Monday, March 18, 2024

Tag: mystical darkies

The Leech Woman
The Leech Woman isn't exactly the creative zenith of Universal horror -- coming six years after the studio's last great monster movie of its golden era, Creature from the Black Lagoon -- but it might be its zenith of racial representation…not that that's exactly high praise. It basically means...
Mario Van Peebles in Jaws: The Revenge
Be they stereotypes or monotypes, they're the "types" that most black characters in horror films inevitably fall into... The Spook As the name implies, the spook is spooked by all things spooky. Typically the comic sidekick, he's often spared from death by his ability to make people laugh. The "classic spook"...
The Last Wave movie poster
It's not really horror, but The Last Wave has horrific elements that invoke the ever popular "mystical darkie," this time in Australia with aborigines. A white lawyer (Richard Chamberlain) defends a group of aborigines accused of murdering one of their own. He discovers that they are "tribal" (i.e., they...
The Offspring From a Whisper to a Sceam horror movie poster
While the standard cinematic mystical darkie is a benevolent being who uses his or her powers to aid a Caucasian in need (CIN) -- see The Legend of Bagger Vance, The Family Man, The Green Mile, The Stand, The Shining, etc. -- The Offspring paints quite a different picture....
Pre-dating the similarly themed Australian cult film Patrick by a few years, Psychic Killer has only one major black character (a not-quite-angelic Della Reese has a throwaway scene), and he dies within the first 15 minutes, but there wouldn't be a movie without him. And if there was, it...
Stephen King's The Stand movie poster
Stephen King loves mystical darkies! In particular, he's partial to the Southern, rustic, uneducated variety (see also The Green Mile). I half expected that in The Shawshank Redemption, Morgan Freeman would sprout wings or take the form of a bucket of water, but King decided to exercise "restraint" (whatever)....