Velvet Smooth

I have never seen such an atrocious looking film with an equally atrocious soundtrack before. A film with the most horrible fight choreography ever depicted and a spiral staircase that obviously went nowhere! That is what we get in Velvet Smooth, a film that tries to be too clever in terms of twists while probably telling the actors to just have fun with it as far as the fight scenes go.

The story, some guys are beating up and stealing from businesses involved in illegal numbers. They belong to a crime guy called King. There is also a dude who has a casino, but I forgot his name. Well King needs to find out who is behind the string of crimes so he gets Velvet Smooth and her lady friends who can unrealistically beat down a superior number of men in masks with karate that is worse than that of the Guy From Harlem. They have to track down the guy behind the masked attackers and get in some loving while pretending the spiral staircase in her apartment leads to a bedroom when it is obvious it goes nowhere.

The actors are horrible, the plot is horrible and the martial arts (if that is what you want to call it) is horrible. I began wondering if this thing were maybe a spoof made at a later date and made to look older when the strange dying screeching music began playing during the fight scenes and that one dude yelled on the roof, but alas, no, not meant to be a spoof.

So, I have seen this and The Guy From Harlem and both are bad, but this one was worse to me. My ears still bleed due to the screeching music. The Guy From Harlem had a more straightforward plot, while this one was all over the place. I saw it coming though, I knew it was going to be an "Aha, I'm the real culprit" type ending. So, it fails to surprise even with all the misdirection and the horrible decor to try and distract you!

The fun, shorter, rifftrax version is on pluto channel. And the less edited, regular version showing on roku channel. Johnnie hill is velvet smooth... the only role she ever did! When someone starts taking their payoff money, the gang goes to a detective agency to get answers. Which is what you do, when someone steals your gang's money! I guess. And of course, bodies start piling up, and the coppers take about three minutes to investigate, then take off. The run time is listed as ninety three minutes in imdb. The pluto version is only seventy four minutes, but on roku, it's ninety three minutes. Pretty big differences. All kinds of cussing, so it wasn't the swears that were cut out on pluto. Lots of badly choreographed gang fight scenes in parking lots. The actors mostly stand around, and sometimes walk to the center and fake fight someone. You'll see rené van clief , who was also in dolemite! Filmed in brooklyn, according to imdb. The picture quality is pretty rough on pluto. For most of the film, there are tiny residual marks of film decay in most of the screen. But they have been cleaned up on roku! Directed by michael fink. One of the two films he directed. And now we know why. It's so bad. No wonder rifftrax mocked it. Certainly interesting as a blacksploitation film from the 1970s.

For a low-budget 70's martial arts film, I thought it was pretty entertaining. The soundtrack is really a hoot, as are the sets and costumes. I especially enjoyed the scene where King and Velvet are on the sofa and you can actually see the audio boom shifting back and forth at the bottom of the screen! When Velvet speaks her line the boom points at her and when King says something, the boom races back toward him--hilarious! I noticed that the casino bouncer is one of the "family" from "Super Fly". There are some amusing parallels: Velvet takes off her bracelet at home, cut to bracelets being stolen at the casino robbery. Also, during the fight scene on the top of the MTA building, the costumes match the colors and shapes of the hele-pad. I thought the Kojak lookalike was a really strange touch and whatever they were using for stage blood looked like marinara! Fantastic!

Mega-gangster King Lathrop (Owen Watson) is being hit, and hit hard. Somebody's moving in on his action, and roughing up his customers. King calls in VELVET SMOOTH (Johnnie Hill) to make things happen. Ms. Smooth gets her crew together, including Frankie (Rene Van Clief).

Let the throw-down showdown begin!

See! A dozen masked thugs karate kicked to near extinction!

Watch! As their manhood is put into critical condition!

Velvet and Frankie are taking out the trash!

VELVET SMOOTH is another "urban" crime-thriller from the 1970's. While it's not at the bottom of the barrel, it's certainly no COFFY or CLEOPATRA JONES, either. It does have that funky 70's charm going on.

Yes, Ms. Hill speaks as though she's still rehearsing her lines, but hey! She's awesome! Looking good in red! Especially when she's kicking major felonious buttocks! Sure, the fight choreography is a bit south of TNT JACKSON, but hey! Velvet is Smooooth! Even when the microphone is in plain view, like a character in itself!

Right on!

EXTRA POINTS FOR: The theme song! "Outta Sight" doesn't even begin to describe it!...

This is one of the weaker Blaxploitation films made in the 70's. Production value? Well, I have seen student films with better attention to detail. The acting is not any better. The music isn't too bad and unfortunately one of the only good things about this film.

If you are dedicated to the Genre, then you have to see it. Otherwise you aren't going to miss anything. They took the formula approach and it shows. You can't take any of these movies too seriously, but you can pass on this one.

See: Three the Hardway, Blackula, Superfly, Shaft or Detroit 9000.