I bet you mortals thought I forgot about Black History Month, didn't you?
It's not so much I forgot, as much as I postponed it. Since January, I've been taking my movies in chronological order, and there weren't many good roles for black actors until 1968, and I've already reviewed Night of the Living Dead twice.
Even after that groundbreaking film and Duane Jones's stellar performance, it's not as if they started handing out lead roles to black people in horror movies. It wasn't until the success of movies like Shaft and Superfly helped usher in the blaxploitation trend that movies started appearing with mostly African-American casts. Such films usually fell into the action-thriller genre, but movies like Abby and Scream Blacula Scream did surface to fill the horror niche.
In belated honor of Black History Month, I would like to tell you about one other such movie.
This week's Thursday Thriller is JD's Revenge.
This 1976 Arthur Marks film stars Glynn Turman as Ike, a young urbanite who drives a cab in New Orleans to pay his way through law school. He has his head on straight, a bright future, and, at the risk of condescending the centuries of accomplishments of countless African Americans, he speaks well. Ike is mostly work, and except for the occasional pick-up game of football, little play.
His girlfriend Christella (Joan Pringle) insists they go out for a night on the town with friends, so they go down to Bourbon Street, take in a fantastically gratuitous strip show, and check out a hypnotist before capping the evening off with some dancing. The hypnotist's spell opens Ike up for possession by the ghost of JD Walker (David McKnight), a gangster whose rap sheet included running a numbers racket and selling beef on the black market. Walker was gunned down by Theotis Bliss (Fred Pinkard) in 1942. Louis Gossett Jr. plays Theotis's brother Elijah, an erstwhile hustler who worked his way into the ultimate con -- religion.
Ike's possession and transformation is a gradual one. It starts with headaches and flashbacks, psychedelic smash-cuts of chopping meat. He remembers finding his sister Betty Jo (Alice Jubert) dead, her throat slashed. He remembers Elijah, his brother-in-law discovering him crouched over her lifeless body, her blood on his hands. He remembers getting shot, but none of these things happened to Ike. His friends tell him it's just the stress of working and studying too hard, but then he finds himself drawn to an old fedora in a secondhand store.
He starts gambling, drinking and slapping Christella around. Under the influence of JD's spirit, he sleeps with Elijah's daughter, which, yes, would be JD's niece, so that's kind of weird.
The ending of this movie seemed a bit too tidy and hastily conceived for my liking, but the fun here is watching Turman play the role, changing before your eyes from a casually dressed student of the law to a vulgar, zoot-suited thug. It's like watching Jekyll turn into Hyde, or Barack Obama turn into Katt Williams.
JD's Revenge streams on YouTube.
His girlfriend Christella (Joan Pringle) insists they go out for a night on the town with friends, so they go down to Bourbon Street, take in a fantastically gratuitous strip show, and check out a hypnotist before capping the evening off with some dancing. The hypnotist's spell opens Ike up for possession by the ghost of JD Walker (David McKnight), a gangster whose rap sheet included running a numbers racket and selling beef on the black market. Walker was gunned down by Theotis Bliss (Fred Pinkard) in 1942. Louis Gossett Jr. plays Theotis's brother Elijah, an erstwhile hustler who worked his way into the ultimate con -- religion.
Ike's possession and transformation is a gradual one. It starts with headaches and flashbacks, psychedelic smash-cuts of chopping meat. He remembers finding his sister Betty Jo (Alice Jubert) dead, her throat slashed. He remembers Elijah, his brother-in-law discovering him crouched over her lifeless body, her blood on his hands. He remembers getting shot, but none of these things happened to Ike. His friends tell him it's just the stress of working and studying too hard, but then he finds himself drawn to an old fedora in a secondhand store.
He starts gambling, drinking and slapping Christella around. Under the influence of JD's spirit, he sleeps with Elijah's daughter, which, yes, would be JD's niece, so that's kind of weird.
The ending of this movie seemed a bit too tidy and hastily conceived for my liking, but the fun here is watching Turman play the role, changing before your eyes from a casually dressed student of the law to a vulgar, zoot-suited thug. It's like watching Jekyll turn into Hyde, or Barack Obama turn into Katt Williams.
JD's Revenge streams on YouTube.
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