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28 out of 35 people found the following review useful:
As long as you don't study it for its technique..., 1 May 2003
Author: morakanabad from The Celluloid Pit

This is a film that has several things going for it, none of them technical. The idea of shooting a movie with a largely black cast on dark streets at night without any sort of extra lighting is... well, a bad one, and coupled with its mic-in-the-cameraman's-back- pocket sound mix, an awful lot of the first half of the movie is just shy of being incomprehensible. Add in an editing job that suggests somebody was busy talking on the phone during the cutting of several key scenes, and you could have a real patience- tester of a film on your hands.

Thankfully, the mood of the film is positive enough that its deliriously illogical plot actually works in its favour. Greasy kid Mario van Peebles (minus the "van" here) is transformed into strapping man Melvin van Peebles in a meaningful encounter with a hooker, and you can buy it. On-the-lam hero Sweetback is challenged to a duel by bikers, and nobody so much as blinks when he suggests that it should be a duel of sexual prowess... hell, they don't even seem to care that he doesn't need to move in order to drive his women wild. He's even brought back from the dead by the chorused voices of The Black Community, and it all sort of makes sense, kind of.

In fact, it isn't until the very last shot of the movie, when you realize that 90 minutes and change have built up to... well, nothing much, really, except maybe a shred of belief in the power of an act of will, and perhaps the promise of a sequel, that you feel like taking the movie to task for its gaping technical flaws again. Even then, it's made so earnestly that I don't really have the heart to slag it for its ineptly-blocked camerawork and dreadful acting. I've seen much worse from filmmakers who weren't trying to change the world by giving a damn, so instead I'll talk it up by calling it the spiritual ancestor of the basketball-teleportation ending to He Got Game, and pretty much everything in The Matrix, too. That it was largely the work of one hugely inspired guy makes it all the cooler, so struggling filmmakers, take note! As long as you crib your technique from other places, Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song should be an inspiration to you.

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31 out of 41 people found the following review useful:
A must-see for fans of weirdness!, 14 February 2005

Author: Brandt Sponseller from New York City

Considered the first blaxploitation film, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song features Melvin Van Peebles (who also directed, wrote, produced, edited and did music for the film) as Sweetback, a Los Angeles-area "male prostitute"/"sex performer" (who only has relations with females). He agrees to be taken in to a police station as a suspect just to make a couple cops look good (because they are tolerant towards the cathouse he lives in). On the way, they pick up a Black Panther and start beating him senseless. Sweetback bludgeons and stabs the two cops with his handcuffs (one end is open) and the bulk of the film has him on the run. Can he make it to Mexico before he's caught?

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song has a lot of historical significance. It is an early independent film in what's considered the current "modern" style, it is one of the earliest mostly black films of its era (there were all black films earlier, such as Oscar Micheaux's work, but they disappeared for awhile), it was controversial (it initially earned an X rating (later changed to an R) and touted that fact proudly as a tagline), it was made for $150 thousand but grossed $15 million, and most importantly perhaps for some film lovers, it is credited with starting the blaxploitation craze in the 1970s. It is worth watching for students of film on those merits alone.

But none of those facts alone make it a good film, and none affect my rating. In terms of quality, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song gets my vaunted 5 out of 10 rating, which is usually reserved for "so bad they're good" films. Although it is loaded with flaws, as one might expect from a low budget film from the era shot guerilla-style on the streets of Los Angeles, it is a hoot to watch. On the weirdness scale, it definitely earns a 10.

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song is firmly mired in the psychedelic era. Peebles gives us frequent shots with negative or false colors near the beginning of the film. More frequently, he directs scenes so they have various "altered reality" allusions--time stretching, repeating, stopping and stuttering, bizarre actions and reactions from various characters, rambling nonsense, and so on--which for the viewer approximate the perception of someone who is wasted almost to the point of passing out. These scenes often play like some kind of avant-garde performance art, and are as much a focus of the film as any of the usually cited "political" messages rooted in racially oriented turmoil and disparity. Perhaps the intended theme was that race relations, and the urban reality of blacks to that point were as bizarre as acid trips, some good, some bad.

The music is equally bizarre (which I love), with a recurrent jazz/funk piece with an almost atonal saxophone melody being the unifier. Some of the vocal music is a veritable Greek chorus, narrating action and emotions, providing critiques and so on. Peebles also frequently layers musical tracks, so two or more can be playing at once for a minute or two.

The film is also notable and admirable for its abundance of almost graphic sex scenes and gratuitous nudity. The opening scene is particularly groundbreaking and laudable. Throughout the film, Sweetback is an unstoppable stud, with almost any woman he desires dropping her drawers for him, even towards the end of the film, despite the fact that he has an oozing, infected sore running up the side of his body, not to mention that he's filthy, and he's been drinking mud and eating raw lizards. The ladies still find him hot enough to give him a poke in the bushes. We need much more of this kind of material in contemporary films.

At one point, Peebles and/or director of photography Robert Maxwell appear to have hit the streets of Los Angeles, filming people at random after they asked them if they've seen Sweetback (the character). These shots are inserted into the extended chase scene near the end of the film (2/3 to 3/4 of the film is actually an extended chase scene). The effect is a lot of fun to watch--definitely guerilla film-making at its finest.

But the problems with the film are legion. Maxwell's camera frequently goes in and out of focus (being generous, we could interpret it with psychedelic intent, but I'm skeptical). Night scenes (which are thankfully avoided for the most part) tend to be seas of blackness where a viewer can only occasionally make out enough of an image to piece together the scene in their mind. The sound is awful--I couldn't make out about half of the dialogue (at one point I thought "this is more like watching a silent film"), and it doesn't help that some characters "jive talk"; if ever a film needed subtitles, it's this one. The camera occasionally has a spot, a hair, or some other gunk on the lens. There isn't much to the story; after awhile, it starts to play more like an odd music video. A lot of shots--scenery, cityscapes, etc.--look like they may have been randomly taken by Peebles with his home camera with the hopes of one day using them in a film.

Still, for fans of weirdness and "so bad they're good" films, not to mention any blaxploitation fan with his or her weight in barbecued ribs, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song is a must see. Make sure you also check out How to Get the Man's Foot Outta Your Ass (aka Baadasssss!), Peebles' son Mario's 2003 film about Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song.

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24 out of 31 people found the following review useful:
The Cinema of Melvin Van Peebles., 27 August 2005

Author: Miyagis_Sweaty_wifebeater (sirjosephu@aol.com) from Sacramento, CA

Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song (1971) was a independent marvel from Melvin Van Peebles. It also influenced the so called black exploitation movement of the seventies. According to Mr. Peebles, after the surprise success of this film, the producers of SHAFT changed his character into a black man. Even beyond Hollywood, Mr. Peebles still has some creative control. Before he made this film and the small success of WATERMELON MAN, several Hollywood Studios wanted him to be a Black expert. They wanted him to doctor some scripts and make them "black" (the term he used can be found in his back about the making and selling of Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song (1971). This book is cool, it also has a lot of vital information, a script to the movie and a copy of the soundtrack.

Mr. Van Peebles used a lot of French new wave style of film making when he shot this movie. The many unique editing and camera angles can be found scattered throughout the movie. He also composed the brilliant soundtrack which also comes across as a concept album. You can listen to the movie on record! This movie was more of a statement to the White Establishment. That a black man can make a unique film without the restraints of the studio system and not have to answer to investors and anxious producers.

I have to give a hand to Mr. Van Peebles. He never gave in to the studios and make terrible sell-out projects. Like him or loathe him, you have to give him all the kudos he deserves and then some.

Highly recommended.

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24 out of 31 people found the following review useful:
The absolute beginning of a real "black" presence., 3 September 2001
Author: Frederick Reeves (fereeves@earthlink.net) from United States

I saw this movie in Boulder CO in 1971 in an audience that was half black and half white in a community in the mountains that was 99.4% white. Blacks in the audience obviously got the raucous humor only the blacks could get living in America...the white's didn't have a clue. As a Welfare Rights Organizer at the time i obviously identified with the black situation. This was the FIRST movie from the black point of view.

Von Peebles is to be commended for doing the impossible and i have used his example of forbearance and excellance for the past three decades. He had been in Europe for ten years prior to the film. He wanted to do the film. He didn't have the money. No one wanted to write it. He wrote it. Black actors of stature didn't want to be associated with it. He stars in it. He gets the financial backing. He gets an "X" rating because he would not have it submitted for a rating and because the only venue he could get was the "X" rated theatres. He still out grossed Easy Rider, which was the big history maker of low budget big return films.

Von Peebles was the first black man to tell it like it was at the time... and he blasted the black myths on and off the screen.

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13 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
From Another Era, 27 August 2006

Author: momohund from United States

This movie, when first watched by people from my generation (Gen X), doesn't seem to be very coherent. Something strange and psychedelic from a weird era. However, if you watch this movie and then watch How to Get the Man's Foot Outta Your Ass, which is a movie about making Sweet Sweetback, you'll see why this was so damn revolutionary. This was the first time Black America told White America on screen that the days of "kissing up to Shirley Temple's ass" were over. It was a political movie about Black America and even Minority America being tired of whiteness, as well as stating that Black America now has its own identity and society. It took some pretty strong courage to make this move when you consider the time frame that it came out in; the early seventies, a period that saw a shift from "I have a dream" to "By any means necessary." I believe this film opened the doors to allow black artistic media to be critical about white America, society, politics and corruption that generally would have been censored before. Sometimes I wonder if this helped pave the way for people like Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy and even Dave Chapelle. My father, a white man, told me that when he went to see this film back in 1971, the audience screamed and cheered during the opening scene when across the screen it read to "all the Brothers and Sisters who are tired of being held down by the Man." Nowadays people wouldn't really respond to that, not even black society I don't think, but back then it could have gotten you lynched, even in 1971. So when people screamed and cheered in the movie theater when they saw this, I think you can imagine how important a film like this must be in film history. No minority had ever dared to say that on the silver screen before.

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17 out of 27 people found the following review useful:
The one that started it all ..., 22 January 1999

Author: Mr Pants (maestropants@yahoo.com) from Columbus, Ohio

You can say what you want about "blaxploitation" films. If nothing else, they can be a lot of fun in their overt use of black stereotypes and semi-predictable storylines. Since their construction is so obvious, it is not the same as the way blacks were portrayed in a film like "Birth of a Nation." Melvin Van Peebles put this thing together by himself (with a little monetary help from Bill Cosby), and while the technical quality is not exactly Hollywood, neither is the content. It is difficult to imagine what it must have been like to have been in the audiences for this film's premiere, as a strong black character emerges to defend his existence against the Racist State. The film uttered what nearly everybody has thought, and seeing it on the screen must have been a truly shocking experience. Perhaps even cathartic, but that may be pushing it. I don't know. I wasn't there.

Maybe it's a good sign that viewing such films today lends itself more to camp fun than any possible serious interpretation; it is a sign that we have moved on, at least a little bit.

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8 out of 11 people found the following review useful:
Perhaps it's an important film, but it really, really sucks...and that might be the nicest thing I can say about this film., 28 March 2010

Author: planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This film, according to IMDb, is the first blaxploitation film. However, unlike the second ("Shaft"), this one is super-super low-budget and is a major chore to watch. That's because, quite frankly, the film is rougher and less polished than even the earliest John Waters film. In fact, there's almost nothing positive I can say about the movie--and it's light-years worse than the worst thing Ed Wood ever produced! Yes, folks, it's that bad! And, after having seen several dozen films in the genre, I think I have some idea what I'm talking about in this review. I've seen Mexican Mummy and Luchador films and "Sweet Sweetback" is SIGNIFICANTLY worse!

Let's talk about the cinematography...if you can even call it that. It's obvious that the cameraman tried to be adventurous and arty, but it ended up looking horrid. The film stock appeared to be, at best, 16mm and it was very, very grainy. The edits, it appears, were done by Ray Charles. I have never seen a more amateurish bit of camera-work--and I've reviewed over 8000 movies!

As for the acting...oh, the horror! Melvin Van Peebles says almost nothing and does almost nothing in the film--like it is a zombie film. Most people under anesthesia emote more than he did! The only thing close to acting that he seemed to do was have sex repeatedly--with very unattractive women. I assume most of his budget went to hire ugly prostitutes for these scenes. The rest of the actors were also horrible...but at least they were more animated and interesting that this writer/director/actor. He simply sleep-walked throughout the film.

Speaking of nude scenes, the film begins with a bit of child pornography. Mario Van Peebles, the way underage son of the director, engages in a very, very realistic sex act with a woman of about 30 years of age. They are both VERY naked and he appears to he having intercourse with her. How the film maker got away with this legally is beyond me. I assume Melvin was motivated by heroin or battery acid or a massive head injury which allowed him to make such an irresponsible scene.

As far as the plot goes, this could have been good...but wasn't. Plus, all too often, the plot was buried among sleaze. The first 10 minutes of the film consisted of having Melvin having sex in front of groups of people. You assume he's some sort of prostitute and he's about as far from Shaft (perhaps a bad choice) or Hammer or the other black heroes of the 70s as you can get. Eventually, the police arrest him and some other innocent man and start working the other guy over even though they know neither had anything to do with a crime--and the cops even admit this! They randomly picked a couple black men to beat up just to make the chief happy! But, while they are pummeling the other man, Melvin turns on them and beats the crap out of them. The rest of the film consists of the cops trying to catch him.

I am sure this was very satisfying for black audiences of the day, as they were probably very well acquainted with police brutality (a national sport up until the late 1960s) and Van Peebles was capitalizing on this resentment. But, with so many more competent blaxsploitation films out there, I suggest you try them first. In fact ANY other film of the genre is better than this film. In fact, ANY film is better than this one. In fact, staring as a toilet for 90 minutes is better...the film is that bad! Just because it's first doesn't mean it's best. It's horribly incompetent and looks like a film made by crack-heads. And, when you watch the director on the accompanying DVD extra, you assume this was the case.

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11 out of 17 people found the following review useful:
Ahead of its time!, 3 May 2004

Author: Chemi Che-Mponda (chemiche3@yahoo.com) from Cambridge, MA

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I had heard a lot about Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song over the years, but finally got to see it yesterday, 5-2-04.

I have to say that I can see how it opened up a new genre..the Blaxploitation films. Whoa! It's powerful from the opening when we read about people in the black community oppressed by 'THE MAN' to the end when Sweetback escapes safely to Mexico (after killing hound dogs)!

There is a lot of symbolism as well. Sweetback lapping water like a dog from the ground in the desert, having sex with an almost Amazon looking white woman till she has an orgasm and calls his name 'Sweetback', Sweetback. Then she helps save him.

One big question I was left with, A woman surrounded by a lot of children says she may have had a child once named Leroy. He was taken away by the state and she doesn't know what happened to him. Is Leroy, really Sweetback? After all the movie opens with a starving, mangy , dirty little boy (young Sweetback) wolfing down food in a brothel and watched by Prostitutes. They take him in and raise him. I take it as saying that the system fails black youth.

The abuse by the white police was appalling, espceially when it came to searching for Sweetback. We hear the white police use the N-word liberally, and Black life is worthless. You can feel the anger of the oppressed black community in the film.

The film may be considered rebellious but I think its a masterpiece. And obviously, Hollywood thought so because it started the era of Blaxploitation films.

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9 out of 14 people found the following review useful:
One of the greatest underground hits of the 70s, 5 November 2002

Author: funkyfry from Oakland CA

A powerful film whose impact is through a montage of images, music, and dialogue, alternating to disorient and reorient the viewer. It might be pretty confusing plot-wise (or perhaps it just doesn't have much of a plot) and the actors are mostly bad, but this film was well thought out and executed with a goal of excellence (something that can't be said for many films, underground or Hollywood). To boot, it is also entertaining and probably gave the exploitation crowd their money's worth in 1971 with some hardcore violence and softcore sex.

Van Peebles created a unique experimental film that succeeds on its own terms. It is a classic for all time.

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10 out of 17 people found the following review useful:
Maybe I'm too old, maybe I'm not old enough. Maybe I just can't dig it, baby. I can't get down with the funk., 11 November 2004

Author: Michael DeZubiria (miked32@hotmail.com) from Luoyang, China

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Whatever the case, Sweet Sweetback's Baad Assssssss Song came off to me as a vibrant exercise in bad taste, bad acting, a barely discernible plot, VERY bad editing, and lots of stupid, stupid white people. The opening feeding scene, the one with the whole crowd of women inexplicably overflowing with lust from watching a dirty kid shovel food into his mouth, is reminiscent of The Hairdresser's Husband, the vastly superior French film that uses similar low-cut necklines revealing massive breasts to illustrate the formation of sexual taboos later in life. Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss song has no time for that. Nope. Next scene, that same dirty kid is naked and reluctantly ravishing someone that I assume is a prostitute, but who could just as easily be his babysitter, his teacher, his mother, or his sister.

Doesn't matter which one, really. Even if it was his mother it wouldn't be as tasteless as the fact that what we're looking at is a 13-year-old kid completely naked between the legs of some woman who is equally naked. I have no problem with sex scenes, of course. It just strikes me as weird to see a movie that literally shows a 13-year-old kid having sex and then the movie (Shocked! Shocked!!) gives itself a tagline like 'Rated X by an all white jury.' What the hell?

I'm reminded of a classic Saturday Night Live skit in which Jim Carrey, Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan go to a nightclub and viciously gang-hump every woman on the dance floor and then when the security guards drag them to the exit they're all screaming 'What??! What?!?! What??!??!' How do they imply that an all black jury might have rated a movie with a naked 13-year-old kid in it? PG-13?

That being said, the movie is basically about a lot of incompetent white cops constantly pursuing someone named Sweetback, who has enough connections on the streets to afford him a good deal of protection and, of course, who is generally too cool for spoken dialogue. We're brought into the dismal world of the inner cities, a plight for which the white man is endlessly blamed and, to whatever extent, this may be true, but for the most part this movie celebrates the condemnation of the white man for causing the black man to live such a terrible life, while at the same time celebrating the black man's inability or unwillingness to do anything about that life beyond blaming the white man for it.

It's a controversial theory that the black community is more interested in blaming white people for their lot in life than they are in doing something to better their situation, but this movie does absolutely nothing to refute it, which is also the case in a disturbing number of 'blaxploitation' movies. Blaxploitation itself, as a term, is wildly misleading. I suppose it means that black people are blaxploited by greedy white men, hence their dismal urban lifestyle, while white people are whitesploited by black people, hence their constant appearance as greedy, racist, and complete drooling morons in 'blaxploitation' films. Pam Grier must be rolling in her grave.

I've heard the editing described as quick to disorient the viewer, which is not the case at all. What you have here is obtrusive editing without reason, cuts simply for the sake of cutting. Like many 1970s blaxploitation films, the movie halts in its tracks half a dozen times or so to turn into a music video for a little while, but the rough and awkward editing does not disorient the viewer, it stops the movie completely because it is totally devoid of meaning. It takes your attention away from what is happening on screen and puts it into the weird colors and shapes dancing across the screen, which have nothing to do with whatever the meaning of the movie is. This is not how you infuse a deep meaning or directorial significance onto a cheesy sexy movie, this is how you make a feature length film when you don't have enough story or material to fill that much screen time. Sometimes lines of dialogue are literally played over more than once. The need for such things escapes me.

In the movie's defense, it is very good at capturing the urban atmosphere in which the story takes place. When you watch the movie, you are there on the streets with the characters, you just have a hard time trying to follow what they're doing, what they're talking about, who's chasing who and why a black man is dancing on a stool while some idiot white guy stands directly behind him, staring at his backside and laughing hysterically. Wow.

The street life is portrayed very effectively, you see how bad it is to live in these areas, but then you have to wonder about the suffering when you see scenes like the one where Sweetback is forced by a gang of hysterical bikers to endure the unending torture of making love to a white woman while they all sit around laughing. What the hell is going on here?

(spoilers) Maybe I just made the mistake of watching Dirty Pretty Things just before seeing this, so I came into this movie having just watched a movie that squeezes in the sex and violence because they are necessary elements of the massive plot, while this movie stretches out the sex scenes and throws in random bits of plot here and there just to fill out the rest of the screen time. There literally is a point in the movie where Sweetback is running from the cops through the desert, becomes so decimated that he kills and eats a lizard, and then when he reaches civilization he stops to have sex with a prostitute in the dirt and have a couple of white cops stop by to giggle at him.

And not only that, if you make it through the movie you are not rewarded with the delivery of some message or cinematic meaning, you are literally rewarded with a series of shots showing a couple of dead dogs floating in a river. This normally is a figure of speech, but this is some of the stupidest s**t I've ever seen.

Here's something to consider – at one point in the movie the white cops chase and capture Sweetback, but wait! He turns out to be just some guy, not Sweetback at all! The guy gleefully explains that he was paid $5 by some guy to run from whoever chased him, and it just happened to be the police but hey! It's five DOLLARS! So the cops don't do a thing at all to this guy, even though he willfully evaded the police. I guess if you're paid to run then it's okay? The thing that really gets me is that white people are portrayed as so stupid and incompetent and endlessly idiotic in these movies, and yet at the same time they are the people who's power and influence black people simply cannot escape.

Given that, here's my question for you - Who do blaxploitation films really make look foolish in the end? Oh, and yes I realize that Pam Grier is alive and well. Thanks for reading all the way to the end of my review...

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