Monday, September 29, 2008

"Abar The Black Superman"(1977)d/Frank Packard

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In jive talk,bad means good.When referring to this blaxploitation movie,bad means bad.Bad like you've never seen before.When Wildman Steve crushes a blatantly obvious cardboard safe in "The Six Thousand Dollar Nigger"(while wearing a t shirt with iron on puffy letters that say "The Six Thousand Dollar Nigger",mind you) you laugh at the ineptitude behind such a ridiculous piece of film/shit.This movie makes that one look like Star Wars.Hell,this movie makes Turkish Star Wars look like Star Wars.I can't even imagine how this could have possibly been any worse.The imdb lists the plot as:"Upon moving into a bigoted neighborhood, the scientist father of a persecuted black family gives a superpower elixir to a tough bodyguard, who thus becomes a superpowered crimefighter." Don't you believe it.What it SHOULD have said,was something like this:
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Even the highway is racist in Abar's hood.
Dr. Kincade(J. Walter Smith,a man who deftly bumbles and stumbles through EVERY single line of dialogue he reads) moves his family into a white neighborhood who welcome them by picketing directly outside the house with blatantly racist placards and throwing garbage onto their front lawn.Kincade doesn't care that the entire neighborhood hates his guts,drawing inspiration from Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr.,whose "I Have A Dream" speech is played on the soundtrack something like every ten or fifteen SECONDS.He's also something of a scientist,judging by the vials and beakers full of smoking kool aid he's got in his basement.He's also got a plastic skull on top of the basement fridge.This guy means business.His race struggle makes the radio news,which catches the collective ears of the "Black Front of Unity" who roll into action on choppers(!) onto the scene to protect the black scientist from his racist neighbors.The BFU is led by a man named Abar(ineptly portrayed by Tobar Mayo,who you'll remember as "Third Indian" in John Carpenter's "Escape from New York"(1981).
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Welcoming party in Honkey-ville.
Abar is something of a black activist,rallying his ghetto brothers and sisters with speeches he can barely spit out without great difficulty,and when he and Kincade meet,it's...uh,a match...made..uhmmm..a m-m-match,well you get the idea.The neighbors try to buy out the scientist and his family,but when the uppity bastard refuses,they brick out his windows and even send assassins to dispatch him!When his kids' frisbee hits a white lady in the head as she's pruning her garden,she lets the epithets fly,calling the two children niggers,pickininnies,and black bastards before collapsing in front of Kincade's house.The good doctor rushes to the racist's rescue and sends off her blood for examination.His children imagine Abar tackling wrangling racists in the wild west,in an outrageous dream sequence,dressed like a gay black cowboy at an all male gladiator bar.When the neighbors lynch the Kincade cat in the doorway with a noose,Abar moves in to protect the family from the fires of bigotry,albeit in non-violent Dr. King,Jr-like ways.
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Unfortunately for Abar,this vial isn't filled with magical acting Kool Aid.
When the doctor's son,Tommie is run over by jive honkeys after foiling their bomb attempt("You better run,you jive honkeys!" he says,lying on the pavement.),Abar agrees to observe the doctor's secret potion in action down in the wood paneled laboratory.After watching the doctor plug a rabbit full of slugs(!),he rejects the notion of becoming a black superman,denouncing the immortal rabbit,at least until some jive honkey takes a potshot at him outside the house.Outta sight!In between badly delivered lines of dialogue,he extracts vengeance on Whitey(albeit in non-violent practical jokish sort of ways).He turns the uncle Tom Dudley's pasta dinner into writhing earthworms.He uses his new soul power to make two racist cops who'd just shot a defenseless black man and planted a weapon on him...argue and bicker back and forth?Right on!In the outrageous finale,he unleashes a series of low budget biblical plagues on white suburbia in the form of bees,snakes,rats,thunder,and a dyn-o-mite wind machine?Wondering about the white racist lady from earlier in the story?She was secretly black(!),and suffering from sickle cell anemia(!!).Cue the Dr. King speech again.Roll end titles.
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"I be back.Yo house....bout to be blown to smitherens."
Amazingly bad and extremely hard to find a copy of these days,Abar still somehow manages to entertain in the same vein as "Plan 9 from Outer Space",and deserves a viewing if you fancy yourself to be any kind of blaxploitation enthusiast.You'll spit malt liquor at every scene.Still,technically,I have to give this mess:
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Racist honkeys get blown off the block by Abar's magical wind machine.
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It's that time of the year again,kiddies!

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Daddy's home,bitches.
With Samhain right around the corner,and Daddy All-Big-in-the-Pants back from his couple of month hiatus of self-destructive decadence(that's right,nothing like partying,dynamic new women,and late night arrests to regain one's focus...),Wopsploitation, your hands down favorite cult/horror/exploitation movie review site is back with a vengeance to once again viscerally vivisect the best and worst genre films ever made.And everything in between.Despite the noticeable lull in new reviews here,the feedback has been very positive,leading your humble narrator to deduct that some of his pals have indeed finally learned to read!Good for you,droogies!
Your persistence will now pay off,as you will be forcefed a movie a day(at the least)right up to All Hallow's Eve.After which,who knows,I may drag it out right into the new year if I manage to stay focused long enough.Gather your kinfolk around the monitor,call your friends,and prepare to spend the glorious Halloween season with your favorite fright film fanatic,yours cruelly,B.W. And we're off....
 
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