Tag: 1970s
Having been balls deep in black horror for a number of years, it’s always fascinating to come across a film of significance that’s been hidden in plain sight for so long. Nothing about the generically titled Night of the Strangler and its lily white poster screams blackness (and what...
Black Is Boo-Tiful
When Jordan Peeele’s Get Out became a breakout success in 2017, earning him the first Original Screenplay Oscar awarded to an African-American, "black horror movies" suddenly became the new hot property in Hollywood, with many people seeming to believe that this was an entirely new subset of...
*SPOILER ALERT* In order to fully discuss this movie, I'll need to reveal its major plot points. Sorry.
Also: *IGNORANCE OF BRAZILIAN CINEMA ALERT* Sorry again.
Although the late Walter Hugo Khouri was a highly acclaimed and accomplished Brazilian director, his movies are ponderously difficult to find; at last check, only...
In between the 1958 original The Blob and the 1988 remake The Blob was Beware! The Blob, a goofy '70s sequel that stands out for little more than being an early example of what would later become a horror cliché: the black guy dying first.
In truth, black characters in...
A couple of years after co-starring in the landmark black horror film Ganja & Hess, scream queen Marlene Clark headlined Lord Shango, and while Ganja & Hess has emerged from the shadows in recent years to gain some mainstream notoriety (and an ill-fated Spike Lee remake), Lord Shango remains...
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a harrowing horror classic that has no doubt been dissected (no pun intended) a million times since its release, but there's one aspect that doesn't seem to get discussed very much: A FREAKIN’ BLACK GUY SAVES THE DAY. For a black person to be...
Chosen Survivors provides one of the earliest examples I've found of a "heroic death" by a black character in a horror movie. The phenomenon of black heroic death has served a purpose similar to that of the black "authority figure": it's a way for mainstream films to present more...
In terms of racial resonance, Don’t Look in the Basement is sort of like the underachieving little brother to Night of the Living Dead. Whereas that George Romero classic has received widespread recognition for its ahead-of-its-time casting of an African-American lead, Don’t Look in the Basement, released just five...
Old Dracula is a silly little horror comedy trying to capitalize on the success of Young Frankenstein, its punny title an indication of the level of humor involved (that being "low"). There's a surprising racial twist, however, in the tale of old vamp Dracula (David Niven, sporting a distinctly...
Although the cast of Nurse Sherri is pretty much racially integrated, and the character of Sherri is very much white, this film is often tagged as a Blaxploitation film -- particularly when re-titled Black Voodoo for VHS release with a complete racial 360 on the cover art:
In the film, tig-ol-bittied Jill Jacobson gives...
