Director and writer Greydon Clark had $50,000 and the idea to take Shampoo and make a black version, subverting blacksploitation by having its hero - Jonathan (John Daniels) - be a business owner instead of the expected criminal. The director of photography had a car accident and still said he would show up. He didn't and the film's gaffer, Dean Cundey, took over.
Mr. Jonathan's is the most successful hair salon for women on the Sunset Strip and that's because, well, every old and rich white woman in town is coming to get dicked down by Mr. Jonathan. There's no other polite way to say it. Backed up by hairdressers Artie (Skip E. Lowe, the inspiration for Jiminy Glick) and Richard (Gary Allen), he lives the kind of life that Machete would later imitate.
He soon falls in love with his receptionist, Brenda (Tanya Boyd), who breaks his heart when she disappears. That's because she's been kidnapped by her ex, a white mobster, and Jonathan loses his mind after they tear up his shop and even sexually abuse his hairdressers. So he does what any of us would. He gets a chainsaw and kills everyone.
This is the kind of movie where a white woman looks at a nude black man and says, "Oh my God! Mr. Jonathan, it IS bigger and better!" Perhaps you will not be surprised by just how bad the depiction of its gay characters is. This was made in 1976 and that's in my lifetime. Also: nearly everyone used stage names as it was non-union, so William Bonner is billed as Jack Meoff. That's kind of the name you'd expect from a porn, but this feels like an adult movie for the first section - there's a scene in which two young women in a pool seduce Mr. Johnathan before their mother mounts him and makes them watch - and then it becomes a romance before someone is sodomized with a curling iron and revenge comes with a pool cue, an axe and finally, that chainsaw in a gory climax no one saw coming.
Mr. Jonathan's is the most successful hair salon for women on the Sunset Strip and that's because, well, every old and rich white woman in town is coming to get dicked down by Mr. Jonathan. There's no other polite way to say it. Backed up by hairdressers Artie (Skip E. Lowe, the inspiration for Jiminy Glick) and Richard (Gary Allen), he lives the kind of life that Machete would later imitate.
He soon falls in love with his receptionist, Brenda (Tanya Boyd), who breaks his heart when she disappears. That's because she's been kidnapped by her ex, a white mobster, and Jonathan loses his mind after they tear up his shop and even sexually abuse his hairdressers. So he does what any of us would. He gets a chainsaw and kills everyone.
This is the kind of movie where a white woman looks at a nude black man and says, "Oh my God! Mr. Jonathan, it IS bigger and better!" Perhaps you will not be surprised by just how bad the depiction of its gay characters is. This was made in 1976 and that's in my lifetime. Also: nearly everyone used stage names as it was non-union, so William Bonner is billed as Jack Meoff. That's kind of the name you'd expect from a porn, but this feels like an adult movie for the first section - there's a scene in which two young women in a pool seduce Mr. Johnathan before their mother mounts him and makes them watch - and then it becomes a romance before someone is sodomized with a curling iron and revenge comes with a pool cue, an axe and finally, that chainsaw in a gory climax no one saw coming.