Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song (1971)

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Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song (1971) – M. Van Peebles

So, is it an experimental film with a Blaxploitation theme or a Blaxploitation film using experimental methods? (Or an experimental Blaxploitation film, as if such a genre existed?).  Melvin Van Peebles uses every trick in the filmmaker’s bag (and on a very low budget) to create a somewhat crazy meditation on our Black hero’s trouble with The Man (he defends a brother who is being shaken down by two White cops) and his flight on foot from L.A. to Mexico.  Earth Wind and Fire provide elements of the soundtrack – or is it just that one riff played over and over and over?  The rest of the soundtrack is, again, experimental and full of subjective effects and non-diegetic sounds. Van Peebles himself plays Sweetback who is renowned for his prowess in the sack (he grew up in a brothel).  Shall I mention that this film also breaks taboos and must have been rated X in its day (although would be seen as somewhat tamer today, though definitely laced with nudity/sex and a tiny bit of fake blood).  Nothing like Shaft or the mainstream Blaxploitation films (you have been warned); so, probably not worth your time if you wouldn’t also enjoy plotless experimental fare.  But otherwise great!