Funkadelic delicious. Like entering a time
capsule of right-on's, baby's, foxy fashions, honkies and super cool black
power. In the middle of all this is 6 feet two inches of kick-ass righteousness
in the form of Cleopatra Jones. With her sleek corvette, fur coats, kung
fu, fearless take no shit attitude, she rides through this film like a force
of nature. It has pretty much everything you would want from a Blaxploitation
film of the 1970's - one of the iconic ones. Lots of attitude, jive talking,
white racism, shoot outs, car chases, corrupt cops, a female villain right
out of white trashville and a soundtrack with a good beat. It was made on
a low budget as nearly all the films in the genre were but they have fun
with it. The car chase is topnotch, the clothes are pure 70's ghetto style,
the pads are sumptuous and it never takes itself seriously.
Cleopatra is played by Tamara Dobson who basically made this film and its
sequel and not a lot else. A gift to Blaxploitation. Pam Grier will always
be the Queen of Blaxploitation but Dobson does the genre proud. Grier
was rougher, grittier, closer to the ground but she could also be victimized
- no one victimizes Cleopatra. Haughty, stylish, playful and sexy, it is
hard to take your eyes off her. Not that you would want to. She had been
a model appearing in many commercials and knew how to present herself. Her
acting could be questioned but in this it is more about attitude and coolness.
It begins with Jones and a few air force planes wiping out a crop of poppies
in Turkey. She is a government agent intent on destroying the heroin pipeline
that is killing her people back home. This crop belonged to Mommy, a foul
mouthed slattern gang leader with an eye and a grab for a pretty girl. Played
by Shelly Winters like she was still Ma Barker in her film Bloody Mama. Winters
had evolved over the years from being a beauty in her younger days to playing
slutty slovenly loud mouthed older women with a maniacal menace. She overdoes
it here to the point of caricature as she bosses around her bargain bin bad
boys like a barking dog. When she gets into a fight with Jones it is kind
of ridiculous. And fun. I wonder who is going to win this one as she huffs
and puffs like an overstuffed vacuum cleaner.
Anyway, she sets the cops on some of Jones' friends (Bernie Casey) and that
brings her back. Cleopatra Jones is back in town goes out like a beacon.
Everyone knows her, everyone loves her - unless you are on the wrong side
of her. The plot is B film basic and not all that bright - basically just
a reason to showcase Dobson, some action and a few others. Such as Doodlebug
played by Antonio Fargas in pure pimp style. Fargas is always great to come
across in his roles as pimp, mugger, stool pigeon - and he showed up a in
few classics - Shaft, Across 110th Street, Foxy Brown, Car Wash - a great
actor limited by his less than handsome looks and race to roles that he was
better than. The one good white guy is Dan Frazer as the Captain, basically
the same role he played on Kojak for years beginning also in 1973. Tarantino
must have had wet dreams about this one as a teenager.
Cleopatra Jones and the Casiono
of Gold
Director:
Charles Bail
Year: 1975
Rating: 7.5
In this sequel to Cleopatra Jones, they take a lot of the funk from the previous
film out of this one. This is apparent immediately when the music kicks in
- well not so much kicks as skips in - as instead of a soul beat it sounds
like some minor league Burt Bacharach on a bad day. That soundtrack stays
with the entire film until the finale when it finally kicks up a few notches.
But replacing the funk is a big fat slice of Hong Kong. This was a co-production
between Warners and the Shaw Brothers and though the director and script
writers were American, the style feels more Shaw than Blaxploitation. In
particular the action which is choreographed by the great Tong Kai who teamed
up with Lau Kar-leung on so many classic films. Tong Kai teams up with Yuen
Cheung-yan (part of the Yuen Clan) this time and though obviously they don't
have the martial arts talent they are used to, they do a fine job with what
they have. Hell, they even make Stella Stevens look ok. For me this was a
lot of fun seeing Hong Kong and trying to spot some HK actors that I am familiar
with. When I looked at the credits on HKMDB I realized I had missed a whole
bunch of them - no doubt minions of the Dragon Lady.
In this one Cleopatra is assigned to Hong Kong. She has sent two of her friends
- the Johnson Brothers who had helped her out in the first film - to go undercover
and buy drugs. But the two of them find themselves in the middle of a gang
war when Chen (Chan Shen, a well-known bad guy for Shaw) decides to break
away from the Dragon Lady and go into business for himself. That doesn't
work out so well as he has to go on the run and the Johnson Brothers (Albert
Popwell and Caro Kenyatta) get captured by the Dragon Lady. This film trades
in Shelley Winters for Stella Stevens - a trade I would take any day.
Cleopatra shows up and teams up with a Hong Kong female detective to look
for her friends and bring down the drug gang. The two of them do a lot of
male bashing and killing. Her partner Mi Ling Fong is played by another Shaw
Brothers regular - Tanny Tien Ni - who I have seen in a ton of films but
never as charming and fun as she is here. She does some high kicking but
in most of her Shaw films she was usually in dramas or erotic comedies. Another
familiar face was the adopted daughter of the Dragon Lady - played by Lin
Chen-chi, famous for her role in Tsui Hark's nihilist early film Dangerous
Encounter First Kind. The final 20-minutes of the film is a blast and well-done
in many ways. The scene with Cleopatra going down the dark alley and fighting
off cars and killers is great and then the big bang finale in the casino
with some great only in Hong Kong stunts and a whole lot of gun play. Nifty
film with a solid budget. Too bad this was the last Cleopatra film.
Some other HK names in the film - Gam Biu the partner who Stella kills, John
Cheung her right hand man, Pang Pang the chubby guy who comes on to Stella
in the casino. And then in roles I did not catch - Yuen Wah, Yuen Wo-ping,
Corey Yuen, Tam Bo, Chui Fat and Mama Hung (mother of Sammo). Hell you could
have made a great movie just with these guys, Oh, and I guess I should mention
Norman Fell who is Cleopatra's boss in HK.
