The Harlem Detective Films
       
Cotton Comes to Harlem
Director: Ossie Davis
Year: 1970
Rating: 7.0
The Blaxploitation genre began officially in 1971 with Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and Shaft. This film isn't given that credit perhaps because it feels too mainstream but like Shaft it was produced by a major studio and with a black director, the great Ossie Davis. It is based on the writings of Chester Himes and his book of the same title. It is part of his Harlem Detective series with Coffin Ed Johnson and Gravedigger Jones as two hard-ass street-wise cops in Harlem who break all the rules but get the job done. Himes wrote all the books while living in Paris and had actually spent very little time in Harlem, but he lovingly creates a world of pimps, grifters, preachers, prostitutes and church ladies. The books are full of plots and characters that cross each other like a bad traffic day.



Davis tries to capture the ambience of Hime's Harlem with lots of side shots and shooting Harlem as the car passes by - but it is a losing cause to do so because so much of his books is the language and also because to do it faithfully would be considered racist today. There is a lot of racial stereotyping in the books. Yet, this is a highly entertaining film that skitters along relentlessly from the opening shot of a large beautiful Cadillac making its way through the broken-down streets of Harlem, past the boarded up buildings and raggedy children playing on the streets.



Reverend Deke (Calvin Lockhart) is going to Harlem to preach to the crowd waiting for him. He is leading a movement of going back to Africa and collecting money from folks to reserve them a spot. Back to Africa. Of course, it is a scam but Reverend Deke is as slick as a skid mark and much more charismatic. Lockhart does a great job. Gravedigger and Coffin Ed aren't buying it for a minute and are there when a gang of white guys in masks shoot the place up and steal 87,000 dollars. In a crash, the money goes missing - hidden in a bail of cotton - and much of the rest of the film is Reverend Deke and the white gang looking for the cotton and the two cops never far behind, The cotton is with none other than Red Foxx as Uncle Budd who found it on the street and sold it for $25 to a junk dealer. Fox was to go on to Sanford and Son two years later with much the same character.



The two cops are played by Godfrey Cambridge as Gravedigger and Raymond St. Jacques as Coffin Ed. They are fine though they really don't have the size and menace that they do in the books. The film has some decent action and sleaze with comic moments popping up at unexpected times. Shooting the outdoor scenes in Harlem add a lot to the film. The early 1970s were tough times in Harlem and apparently an organization called The Black Citizen's Patrol kept them safe. Cleavon Little has a small role as a junkie and the white roles are filled out nicely by Eugene Roche, John Anderson and J.D. Cannon. Judy Pace has the role of Iris with her great seduction scene of the dumb cop. Put this paper bag over your head so I don't have to see your honky face.


Come Back, Charleston Blue
Director: Mark Warren
Year: 1972
Rating: 5.5
The black Harlem detectives Gravedigger Jones (Godfrey Cambridge) and his partner Coffin Ed Johnson (Raymond St. Jacques) are back in the sequel to Cotton Comes to Harlem from two years earlier. But Ozzie Davis as the director isn't back and those duties are handed over to Mark Warren who basically stayed in the world of TV for most of his career - and it shows. This is enjoyable but it has a TV sheen about it. Like a Movie of the Week. Davis was nearly poetic in the way he portrayed Harlem while Warren is just there. More often than not he goes for the cheap joke. Some of which is funny. In the end for some reason, he decides to go full Keystone comedy with the added corny ragtime music that those old shows always have. Up till then it was serious with laughs. This part was just awful. This is based on another Chester Himes novel.



In his books, Himes paints nearly everyone in Harlem as less than above board. Everyone either has a scam going or is the victim of one. In Cotton Comes to Harlem, it was a Reverend; this time it is a man of the people. Bringing good to the youth of Harlem. Joe (Peter De Anda) is good looking, smooth talking and appears to be legit. Gravedigger and Coffin Ed have been around too long to believe him. The Mafia runs the drug trade in Harlem through their black agent Caspar (Maxwell Glanville - played the same role in Cotton). A group of blacks are hijacking the shipments of drugs to the point where Harlem is dry and junkies are shaking. They want to drive the white owned business out of Harlem and stop drugs.



Or so the rumor is. The other rumor is that Charleston Blue has come back from the dead to do this. Charleston Blue ran Harlem rackets back in the day and wanted to drive out the mafia. In 1932 he went to kill Dutch Schultz with his legendary razor blade.  He never returned and considering that Dutch was killed in 1935 by Murder Inc., I guess Blue failed. There is a good shootout at a cemetery and some idiot silliness as the film jumps from serious to nonsense on a dime. This film has none of the nudity or sleaze that the first one did. Again, reinforcing its TV feel and none of the side characters made much of a mark. The only other film based on Hime's detectives is the 1991 A Rage in Harlem.