A.W.O.L. (1972)

          Vietnam-era movies about young Americans illegally avoiding military service tended to be angsty dramas, so A.W.O.L. is an oddity not just because it has comic elements, but because it blends drama, farce, political violence, pornography, racial strife, romance, and even sci-fi. Given the film’s obscurity, it’s unsurprising to discover this patchwork approach doesn’t work. There’s a wispy central storyline, but after about 30 minutes the movie seriously loses its way. Although the main character’s journey is central to nearly every scene, the filmmakers lack a guiding aesthetic or a thematic destination—so despite some moderately distracting moments, the whole thing has the vibe of a freewheeling brainstorming session. This project badly needed a sure hand at the helm, which is ironic given that it bears a truly hubristic credit: “Entire Production Under the Supervision of Merrill S. Brody, Executive Producer.”

          After finding his way to Sweden, boyish redhead Willy (Russ Thacker) feels lonely until visiting a porno shop, where he’s recruited to act in a skin flick. This lands him in the orbit of fellow expat Mohammad G. (Glynn Turman), who’s part of a group of lefty radicals that includes lissome blonde Inga (Isabella Kaliff). After several heated exchanges about Che Guevara and the like, Willy and Inga become lovers. They also attend protests that devolve into brutal clashes with authorities. Meanwhile, CIA agent Cupp (Dutch Miller) lurks around the edges of Willy’s life, alternately cajoling and threatening the young man to return to the States. (In one of the movie’s broadest sight gags, Cupp tempts Willy by revealing a briefcase full of American candy bars and soft drinks.) Eventually, the story becomes absurd when the CIA uses futuristic technology, and then the story makes a whiplash turn into bogus heaviosity with a fashionably dark and ambiguous climax.

          Tonally, the movie is a mess, but minor amusements reside in this disjointed hour and a half. In terms of low pleasures, Kaliff has an extended topless scene and some of the CIA-related gags are jarringly goofy. As for incrementally more sophisticated elements, Turman has a couple of monologues in which he blends emphatic ’70s urban slang with counterculture-era political rhetoric, allowing him to chew scenery agreeably. The movie also provides a minor ’70s footnote inasmuch as the score was composed by Rupert Holmes, later to achieve soft-rock immortality with “Escape (The Pina Colada Song).” Alas, none of that tune’s smooth melodicism is evident here.

A.W.O.L.: FUNKY 

A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich (1978)

          An earnest exploration of problems bedeviling America’s inner cities,  A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich was adapted from the noted Alice Childress novel of the same name. Put bluntly, the story doesn’t work in terms of cinematic narrative, because Childress, who also wrote the screenplay, failed to define the central focus, thereby falling into the myriad traps of episodic structuring. Is the movie about a young man’s descent into heroin addiction? Is it about that same young man’s fraught relationship with his mother’s boyfriend, a stand-up guy who struggles to break through the protagonist’s youthful arrogance? Or is the story about the difficulties that the protagonist’s mother and teachers face when trying to instill a sense of cultural pride and personal purpose, despite the bleak milieu of life in South Central Los Angeles? The answer to all of these questions is “yes,” and that’s the problem—with rare exceptions, the trick to adapting novels for the screen involves peeling away subplots and themes until only the core story remains, giving filmmakers the tools they need to create onscreen momentum. That didn’t happen here. So, while a great deal of what happens in A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich is believable and poignant, the parts never cohere into a potent statement.

          The main character is Benjie (Larry B. Scott), a teenager caught between good and bad influences. On the good side, he’s got his stalwart mother, Sweets (Cicely Tyson); her boyfriend, Butler (Paul Winfield); and an Afrocentric schoolteacher, Nigeria (Glynn Turman), who encourages Benjie’s nascent writing ability. On the bad side are various neighborhood lowlifes, including the dealers who draw Benjie into heroin use. While the scenes of Benjie injecting himself are bracing, they feel a bit disconnected from the rest of the story until the second half of the picture, which focuses on Benjie’s attempt to kick his deadly habit. Similarly, it’s unclear that the movie’s most important relationship is the one between Benje and Butler until very close to the end of the movie, when Winfield’s intense work raises the dramatic quality of A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich to a level suiting the seriousness of the subject matter.

A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ but a Sandwich: FUNKY

Carter’s Army (1970)

          Formulaic, predictable, and shot on a meager budget, the made-for-TV war picture Carter’s Army, often marketed by the alternate title Black Brigade, is nothing special from a cinematic perspective. However, because the movie features several noteworthy black actors, including future box-office heavyweights Richard Pryor and Billy Dee Williams, Carter’s Army is enjoyable as a sort of all-star African-American riff on The Dirty Dozen. Set in 1944 Germany, the exceedingly simplistic movie revolves around U.S. Army Captain Beau Carter (Stephen Boyd), a racist southerner given the thankless task of capturing a heavily guarded dam from the Nazis. Unfortunately for Carter, the only squad available to assist him is an all-black unit that’s never seen combat. Working reluctantly with the squad’s formidable commander, African-American Lieutenant Edward Wallace (Robert Hooks), Carter leads six enlisted men on the mission even though it’s likely to end in tragic failure. Along the way, the born-and-bred cracker learns to respect black people because of the bravery the soldiers demonstrate and because he witnesses the everyday humiliation the men suffer at the hands of fellow Americans.

          Not a single frame of Carter’s Army will catch viewers by surprise, and in fact, some scenes are a bit hard to take seriously because the forests of Germany look suspiciously like the high-desert woods above Palm Springs. (One could never accuse TV kingpin Aaron Spelling, who cowrote and coproduced this project, of overspending on location photography.) In lieu of a novel story, what keeps Carter’s Army lively is the cast.

          Moses Gunn appears as a professor suffering wartime indignities with grace, Pryor plays a soldier so afraid of fighting that he attempts desertion, Glynn Turman portrays a young man keeping a journal of the action-packed war that he wishes he could tell the folks back home he’s fighting, and Williams plays a tough guy from Harlem whose racial anger matches the intensity of Carter’s bigotry. Also in the mix are gentle giant Rosie Grier, the NFL star-turned-actor, and the stalwart Hooks (Trouble Man), who lends gravitas to the role of the squad’s leader. This being a Hollywood movie of a certain time, of course, the title character is a white guy whose journey to enlightenment is portrayed as having more narrative value than the lives of the black men around him. Veteran big-screen stud Boyd delivers adequate work as Carter, complete with a litany of disgusted facial expressions and an amusingly soupy accent.

Carter’s Army: FUNKY

Five on the Black Hand Side (1973)

          Although the success of the blaxploitation genre created tremendous employment opportunities for African-American actors (and filmmakers), the genre propagated so many stereotypes that several enterprising producers recognized opportunities for counterprogramming. For example, the domestic comedy Five on the Black Hand Side takes a lighthearted look at the tensions within a middle-class black family in Los Angeles. Not a dealer or pimp is in sight, and there’s nary a hint of inner-city blight or rampant poverty. Five on the Black Hand Side explores the affluent (or at least comfortable) side of American black life circa the early ’70s. Adapted by Charlie L. Russell from his play of the same name—without any distracting traces of its stage origins remaining—the picture explores the novel premise of a family practicing civil disobedience against their patriarch to force positive change.

          Said patriarch is John Henry Brooks (Leonard Jackson), a self-made success who runs his household like an empire. “Mr. Brooks,” as he insists on being called, dresses in three-piece suits, scorns the way his adult children embrace Afrocentrism, and treats his wife like a personal assistant instead of a spouse. The joke is that instead of being a captain of industry, Mr. Brooks is merely the proprietor of a neighborhood barbershop—respectable, no question, but hardly grandiose. When the story begins, Mr. Brooks’ overbearing leadership style has alienated nearly all of his relatives. His youngest son, Gideon (Glynn Turman), has moved out of the family apartment to live on a rooftop. His oldest son, Booker T. (D’Urville Martin), has left the house entirely. His daughter, Gail (Bonnie Banfield), has raised Mr. Brooks’ ire by insisting on an African-style wedding to her fiancé. And Mrs. Brooks (Clarice Taylor) breaks down in tears every day because her husband is so cold and imperious.

          As the story progresses, Mrs. Brooks’ children and friends encourage her to revolt, so she stages protests and walkouts, insisting Mr. Brooks sign a list of demands. Meanwhile, Mr. Brooks finds support among his male buddies, who encourage him to stand his ground. Five on the Black Hand Side moves along at a leisurely pace, lingering on long scenes that depict the texture of everyday life in the Brooks’ neighborhood—Mr. Brooks and his pals tell boastful stories in the barbershop, while Mrs. Brooks and her friends gossip in the beauty parlor. And in one of the movie’s best scenes, Booker T. and Gideon tussle over the thorny issues of assimilation and miscegenation—Black Power advocate Gideon calls Booker T. a traitor to the race because Booker T. has a white girlfriend. The way that Russell and director Oscar Williams jam signifiers and topics into the story gives Five on the Black Hand Side heft, even though the picture is largely designed as light entertainment. And entertaining it is, thanks to charming performances and spirited writing.

Five on the Black Hand Side: GROOVY

The River Niger (1976)

          Offering a potent alternative to the stereotypical content in blaxploitation films, a handful of serious dramas with primarily African-American casts were released in the ’70s, including Black Girl (1972), Claudine (1974), and this adaptation of a Tony-winning play by Joseph A. Walker. Originally presented in New York by the progressive Negro Ensemble Company, The River Niger is intense and political but loaded with so many hot-button signifiers that, seen today, it seems a bit more like a highlight reel of the Black Power movement than a proper drama. Walker crams in Afrocentrism, Black Panther-style militarized activism, the resentment felt by black Vietnam veterans, the ravages of alcoholism among urban African-Americans, and myriad other incendiary topics. Thus, even though the story pulls these threads together, more or less, by focusing on the troubles that plague a single black family, The River Niger feels episodic and pretentious, as if Walker felt compelled to address every single subject that was important to African-Americans during the early ’70s.

          In the broadest stokes, the movie depicts what happens the week that Vietnam vet Jeff Williams (Glynn Turman) comes home from the war to his family in Los Angeles. Jeff’s father, Jonny (James Earl Jones), is a drunk who dabbles in writing poetry; Jeff’s mother, Mattie (Cicely Tyson), is a strong matriarch trying to prevent her loved ones from learning she has cancer; and Jeff’s friend, Big Moe Hayes (Roger E. Mosley), is a militant caught up in an ongoing hassle with the LAPD. Suffice to say, tensions are as plentiful as plotlines. Combined with narrative-flow problems in the screen version (also written by Walker), this kitchen-sink approach to dramaturgy makes The River Niger a tough film to slog through. Worst among the narrative-flow problems is Walker’s inability to command pacing and tone; the movie jumps abruptly from intense scenes to light ones, and Walker misses myriad opportunities to group similar scenes together and/or use cross-cutting to create dramatic counterpoint. Director Krishna Shah seems equally adrift, occasionally using interesting devices—flash cuts of African masks, a striking camera angle looking over the barrel of a gun—without ever locking into a consistent style.

          Even the acting, by a cast of normally reliable performers, is inconsistent. Jones has many beautiful moments, especially when reciting poetry, but his belligerent-drunk bits get tiresome. Tyson, perpetually and rightly cast as personifications of principle, is formidable but humorless. Turman, at his best when loosest, is tight in the extreme, delivering rigid body language and stilted line deliveries. Even the always-interesting Louis Gossett Jr. is merely okay, playing the family’s doctor with a campy Jamaican accent. Holding the film together, to some degree, is a funk/R&B score by one of the quintessential ’70s bands, War, though none of their melodies connect as strongly as their loping grooves.

The River Niger: FUNKY

J.D.’s Revenge (1976)

          An imaginative mash-up of blaxploitation and horror, this New Orleans-set thriller concerns a mild-mannered law student who gets possessed by the spirit of a 1940s crook intent on payback against a murderous hoodlum. Featuring a fair amount of visual panache—think sepia-colored flashbacks and tricky mirror shots during which the protagonist sees another face instead of his own reflection—J.D.’s Revenge is consistently entertaining even though the storyline is alternately murky and overwrought. Much of the film’s potency stems from its nasty depiction of the hero’s behavior while possessed—the hero beats up a senior, slaps around and rapes his girlfriend, and nearly murders a dude by slashing him repeatedly with a straight razor. Whatever its faults, J.D.’s Revenge can’t be accused of timidity.

          Glynn Turman, the amiable star of Cooley High (1975), plays Isaac, an unassuming guy who’s stressed out from his studies but happily involved with an understanding girlfriend, Christella (Joan Pringle). One evening, Isaac and Christella attend a hypnosis show at a Bourbon Street club. While he’s hypnotized, Isaac is invaded by the spirit of J.D. Walker (David McKnight), a criminal who died violently. As the movie progresses, Isaac suffers repeated episodes during which J.D. overtakes Isaac’s body, causing Isaac to act with uncharacteristic savagery. Christella gets the worst of it, receiving two nasty beatings during sexual assaults. Furthermore, Isaac—while under J.D.’s control—tracks down the two men who were present when J.D. died. J.D.’s murderer is a gangster named Theotis Bliss (Fred Pinkard), and that man’s brother is a gangster-turned-evangelist named Rev. Elijah Bliss (Louis Gossett, Jr.). The plot gets unnecessarily complicated whenever the Bliss family is involved, but repeated flashbacks to the awful moment when both J.D. and his sister were murdered underscore why J.D. is so hungry for revenge.
          Screenwriter Jaison Starkes loses the thread of the story at regular intervals, relying on such inexplicable contrivances as J.D.’s spirit wasting time on adventures before tracking down his enemies; additionally, it’s hard to accept the idea that Isaac escapes police capture despite committing multiple heinous acts. Nonetheless, if one can ignore the picture’s myriad logical lapses, J.D.’s Revenge offers plenty of lurid thrills. The image of slight Turman strutting around in 1940s gangster garb while menacing people with his straight razor is unnerving, and the rape scenes are horrific. Plus, even though most of the film’s performances are perfunctory, Gossett is electric in all of his scenes, whether he’s frenetically testifying through church sermons or channeling anguish during the finale.

J.D.’s Revenge: FUNKY

Together Brothers (1974)

          The inner-city drama/thriller Together Brothers brings together a number of disparate elements, and though the picture doesn’t hold together well, it makes for an oddly memorable viewing experience. When the story begins, we meet Mr. Kool (Ed Bernard), an African-American beat cop who uses a human touch while patrolling a tough black ghetto. Fair and hip, he’s respected even by criminals and street kids. Yet one night, Kool is murdered—right before the eyes of grade-schooler Tommy (Anthony Wilson). Kool’s assailant flees, and the police are slow to follow up on leads, so Tommy’s older brother, teenager A.J. (Ahmad Narradin), and his pals decide to track down Kool’s killer. Among other things, they’re afraid the murderer might track Tommy down to eliminate a witness. After this interesting set-up, the movie drifts into a lively section during which A.J. and his buddies seek aid from their rivals, a Hispanic street gang led by Vega (Richard Yniguez). So far, so good, right? Well, we’ve reached the point where Together Brothers becomes offensive—the killer is revealed to be a flamboyant homosexual named Billy (Lincoln Kilpatrick), who goes back and forth between brutal rage and prissy crying jags.

          Yes, Together Brothers continues the vile tradition of stereotyping gay men as unstable freaks. And that’s a bummer, because up until Together Brothers goes wrong, it’s thoroughly arresting. Director William A. Graham shoots the hell out of the picture’s grimy urban locations, depicting vibrant souls living in defiance of crushing poverty. Furthermore, the action scenes are taut, and while the juvenile performances are spotty, adult players Bernard, Kilpatrick, Yniguez, and Glynn Turman (who plays a therapist in one scene) deliver strong work. And we haven’t even mentioned the secret weapon of Together Brothers, R&B superstar Barry White, who composed the picture’s lively score and a handful of songs—including the thumping groove “Somebody’s Gonna Off the Man.” With his imaginative arrangements and lush strings, White kicks some Together Brothers scenes into full-on blaxploitation funkiness, even though the picture is, generally speaking, bereft of blaxploitation clichés. So, while it’s difficult to recommend Together Brothers too heartily given its flaws and its ugly portrayal of homosexuality, this is an interesting picture offering small rewards for adventurous viewers.

Together Brothers: FUNKY

Cooley High (1975)

          An African-American alternative to American Graffiti (1973), this charming nostalgia piece depicts the highs and lows of teen life in the black housing projects of Chicago’s North Side during the mid-’60s. Writer Eric Monte based the script on his experiences as a student at the real Cooley High, an inner-city vocational school, and together with director Michael Schultz, Monte does a wonderful job of capturing the exuberance and vitality of a particular historical moment. Boasting a soundtrack filled with great Motown tunes, Cooley High doesn’t dwell on the challenged economic circumstances of its characters, but at the same time the picture doesn’t shy away from the dangers of ghetto life.

          Underachieving pseudo-intellectual Leroy “Preach” Jackson (Glynn Turman) and swaggering basketball prodigy Richard “Cochise” Morris (Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs) know that unless they get bold or lucky, if not both, they could end up working in dead-end jobs like so many of the adults in their neighborhood, and they’re also painfully aware of the prevalence of street-level crime among their peers. Yet they’re still testosterone-crazed adolescents, so they think they’ve got the world figured out, they’re big on breaking rules, and they feel invincible. By focusing on universal coming-of-age rituals like joyriding in cars, skipping school, and trying to make time with pretty girls, Monte creates characters to which anyone can relate, even as he integrates the countless ultra-specific details that make Cooley High a unique study of a vibrant subculture as it existed for a fleeting moment in time.

          Turman is incredibly appealing, communicating that special mixture of arrogance and insecurity that distinguishes young men trying to carve out their own identities, and he’s also very funny, especially when his character tries to manage a complicated love life. Preach has a thing going on with Sandra (Christine Jones), a classmate who won’t let him get very far, but then he falls wildly in love with Brenda (Cynthia Davis), a gorgeous girl who rebuffs his advances until she discovers his interest in poetry. Cochise, on the other hand, is the guy every teenage boy wants for a best friend—a popular jock who’s always ready for an adventure, a fight, or a prank. Hilton-Jacobs, who later achieved fame as a regular on the sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, offers a tart counterpoint to Turman’s sweetness.

          Cooley High is filled with memorable scenes and characters, like the zaftig greasy-spoon proprietor who chases troublesome kids out of her place by brandishing a cleaver, and the story advances from high jinks to melodrama in a graceful fashion. So in addition to being one of the most important black films of the ’70s—an authentic, sensitive change of pace from the demeaning sleaze of blaxploitation—it’s one of the best pictures about teen life to emerge from any era.

Cooley High: RIGHT ON