Street Sisters

Not depressed enough? Why don't you try this film that involves the life and times of some poor kid who has to be brought up by his grandparents because his mum is out there getting her kicks from Johns while getting them to bite her real heard or something because she thrives on their hate.

Add to that the grandfather who is a priest who thinks his grandson is some sort of abomination but ain't afraid to play stinky finger with his grandson's childhood sweetheart. To be honest if you can even make it to this part in the movie without removing your eyeballs with a spoon then you may actually have the same kind of OCD as me.

Easily the weakest film in the mill Creek Drive in Classics box set, this film is like standing in line to get a hot dog, pishing yourself, then weeping uncontrollably.

With the title of this movie at times being "Street Sisters" and other times "Black Hooker", one might be lead to believe this is a sleazy blaxploitation movie. Actually, while the movie does have a couple of sex scenes with nudity, the majority of the movie aims to be a serious drama. Nothing wrong with that aim, but the end results are disappointing. I will say that the acting by the no-name cast is competent, and while the movie is based on a stage play, it manages to hide its stage origins fairly well. But the storytelling is a mess. It's confusing with its abrupt jumps in time, though most of the time the movie is really slow, padded out with scenes that serve little to no purpose. And we never really get into the head of the Caucasian central character. I suspect that this worked a lot better on the stage than this cinematic translation.

Black hooker accidentally gets pregnant by a white man, and drops off the finished product at her parents house. Only Grandma cares about little "what's his name". Grandpa the Preacher despises the young lad, due to the fact that his half-blackness doesn't show. Mama the prostitute couldn't care less if little "whats his name" lives or dies, as black hooker is too busy out living her sinful life to care about anyone but herself. It's just a matter of time before half-white offspring becomes seriously screwed-up half-white guy, who has issues with women. An estranged hooker for a mother is one thing, but having to depend on hateful old Grandpa is becoming a bit much. Now that Grandpa has stolen "what's his name's" best girl, maybe it's time to leave home, and go pay mama a visit, to see if she can make life any less unbearable. Apparently, "what's his name" forgot the part about mama not caring whether he lives or dies. Hopefully, she'll break the news to him gently.

Yeah, sure, why not? A little mean-spirited Blaxploitation, now and then, is good for the soul. I'm not even sure this is Blaxpoittation. It's more like some really dismal Hixploitation, which happens to feature a black cast. Whatever the hell this is, it is quite the mean-spirited, uncomfortable little obscurity, which caters only to collectors of the most obscure B-cinema available. A hostile, impersonal story, with zero light at the end of the tunnel. none of the characters even have names. What kind of director makes a movie like this? A director who didn't have a very happy childhood, that's who. I mean, this isn't exactly Cannibal Holocaust, or I Spit On Your Grave, or anything like that, but Black Hooker is just hateful. Available on Mill Creek Entertainment's Drive-in Movie Classics 50-pack. I figure, if you aren't depressed by depressing movies, and are up for anything as long as it's obscure, then who knows? You might not hate Black Hooker. 5/10

Blaxsploitation cinema of the 70's is littered with the same old tiresome genres: Martials Arts, Gangster movies and Drug Smuggling. So it's refreshing to come across a movie that tries to shake the boundaries and try something new. Granted Arthur Robinson's 'Sister, Sister' aka Black Hooker and Don't Leave Go My Hand, suffers somewhat dramatically from amateur directing, but overall the movie delivers its story well enough for the audience to appreciate the intentions it sets out to achieve.

The story follows the early years of a young white boy, abandoned by his mother; A high class African-American hooker from the city, to be brought up by her grandparents in the poor black regions in the countryside. The denial of her son, is illustrated through her disgust at his white skin, blonde hair and blue eyes, a child born a bastard to a drunken white man and a prostitute. The child however, alien to a world of racial bigotry, wants only the love of his estranged mother. After losing his childhood sweetheart and first love to his preacher grandfather at the age of 16, he decides to leave home for the city in search of his mother, only to finally find her and be greeted with stone cold denial, and contempt. A lifetime of rejection and hardship is too much to bare for the son... How will he cope?

A fairly thought provoking story which undeniably sets out to challenge the social and ethnic class structures that were so divided in working class America in the 70's. Which I feel the current IMDb rating does not give it credit for. There's no pretending that this movie is anything particularly special, but it does manage to string together a plausible narrative, which offers somewhat more than the usual pimp/blow/fist fighter we're so used to with blaxploitation.

The strength of this movie comes from the performance of the leading actress Sandra Alexandra who plays the working girl mother. Besides Alexandra's performance, the rest of the cast is nothing out of the ordinary, but the ideals this movie is trying to flagstone, speak louder than the actions actually portrayed on the screen.

Make no mistake, "Street Sisters" (which I saw as "The Black Hooker") is a bad film. However, it does have enough bad elements to keep you curious enough (maybe) to sit through the whole thing.

One interesting thing is that the film is set in the 30's and 40's, with most of the actors still looking like they are from the 70's of course, especially hair-wise. The plot - a very attractive black hooker has a white son in "a bad way" (meaning from a john), wants nothing to do with her son, so she keeps the son on her parent's farm where grandma and grandpa raise him. Grandpa is a preacher but a pervert and a mean dude, grandma is very nice but she has an undisclosed bad past. The kid makes friends with a young black girl (why he shockingly pushes her from behind as she is running in a small brook who knows) and then all of a sudden it's the 40's, and the kid and his girlfriend are teens.

His girlfriend has a certain encounter with grandpa, prompting the son to leave home, and go find his hooker mom. He wants a relationship with her, but she still wants nothing to do with him. He goes off on his own and has a few "adventures." The last 15 minutes of this film gets real strange. The color tone of the film change for a little while and things get a little psychedelic. Some weird things happen and it all ends very suddenly and strangely.

The film is bad. There are plenty of odd close-ups and poor camera angles. Despite being set in the 30s and 40s, the music is still 70's porno funky. Makes you think maybe the film is indeed set in the 70's after all, but the few vehicles you actually see are all 30's cars. yeah right! There are some sequences where nothing happens at all, except to fill in the time with some utterly meaningless conversation between characters.

There is even one long and brutal beat down of one of mom's johns by a couple of guys (her pimp and his muscle?) that makes you wonder, what does this have to do with anything? There are early indications that the film will be about the white boy struggling to live in the "black world" due to his family and upbringing, but that's never touched upon after all. Mom though, as attractive and sexy as she is, is very much an unlikable selfish bitch to such a degree, the viewer can never feel anything for her at all.

This is definitely an interesting viewing experience but it isn't something you will want to watch again more than once most likely.