PAM Grier was on a roll in the early 70s. As a proper icon of the so-called Blaxploitation genre she roared her way through gritty and groovy fare like Coffy and Foxy Brown. Beautiful and bad ass in an early 70s kind of way, she carved out a neat little niche for herself cutting down drug dealers and pimps while sporting the kind of full-blown Afro-and-flared-trouser-suit combination that usually only a member of Earth Wind And Fire could carry off.
Sexy and streetwise, she created an on-screen persona so powerful that it was really only a matter of time before a hopelessly addicted B-movie obsessive like director Quentin Tarantino reintroduced her unique magic to the watching world. He did just that with his loving homage to the African American crime film with Jackie Brown in 1997 and her status as the original queen of black action cinema was assured.
Around the same time Miss Grier was knocking them dead in those original wah-wah-pedal-enhanced funky tales of inner-city life on LA’s mean streets, she also knocked out a series of women-in-prison potboilers that brought her to a whole new, and slightly grubbier, audience. The Big Doll House (1971), The Big Bird Cage (1972) and Women In Cages (71) all scored big on the American drive-in circuit and all made Grier a leading lady to reckon with.
The best of these cheesy but undeniably entertaining exploitation epics that Grier graced with her presence is Black Mama, White Mama from 1973 (re-released this month by Arrow Video).
Produced by the king of B-movie beauty Roger Corman, directed by Eddie Romero and released originally by those stalwarts of stateside sleaze American International Pictures, it’s a film packed with all the action, violence, humour and gratuitous nudity that the most loyal of Pam Grier fans could hope for. That the film was developed from a story written by future Silence Of The Lambs director Jonathan Demme only adds to its impressive cult credibility.
Delivered to a remote female-only prison on a tropical island, hardened prostitute Lee Daniels (Grier) and unrepentant revolutionary Karen Brent (Margaret Markov) butt heads repeatedly in the grim facilities and their behaviour leads them to be transferred to a high-security block. As they’re driven away they are chained together and when some of Karen’s rebel friends attack the bus and set them free the warring couple are forced to flee across country towards freedom.
Admittedly the whole 'odd couple in chains' element is lifted wholesale from the 1958 film The Defiant Ones but there’s much to savour here. Yes there is an obligatory naked shower scene near the top but Grier is immense as the black power icon Lee and Markov gives a powerful and, believe it or not female-empowering, performance as the rebel attempting to buck the system.
There are the shoot-outs and fist fighting that you’d expect from a low-budget 70s action flick and Sid Haig’s entertaining turn as the cowboy bounty hunter who tracks the women down is, like Pam Grier in just about anything, unforgettable.
