Mean Johnny Barrows

1976; color

Directed by Fred Williamson

Starring: Fred Williamson, Roddy McDowall, Stuart Whitman, Anthony Caruso, Luther Adler, R.G. Armstrong & Elliott Gould

Final Comedown

1972; color

Directed by Oscar Williams

Starring: Billy Dee Williams, D'Urville Martin, Celia Kaye, Raymond St. Jacques & R.G. Armstrong

Lady Cocoa

1975; color

Directed by Matt Cimber

Starring: Lola Falana, Gene Washington, Alex Dreier, Joe Greene, James A. Watson Jr., Millie Perkins & Gary Harper

Velvet Smooth

1976; color

Directed by Michael Fink

Starring: Johnnie Hill, Emerson Boozer, James Durrah, Moses Lyllia, Elsie Roman, Frank Ruiz, René Van Clief & Owen Watson

If it were restored and reissued properly, Mean Johnny Barrows could eventually be regarded as a lost Blaxploitation classic. Fred Williamson's directorial debut definitely leaves something to be desired in it's present form but I believe much of that is due to the horrible pan and scan treatment the film gets here. Numerous scenes become almost nonsensical thanks to the fact that you can't see who's talking or what they're doing since everyone of importance is on the side of the frame. The plot is a pretty good one, especially for 1976, depicting the saga of a Vietnam vet who's unjustly given a dishonorable discharge and finds nothing but trouble and unemployment back on the home front. He has run-ins with some racist cops who want to beat his ass just because he's black, and quickly ends up homeless and roaming the streets. Eventually he does get a job cleaning up a gas station and the owner "graciously" lets him sleep on the floor in the back because he literally has nowhere else to go. As it turns out, Barrows was a big college football star before his tour of duty, and an old rival from another team who always respected his on-field ability offers him a job. Unfortunately it's working for the mob as a hit man (the film uses the old rival-families-encroaching-on-each-other's-territory subplot) and he's not interested. To a point. Once Johnny's football buddy ends up in the hospital with a gut full of lead he begins to rethink what the $100,00 and big piece of land he's been promised as payment for the job could do for him. At this point he finally changes out of the one pair of jeans, shirt and denim jacket he lives in for the first two-thirds of the film and starts wearing swanky suits and ties. He also starts knocking off the members of the rival family one by one until the job is done. And while it looks like Johnny Barrows finally gets what he feels is coming to him at the end, the twist ending (which, truth be told, you can see coming well in advance) puts a bullet through that notion real quick. Two of the odder roles in this are Elliott Gould in a regrettably awful turn as a homeless "professor", which only proves he can't act very well; and Roddy McDowall, who also must have been slumming for paychecks at this point, as a mobster's son who runs a flower shop and is the romantic "lead" in some regard. (He seems so out of place in this flick, you're almost glad when he gets whacked.) Not awful, not great, but definitely worth checking out at least once.
—the Kommandant

Final Comedown

This has got to be filed under the "what the hell was he thinking?" category. Billy Dee Williams "political statement" movie, Final Comedown, isn't so much Blaxploitation as it is a rhetoric-laden commentary on racism in LA in the early 1970s. Make that a totally bloody and gun-happy rhetoric-laden commentary on racism in LA in the early 1970s. For a serious movie - and make no mistake, this movie is dead serious in every single frame - there's more blood, guts, and killing than any entry in the Friday The 13th series. (Except maybe Freddy vs. Jason but that one doesn't really count.) I didn't keep track but between the cops and the radicals there had to have been at least 25-30 deaths, probably more. When Williams made this, in 1972, he was already regarded as an up and coming talent having just been nominated for an Emmy for the legendary TV movie Brian's Song. In fact, the movie he made right after Final Comedown, Lady Sings The Blues, made him a major presence in Hollywood for decades to come. But back to the matter at hand. Most of the movie takes place during an armed riot in what's supposed to be either Compton or Watts, and revolves around Williams and his cadre of revolutionaries trying to mow down as many cops as they can to start the revolution. Early on Williams gets shot in the stomach and for the rest of the movie he's propped up against a wall, babbling like Dutch Schultz on his deathbed, having flashback upon flashback taking us from his childhood up to the planning of the riot, and all the events that shaped his character, attitude and beliefs. Unfortunately, everyone else in the cast, with the exception of Blaxploitation mainstay D'Urville Martin, can't act to save their lives. And with a script that's so weighted down with political statements it might as well have been written on lead paper, it makes the whole thing all the more unbearable. Fortunately, they don't need to "act" that much, as literally everyone dies in this Peckinpah-like gun-fest. Even for genre completists like me this one's hard to get through, and definitely will NOT be getting repeat viewings here at the casa.
—the Kommandant

Lady Cocoa

When one thinks of the blaxploitation genre and it's female heroines the first name that always comes to mind is Pam Grier, and with good reason; she starred (and co-starred) in some of the most memorable films of the era. The second most well-known actress of the era would probably be Tammy Dobson (aka Cleopatra Jones) and then third... um... well, I can't think of an third actress that would rank in the same category as Grier and Dobson. Which is not to say there were no other attractive African American women who had a starring role in a film of this ilk. I'm just saying their films aren't as memorable. Today's subject, Lady Cocoa is somewhat memorable; but for all the wrong reasons. The acting is bad, the dialogue is bad (hell, they couldn't even come up with ANY dialogue for Mean Joe Green and his co-hort) and the storyline is barely plausible. To add insult to injury, the transfer itself is so horribly dark and grainy that you often have to strain to figure out what's going on. (Once you do, you realize it made no damn sense anyway.) On the other hand, if you're a person who just can't resist a bad movie - like the Kommandant - you may like this movie and even try to convince the person watching it with you to feel the same way. I admit he may have succeeded a little bit there; when I thought about the movie the next day it didn't seem as awful as when I was watching it, especially after sitting through Velvet Smooth. (But let's not get ahead of ourselves.) Cocoa is played by Lola Falana, who - according to her Wikipedia page - was born in Camden, NJ, dropped out of Germantown High School here in Philly months before her would-be graduation and went on to be responsible for the end of Sammy Davis Jr.'s interracial marriage. (Among other things.) From what I gather she was most famous as a dancer so I'm not really sure why someone would cast her in a starring role in a film. I would say her acting skills would be better suited to a guest spot on an episode of the Love Boat. (I didn't actually check her IMDB page but I wouldn't be surprised if she did appear on that show; and I bet she made out with Isaac.) In fact, the plot, which casts Falana as a foul mouthed mobster's ex-girlfriend who is about to testify for the prosecution and is granted a 24 hour bout of freedom in a casino / hotel in Lake Tahoe would be better suited for an hour long TV show with a lot of commercial breaks. But then we wouldn't have heard her curse a blue streak or seen her topless. Not really recommended for the casual blaxploitation fan but if you're determined to see ever movie of the genre, you might as well watch this one too.
—Bunny

Velvet Smooth

After I was done reading Lola Falana's Wikipedia page I decided to type in Velvet Smooth, just for the hell of it, and was surprised to find it actually had a page all it's own. I was not as surprised to see the page contained merely a VHS box cover and one single, telling, sentence: "Velvet Smooth is a 1976 blaxploitation film." (Even I cannot argue with that astute summation!) If we're going to subscribe to that old grandmotherly "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" saying, I'm not sure what else to add. Of course, we're not beholden to say nice things, or avoid saying not nice things, so that in itself wouldn't stop me but there really is not a whole lot to say about this movie. Other than it was not very good. The story, if you can call it that, centers around a lady dick (ahem; a female private investigator) who gets hired by a local crime boss to aid him in finding out who's behind the roving gang of masked men attempting to encroach on his territory. Of course Velvet Smooth is no ordinary lady PI, she has a staff full of equally awkward women and they all know karate - or something kind of similar to it involving a lot of jarring arm and leg movements but not a lot of physical contact. (Now that I think of it, in retrospect, the premise is not such a bad idea and could have been much more successful if handled by a different production team. Maybe Quentin Tarantino should think about remaking this film.) Velvet Smooth is one of those flicks you just can't imagine anyone ever paying to see in a theater, assuming such a thing was possible. I don't know how this unfortunate movie ended up even being issued on DVD but one can only surmise that the folks behind this package needed a fourth feature to fill out the box set and this was literally the only other film they had access to.
—Bunny