Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song arguably
kicked off the Blaxploitation subgenre in the early 1970s, paving the way for
films like Shaft, Coffy and Foxy Brown. Overt
exploitation flicks typically centered around predominantly black characters
enmeshed in urban poverty struggling with or against crime, many Blaxploitation
films became increasingly popular in the U.S. as well as controversial with
some hailing the genre as eschewing racist stereotypes while others contend the
genre merely reinforces them. What the
supporters and detractors didn’t take notice of, however, was the overwhelming
influence the Blaxploitation genre had on international cinema where the
chances of producing a film remotely like a Blaxploitation picture were next to
none.
Enter the recently unearthed
and rediscovered South African Blaxploitation flick Joe Bullet, the first movie in it’s country of origin to feature an
all-black cast with no trace of any white actors in sight. Made in 1972, this micro-budget do-it-yourself
bit of guerilla filmmaking filmed entirely on location in Johannesburg, Joe Bullet has a bit of everything fans
have come to expect from the subgenre and more.
Including but not limited to soccer tournament rigging, gunfights,
martial arts such as karate and some death defying stunts that would make
Melvin Van Peebles blush, Joe Bullet
is the most authentic Blaxploitation film you’ve never heard of or been able to
see for over forty years.
Initially screened only
twice in a remote independent South African cinema after completion in 1972,
the film was banned outright by the apartheid government before disappearing
without a trace. Thought to be lost
forever, an intact 35mm print was discovered in a garage and thanks to the
painstaking efforts of the film’s distributor and Africa’s one and only film
preservation division, Gravel Road Entertainment, Joe Bullet has been brought back to theaters and makes it’s U.S.
debut for the first time in Michigan’s very own Cinema Detroit!
Take for instance a scene where the hero is tied up by the stereotypical villain and a live cobra is dropped beside him. Unlike Raiders of the Lost Ark which sneakily posited a glass window between the cobra and Harrison Ford, Ken Gampu’s face gets closer to this snake’s venomous fangs than any other main actor in a film I’m aware of. I have to wonder whether or not a real snake was killed in the process of the making of the film, as this production was done almost completely under the radar and watchful eyes of the apartheid government.
I was also taken aback by
the pyrotechnic explosions in the film, which are again detonated dangerously
close to the actors. There’s a
go-for-broke air to Joe Bullet and
you get the sense that the actors would have willingly leapt in front of an
oncoming car if asked to do so. Given
just how much was on the line, you can forgive the technical and narrative
shortcomings which are at times just plain amateurish. Arguably Joe
Bullet betters Sweet Sweetback from
a technical standpoint but is comparatively far less radical than Van Peebles’
film.
Despite there being almost
zero production values behind this film, there’s an edginess to the production
with the band of gangsters roaming the crumbling Johannesburg cityscape and our
own knowledge that the cast and crew were frequently harassed by government officials
who show up at the end of one take presumably to shut down filming. It’s sad to think after making the film under
such duress that all the filmmakers’ efforts were swept under the rug
anyway. No the exhuming and resurrection
of Joe Bullet doesn’t reveal a
masterpiece in quite the same way something like the unearthing of the nearly
lost Wake in Fright does, but it was
an entertaining hour and nineteen minutes showing moviegoers a side of the
Blaxploitation genre we never knew existed.
Score:
- Andrew Kotwicki