Supersoul Brother (1978)

The best joke related to this rotten blaxploitation comedy is its alternate title, The Six Thousand Dollar Nigger, an edgy riff on The Six Million Dollar Man satirizing how black lives are valued in American society as compared to white lives. Had the filmmakers actually created a spoof about a bargain-basement bionic man, as some advertising materials suggest, Supersoul Brother could have been funny and provocative. Unfortunately, it’s just crude and stupid. Two criminals approach a scientist named “Dr. Dippy,” played incompetently by little person Peter Conrad, and pay him $6,000 to create a serum that grants invulnerability and super-strength. The catch is that the recipient of these powers will die a week after the serum is administered. The criminals grab a wino off the street, then provide him with a swank new pad and a maid who performs sexual services, promising financial rewards in exchange for receiving an injection of the doctor’s serum. (They don’t tell him about the whole impending-death thing.) The wino becomes super-powered and helps the crooks pull off a heist, but when the mad doctor’s pretty assistant tells him the truth, the wino rebels. All of this unfolds in some of the least attractive frames ever committed to celluloid. Director Rene Martinez Jr.’s camerawork is roughly equivalent to that found in amateur porn, all artless compositions and choppy edits and garish lighting. This presentation problem is exacerbated by dopey scatological dialogue and mindless sex jokes. (The insertion of a rectal thermometer is presented as a comic highlight.) Naturally, all of the performances are atrocious, though leading man “Wildman” Steve Gallon, a regional nightclub performer who appeared in a handful of terrible movies, has something that vaguely resembles swagger.

Supersoul Brother: LAME