Le Parrain noir de Harlem

The Black Godfather (1974) is a movie that I recently watched on Tubi. The storyline follows JJ, a rising drug dealer who can't stand what drugs are doing to his neighborhood. He decides he wants to change how he, and everyone else, do business his neighborhood and get crack off the streets. His business partners don't agree with his epiphany leading to a battle in the streets.

This movie is written and directed by John Evans (Speeding up Time) and stars Rod Perry (The Black Gestapo), Don Chastain (C. C. And Company), Tony Burton (Assault on Precinct 13) and John Alderman (Cleopatra Jones).

This movie had a classic blaxploitation storyline but all the charm that comes with this genre - a great soundtrack, fun attire and style, entertaining dialogue and characters that are easy to root for. There are some worthwhile nudity and sex scenes and the film does a great job of making the main character relatable despite his decisions and actions. The action is very average and the ending is as you'd expect.

Overall, this is an average addition to the blaxploitation genre that I would score a 5/10 and recommend seeing once.

After a burglary in Harlem goes bad and his best friend is killed a wounded "J.J." (Rod Perry) is rescued by a man named "Nate Williams" (Jimmy Witherspoon) who is also known as "the Black Godfather" due to the fact that he owns the numbers racket there. After treating his wounds Nate decides to mentor J.J. because he recognizes something special in him. Sometime later J.J. becomes quite influential in both gambling and prostitution--but not in drugs which is controlled by an Italian mobster named "Tony Burton" (Don Chastain). Having seen the devastation within the black community caused by heroin J.J. decides to team up with some black militants led by a man named "Diablo" (Damu King) to make it more difficult for Tony to do business in this part of the city. Unfortunately, Tony has no intention of abandoning such a lucrative market and war soon breaks out. At any rate, rather than reveal any more of this movie and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this was a fairly decent "blaxploitation" picture. Admittedly, some of the scenes were rather slow and it could have used a bit more action here and there but otherwise it turned out okay. Accordingly, I rate it as about average.

On the one hand, it's pretty good to focus on a man whose aim is to keep drugs out of his community, but this is silly. The fight scenes aren't as neat as those seen in "Shaft" or "Superfly". An interesting factoid is that Tony Burton, who plays Sonny, has also starred in two of the most famous movies: he played Apollo Creed's trainer in "Rocky" and the garage owner in "The Shining" (on whose set he played chess with Stanley Kubrick).

So, there's nothing special about "The Black Godfather". Like any blaxploitation flick, it's purpose is to show African-Americans being cool. This one succeeds at least partly.

It would only be fair to say that the title of this one gives a pretty clear clue of what it's going to be about in advance. Needless to say, The Black Godfather is about the head honcho of an African-American gangster group. It's clearly a Blaxploitation riff on the earlier mega hit, The Godfather (1972), except in this one there is no focus whatsoever on the rise of the central character up to the summit of his organisation. Basically, in this one he has arisen to the rank of godfather after approximately ten minutes in! So the focus is on things he has to deal with as the leader of a black gang, such as white hoods trying to introduce drugs into the neighbourhood, something the black criminals are strongly opposed to. In order to combat this, the godfather joins forces with a Black Panther styled militant group.

I was looking forward to this one, as it sounded like a sure fire winner but in all honesty it's a pretty poor effort from a genre where even most of the ropiest entries are still somewhat entertaining. It is a little too talky for its own good and it doesn't deliver enough fun on the whole. The black godfather himself wasn't truthfully the most interesting central character as it turned out, which was disappointing. It's probably a film suited mostly to Blaxploitation fanatics and I'm sure it will deliver something for most of them. One point of interest I did find though was the presence of Duncan McLeod as the requisite corrupt cop – he, of course, played the shady lawyer Porter Hall in the delicious cult classic Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) and it certainly was at least nice to see him appear in something else.

The Black Godfather (1974)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

The title to this Blaxploitation flick pretty much tells you all you need to know. Rising gangster J.J. (Rod Perry) wants to get his black brothers buying dope from their own kind and in order to do this he must battle the evil white gangster (Don Chastain) who keeps pushing into his neighborhood. THE BLACK GODFATHER is a pretty lame entry in the genre for a number of reasons but the biggest is that it's simply got a cash-in title and very little else. A lot of these Blaxploitation films were nothing more than cash-ins but every once in a while you'll come across one that's actually good. Sadly, this here isn't that type of film as this here is pretty boring from start to finish and there are only a couple campy scenes that keep it from being a real disaster. I think the biggest problem is the rather lackluster direction, which just never pumps any energy or excitement onto the screen. The film just seems to be going through the motions and there's nothing that happens that you won't see coming from a mile away. Even the lead character isn't all that interesting and not for a single second do you care about his cause, care about his friends or even care if he's killed or not. As with most of these films, all the blacks are hard-working people just trying to make some cash for themselves while all the whites are evil racists. This simple set up can be fun when it's done correctly but here it just seems tired and old. I actually thought Perry was good in the lead role but it's really too bad that the screenplay didn't give him something better to do. I also liked Chastain as the bad guy. The highlight of the film is when a group of blacks break in on a couple and the white woman is needing a fix and offers herself for one. This entire sequence is pretty hilarious and it's too bad we didn't get more moments like this.