Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song was a 1971 blaxploitation film. Unusually for the genre, it was directed by a black director, Melvin Van Peebles, who also starred, wrote, produced, and co-wrote the score with the then-unknown group Earth, Wind & Fire. The film, which was funded and distributed outside of the Hollywood system, broke conventions with its visual style, as well as its content.
The film's fast-paced montages and jump-cuts were novel features for an American movie at the time, although it is likely that Van Peebles was influenced by the avant-garde films of Jean-Luc Godard, since he was living in Paris and studying to be a director during the mid-1960s.
Because Van Peebles had refused to submit the film to the MPAA, the film received an automatic X rating, and thus, the film was released with the tagline: "Rated X By An All-White Jury!" The film made $10m off a meager $150,000 budget, a testament to both the financial clout and political awareness of the black-community at the time. Surprisingly, Bill Cosby was among the financial backers of the film.
Infamously, when funds ran low, Van Peebles made extra money by applying for worker's compensation after he contracted gonorrhea when filming one of the film's numerous hardcore, unsimulated sex scenes. The scheme paid off, and Van Peebles used the money to further fund the project.
In 2004 Melvin's son Mario Van Peebles made a biopic based on the filming of Sweet Sweetback entitled BAADASSSSS!
Plot
The film opens with the dedication, "Dedicated to all the Brothers and Sisters who had enough of the Man," followed by the credit, "Starring: The Black Community." Then, the story begins:
A young orphan boy (Mario Van Peebles) is taken in by the proprietor of a Los Angeles whorehouse in the 1960s. While working there as a towel boy, he loses his virginity to one of the whores; the women name him "Sweet Sweetback" in honor of his sexual prowess and gigantic penis.
The movie flashes forward to the 1970s, where Sweetback (Melvin Van Peebles), now an adult, works as a performer in the whorehouse, entertaining customers by having sex on stage. One night, a pair of police officers come in to speak to Sweetback's boss, Beetle. A black man turned up murdered, and there is pressure from blacks to bring in a suspect. The police ask permission to arrest Sweetback, blame him for the crime, and then release him a few days later for lack of evidence, in order to appease the black community. Beetle agrees, and the officers arrest Sweetback.
On the way to the police station, the officers arrest a young Black Panther. They handcuff him to Sweetback, but when the Panther mouths off to the officers, they un-handcuff him, take him out of the car, and beat him; in response, Sweetback gets out of the car and murders the officers.
The remainder of the film chronicles Sweetback's flight through South Central L.A. (now South L.A.) towards the Mexican border. Highlights of his odyssey include:
- Sweetback is captured by the police for the murders of the cops, but escapes when a riot breaks out.
- A kindly old white man sympathetic to his cause agrees to switch clothes with him, allowing the usually velour clad Sweetback to blend in.
- The police find Sweetback's foster-father, a blind, illiterate old man who reveals that Sweetback's birth name is Leroy.
- Sweetback goes to a woman he knows who can cut his handcuffs off; she makes him pay her with sex. With his handcuffs off, Sweetback continues onward, only to be captured by an all-white chapter of the Hells Angels. The female members are impressed by the size of Sweetback's penis, and after he gives one of them multiple orgasms during sex, they help him get to the desert.
The film concludes in the desert, where the L.A. police send a pair of German Shepherds after Sweetback. He makes it into the Rio Grande, where he kills the dogs with his bare hands and escapes into Mexico. Afterwards, Sweetback delivers a warning (via on-screen text) to white viewers: "Watch out - a baad assss nigger is coming to collect some dues."
Censorship
The Region 2 DVD release from BFI Video has the opening sex sequences removed. A notice at the beginning of the DVD explains that the scenes were censored "in order to comply with UK law (the Protection of Children Act 1978)."
See also
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