Let’s not kid ourselves—if you took Pam Grier out of Sheba, Baby, you’d have 90 minutes of taxidermy-level stiffness, a script that reads like it was written during a lunch break at Sears, and action scenes that move with all the urgency of a DMV line on Ambien. This isn’t blaxploitation; it’s blahxploitation. It’s as … Read More “Sheba, Baby (1975): Pam Grier Deserves Better Than This Beige Revenge Fantasy” »
There are cult classics, and then there’s Coffy—a film so desperate to be gritty, it scrapes its knuckles against the pavement for 90 minutes straight. Directed by Jack Hill and starring Pam Grier in her breakout role, Coffy wants to be a fierce middle finger to systemic corruption, racism, and the drug trade. What it … Read More “Coffy (1973) – Pam Grier, Shotguns, and the Wobbly Rage of Exploitation Cinema” »
There are films that swagger. Then there’s Truck Turner, which bursts through the front door with a foot-long magnum in one hand and a six-pack of Olde English in the other. Released in 1974, this Isaac Hayes-led blaxploitation gem is less a movie and more a two-fisted time capsule of an era when Los Angeles … Read More “Truck Turner (1974): Where Pimps Die Hard and Isaac Hayes Drives Like a Maniac” »
If grit were a currency, Across 110th Street would be Fort Knox. It’s a movie dipped in gasoline, lit by the neon of a crumbling Harlem, and set to the smoky baritone of Bobby Womack. And while the title sounds like a public transit PSA or maybe a Motown b-side about unrequited love and bus … Read More “Across 110th Street (1972) — The Best Movie with the Worst Title Since “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes”” »
There’s something about Cotton Comes to Harlem that makes you want to drink your bourbon straight and your politics crooked. It’s a film that explodes onto the screen like a Molotov cocktail tossed into the back of a preacher’s Cadillac—a wild, funky, sun-drenched fever dream of cops, crooks, and con men, directed by a man … Read More “Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970): A Hard-Boiled Love Letter in Gunpowder” »
If “The Wisher” were any more lifeless, it’d be sitting in a La-Z-Boy with a gravy stain on its shirt, yelling at the Price Is Right. Gavin Wilding’s 2002 Canadian horror flick stumbles in wearing a trench coat full of borrowed clichés and all the menace of a damp sponge. This movie isn’t scary—it’s the … Read More “The Wisher (2002) – A Cursed Movie Masquerading as Horror” »
There’s bad. There’s so-bad-it’s-good. And then there’s Mosquito—a film so creatively bankrupt it makes you nostalgic for the sweet, warm embrace of brain freeze. Released in 1994, Mosquito is the kind of movie that crawls out of a VHS bargain bin at a gas station somewhere between Nowhere and Regret, Michigan. It wants to be … Read More “Mosquito (1994) – A Bloodsucker of a Movie, and Not in the Way You’d Hope” »
There’s a special kind of dread in liminal spaces. Highways. Motels. The inside of a Greyhound bus that smells like mustard and old socks. These are America’s true horror cathedrals—where lives unravel one gas station burrito at a time. In Masters of Horror: Pick Me Up, director Larry Cohen grabs that highway nihilism by the … Read More “Pick Me Up – Larry Cohen’s Grim Roadside Wager with Death and Fairuza Balk’s Devilish Spark” »
Original Gangstas is the kind of movie that sounds like a good idea when you’re six bourbons deep at a VHS nostalgia convention. Round up the legends of 1970s blaxploitation—Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, Pam Grier, Richard Roundtree—and throw them back into the streets of Gary, Indiana like they never left. You know, for old times’ … Read More “Original Gangstas (1996) More Geriatric Than Gangsta” »
If you’re looking for a TV movie that feels like it was shot on a budget smaller than a Costco rotisserie chicken, yet still manages to hold your attention through sheer ‘90s charisma and the hypnotic presence of Traci Lords’ cheekbones, As Good As Dead (1995) might be your jam. What makes it even stranger … Read More “As Good As Dead (1995) – Lifetime, Lipstick, and a Low-Stakes Body Swap” »
