Big Time (1977)

          Noteworthy as the lone venture into film production and screenwriting for legendary Motown singer-songwriter William “Smokey” Robinson, Big Time is an amateurish but mostly pleasant blaxploitation comedy that benefits greatly from a funky soundtrack composed by, naturally, the estimable Mr. Robinson. The picture also has three appealing actors in leading roles. Christopher Joy gives an amusing turn as a low-rent hustler who gets into trouble by messing with the Mob’s money. Roger E. Mosley is entertaining as a crook with a pimptastic wardrobe, who may or may not be as tough as he seems. And leading lady Jayne Kennedy, playing an insurance investigator who goes undercover to entrap Joy’s character, is so breathtaking that it doesn’t matter if her performance is merely adequate—after all, the description “merely adequate” could just as easily apply to Big Time itself, so why not enjoy the sights and sounds that make Big Time bearable?

          Eddie Jones (Joy) is a con artist specializing in fake accidents (think neck braces and frivolous lawsuits). A string of bad decisions have left him in debt to J.J. (Mosely), who threatens violence if Eddie doesn’t make good. In a typical scene, J.J., who has his initials inscribed on vanity plates and on custom-made gold teeth, compels Eddie to leap from a moving car even though Eddie’s wearing only a towel. Desperate to pay his debts, Eddie enlists his buddy Harold (Tobar Mayo) for help running schemes. Eddie also woos Shana (Kennedy) following a meet-cute during an accident, though he’s too dim to recognize her hidden agenda. Eventually, Eddie stumbles onto a crime scene and steals a suitcase full of cash. This upsets mobsters, who are portrayed as a bunch of fat Italians sitting around a table covered with pizzas.

          Once the FBI enters the storyline, things get confusing fast, so during a good 30 minutes of Big Time, it’s difficult to track who’s doing what to whom and why. Also distracting: The way Shana’s partner delivers most of his lines in a bad Humphrey Bogart impersonation. Presumably influenced by the anarchic vibe of Sidney Poitier/Bill Cosby comedies from the mid-’70s, Big Time is blaxploitation without degradation, which counts for something. The language is gentle, the racial portrayals aren’t especially vulgar, the violence is tame, and Kennedy maintains her dignity by never wearing less than a bikini. So even though Big Time is dopey, it’s an amiable romp set to a slick Motown groove, and every third or fourth attempt at a joke nearly connects.

Big Time: FUNKY

The Muthers (1976)

          Yet more women-in-prison sleaze from the Philippines, only this time with a modern-day-pirates angle, The Muthers does not merit any special mention in the areas of execution, imagination, quality, or taste. It’s a crude piece of work, with grungy photography, needle-drop scoring, and way too many beatings and executions and rapes. Within those narrow parameters, however, the movie more or less gets the dirty job done. It’s a live-action comic book for leering fans who dig bloodshed and smut, and it features two of the loveliest African-American starlets working the low-budget cinema circuit during the ’70s, former Playboy model Jeannie Bell and former beauty-pageant winner Jayne Kennedy, who later became a sportscaster covering the NFL. Given the predominantly black cast, The Muthers also qualifies as a blaxploitation flick.

          The picture opens on the high seas, where a pirate gang led by Kelly (Bell) plunders mercilessly. When Kelly learns that her sister has been kidnapped by slavers and thrown into a prison that’s used as a meat market for men eager to buy women, Kelly makes a deal with the government—she’ll break into the prison and expose the slavers’ scheme, in exchange for the sister’s freedom and a pardon for the pirates’ crimes. The plot is illogical and laborious, but seeing as how the prison is named “Get Out If You Can,” the intellectual resources available to the filmmakers were not boundless. Upon arriving at the prison, Kelly clashes with Serena (Kennedy), a glamorous inmate who avoids hard labor and physical abuse by serving as the warden’s live-in concubine. Will the ladies join forces and mount an escape? Have you ever seen a prison movie before?

          Considerations along the lines of acting, characterization, and style don’t matter much for a film like The Muthers, which is designed to generate as much titillation per scene as possible; as such, noting the ineptitude with which certain elements are handled seems pointless. Suffice to say that attractive women do lots of unattractive things, occasionally delivering badass one-liners. There’s also just enough tragedy in the storyline to lend The Muthers the faintest whiff of actual humanity—although that doesn’t detract, if that’s the right word, from the overall low-budget trashiness.

The Muthers: FUNKY

Fighting Mad (1978)

          Sometimes a bad movie merits an ironic viewing simply because the premise is so absurd that one can happily marvel at the hubris—or insanity—of the filmmakers. Fighting Mad easily meets that criterion. The violent flick was originally released as Death Force, but then it was reissued under the moniker Fighting Mad once two of its costars achieved greater fame—gorgeous starlet Jayne Kennedy became a popular sportscaster, while her husband, DJ-turned-actor Leon Isaac Kennedy, starred in the hit exploitation flick Penitentiary (1979). In other words, never mind the above poster suggesting that Fighting Mad is a straight-up action movie featuring the Kennedys as a couple. Quite to the contrary, Leon plays the main villain, and Jayne plays the long-suffering wife of the actual star, James Iglehart.

          Here’s the humdinger of a plot. In the Vietnam War era, soldiers McGee (Leon Isaac Kennedy), Morelli (Carmen Argenziano), and Russell (Iglehart) smuggle gold out of Indochina, and then sell it to criminals in the Philippines. Yet Russell’s partners get greedy, so they stab him and toss him off a boat in the middle of the Pacific. Russell survives, washing ashore on an island inhabited only by two Japanese soldiers who were never told that World War II ended. The Japanese soldiers train Russell to be a samurai, even giving him his own sword. Meanwhile, McGee and Morelli return to the U.S. and become crime lords. Furthermore, McGee puts the moves on Russell’s wife, Maria (Jayne Kennedy), who believes her husband dead. (This is especially odious because Maria has a young son with Russell.) Next, Filipino soldiers find the island and rescue Russell, who travels back to the States with his samurai sword and a thirst for vengeance.

          Fighting Mad is exactly as silly as this description suggests, but it’s got a certain pulpy energy—exciting things happen, the pace is brisk, and the story never gets mired in troublesome things like characterization or nuance. This is sheer escapist nonsense, combining the genres of blaxploitation, crime, and martial arts into a schlocky smorgasbord. Excepting Argenziano, who’s an acceptable low-rent substitute for swarthy ’70s stalwart Don Gordon, the actors in Fighting Mad are uniformly weak. Nonetheless, each player fits his or her role. Iglehart’s built like a boxer, so he’s quite a sight when flailing his katana, and Leon Isaac Kennedy manages to look like a skeevy pimp even though he’s not actually playing a skeevy pimp—watch the way his Afro always seems slightly unkempt. Plus, since Jayne Kennedy was one of the great beauties of the ’70s, it doesn’t much matter that she lacks dramatic skill; cast as eye candy, she more than justifies her presence in the picture. She also gets the best line in the movie. When McGee offers to help raise Maria’s young son, Maria spits back, “He don’t need a mother like you for a father!” And if that line doesn’t immediately seem awesome, note that in this circumstance, “mother” is an abbreviation. Shut yo’ mouth!

Fighting Mad: FUNKY