pre-Civil Rights movement.
Movie Review: Electrifying Inner-City Comic Thriller
Summary: 4 Stars
Director Ossie Davis delivers not only a taut police thriller but a film that inserts the concerns of the civil rights movement circa 1970 in a fascinating way. Filmed on actual locations the film just exudes authenticity and atmosphere. For a film that keeps it real I found it interesting that the film's score was composed by Galt McDermott of "Hair" fame(?!). Another minor quibble is that the violence in the film was at times over-the-top. Godfrey Cambridge as Gravedigger Jones and Raymond St. Jacques as Coffin Ed Johnson make an engaging pair. They assume their duty as New York police detectives is to protect their people from predators whether they be black or white even if at times they are at odds with their white captain. Calvin Lockhart is deliciously smarmy as Reverend Deke O'Malley who bilks his congregants out of cash for a bogus back to Africa scheme. Judy Pace is seductively evil as Iris, O'Malley's main squeeze. Redd Foxx is underutilized here as a junk dealer but his character does prove integral to the film's plot.Movie Review: Two Words: Judy Pace!
Summary: 4 Stars
Seeing Judy Pace in this movie is worth the price of admission alone! The movie itself has an interesting storyline and it does bounce around a little but is definately entertaining. This movie isn't as cliche as many of the other films in this genre. There are some good chase scenes and it was interesting to see Redd Foxx pre 'Sanford and Son'. I would consider this one of the most important movies of the blaxploitation genre.