Blaxploitation meets the melodramatic potboiler

Going through the movies that I put on the DVR during the Black Experience in Film spotlight from back in September, I finally got around to watching Cleopatra Jones.

Tamara Dobson plays Jones, who at the start of the movie is in Turkey with what look like members of a special Turkish military/police division tasked with fighting the war on drugs, as they're destroying a field of poppies. Cut to America, and Mommy (Shelley Winters). Apparently she had dibs on those poppies, with the obvious intention of turning them into heroin and making a kiling off the drugs. Mommy, who has a bunch of young beauties working for her and who has some odd sexual predilections, is pissed, and plans to get revenge on Cleopatra.

Cleopatra's boyfriend Reuben (Bernie Casey) helps run a halfway house for recovering drug addicts, so Mommy comes up with the brilliant idea of planting some phony evidence that that will get Reuben arrested and thwart the work of the halfway house. Unsurprisingly, there are quite a few corrupt police officers, so Mommy has no problem doing it, although it only furthers Cleopatra's drive to bring down Mommy, as well as prevent all those drugs from flowing onto the streets of the ghetto.

Meanwhile, Mommy can't sell drugs in the ghetto herself, what with the kingpins appearing to keep their hands clean and besides, who's going to buy drugs from a 50-something white woman with big hair? So she's outsourced that part of the operation to Doodlebug (Antonio Fargas), but wants to rise above his station, which means that Mommy is going to be going up against Doodlebug as well as Cleopatra. Of course, in a movie like this the men are easier to deal with....

Having dispatched Doodlebug, Mommy proceeds to the final showdown with Cleopatra, at a car junkyard, where the crusher reminded me a lot of the James Bond movie Goldfinger. Cleopatra uses her wits, as well as her skill in martial arts, to take down all the bad guys and Mommy, but you knew she was always going to come out on top.

In the title of the post, I mentioned those melodramatic potboilers, which was only in part because of the presence of Shelley Winters, whose career had already turned a few years earlier when she made What's the Matter With Helen? (well, that and Bloody Mama). But I've also come to the realization the blaxploitation and those movies like What's the Matter With Helen, over the top and starring one or another of those aging Hollywood actresses, have something in common for me.

Going back to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, a lot of thse movies had serious pretentions, although for a lot of people, the main reason to watch is for those poor old actresses having to go way over the top -- think Bette Davis and Joan Crawford going at each other, and the rat on a silver platter, and the like. The blaxploitation movies -- certainly entries like Blacula and Shaft, were trying both to produce good art and make some commentary. But for a white guy like me who was born too late to see these movies when they originally came out, I tend to find myself glossing over that facet of the movies (both with blaxploitation and the older woman melodrama). One thing that I did find myself noting, though, was the dilemma of the War on Drugs where drug use is obviously destroying this community, but the police's fighting it might be causing even more damage.

As for Cleopatra Jones, I think I'd have to say that I slightly prefer Pam Grier's heroines in Coffy and Foxy Brown. (Weaponizing one's afro will do that, I suppose.) When Cleopatra Jones is over the top fun -- and there is quite a lot of that -- it's for me more when some of the other characters are on, Doodlebug and especially Mommy. I don't know why Shelley Winters decided to take her career in the direction she did, but boy am I thankful for it. There's a string of movies where she's loud, brassy, and fun, and she turns that up even more in Cleopatra Jones. Mommy and Cleopatra are good foils for each other. The rest of the movie seems slightly toned down: Cleopatra isn't quite as over the top as the Pam Grier characters as I already mentioned, and there were also times when I was wondering whether the movie would turn into one of those 60s spy spoofs, but it never quite goes there either.

My understanding is Warner Bros. produced Cleopatra Jones in part trying to appeal to a broader audience, and it certainly is a movie that deserves to be seen more broadly. It's a hell of a lot of fun, and offers something for almost everybody.