Black Mama, White Mama
Exploitation flick features early Pam Grier

In 1973 and '74, a pair of Blaxploitation films, Coffy and Foxy Brown, would showcase Pam Grier as being one of the most charismatic screen presences of the decade. As one character in Foxy Brown would say of her after witnessing her kick some righteous ass, including his own, "That's my sister, baby, and she's a whole lotta woman." And she was indeed.

Having recently seen both Coffy and Foxy, it was interesting to see this earlier Grier film, released just a year before Coffy. However it happened, whether because of better writing and directing or both, or that Pam had simply learned a thing or two about acting between shoots, but this 1972 effort shows little of the "can't-take-your eyes-off-of-her" brilliance she would soon deliver. Dedicated Grier fans will no doubt take me to task for that statement, but I call 'em as I see 'em. Besides which, they're wrong and I'm right.

Grier nominally stars as Lee Daniels, a down-on-her-luck prostitute trapped in an unnamed jungle republic, let's call it the Philippines. After years as a virtual sex slave, she is arrested just as she was about to make her grand escape using money she stole from a drug-pushing pimp gangster so repulsive that he seems to be the model for Jabba the Hutt.

She is sent to a women's prison where, after lots of naked showering and lesbian situations and cat fighting, she is chained to Karen Brent (Margaret Markov), a beautiful rich society girl turned radical revolutionary. While being transferred to another prison, the women escape the bus and flee into the jungle still chained together at the wrist, one black mama and one white mama.

It's the female version of The Defiant Ones, but don't get too wrapped up in that conceit. Chained together, bickering, the women soon find themselves on the run — or at least on a brisk walk — through the Philippine jungles while being pursued by just about everyone: the rebels seeking to rescue Karen, the "Federales," and also a gang led by a crazy cowboy bounty hunter hilariously played by genre veteran Sid (The Devil's Rejects) Haig. In fact, Haig's scenes are so fun and energetic that it begins to overwhelm the pace of the Grier/Markov storyline which, being literally shackled, just can't keep up.

Ulitmately, the film's main gimmick works to its detriment. Nothing much is really done with the fact that the women are chained together. There are no frank exchanges on race relations, no social allegory and symbolism about how the fates of both races, black and white, are, in a sense, chained to each other as surely as are Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier in The Defiant Ones. In this movie, sometimes a wrist chain is just a wrist chain.

Between the two leads, it is Markov who turns in the better performance, possibly because her character is the more interesting as well. Her revolutionary zeal is genuine and her fate matters more than the Grier character's self-centered tough girl. Markov's character has a more distinctive arc while Grier's character remains essentially unchanged.

Although BMWM's situation is preposterous, director Eddie Romero does occasionally pull off some unexpected coolness and originality. He can stage a good action sequence and keep the battle lines well drawn when the guns are a-blazin'; and his bad guys are especially vivid. They are gross and repulsive without being completely overplayed. Several minor characters and scenes, as well, often show touches of surprising nuance, just enough to elevate the proceedings to the point where they make the film seem more interesting than it probably is.

Obviously geared for the exploitation/grindhouse circuit still flourishing during the early '70s, the film contains lots of gratuitous nudity (the kind you just don't see in films anymore); there's lots of bloody gunplay, and a fairly brutal torture scene presided over by Jabba. Of course, it doesn't match the over-the-top sadism you can find in movies like Saw, but it feels all the more brutal for the reality of it. Strange how one era's "exploitation" can be subsumed into the mainstream and yet still not seem to match the original's sleaziness.

On a scale of 10, I place this around 5. Some nice moments throughout, and if you are Women in Prison fan you can't beat the film's marathon shower scene. Still, the film's primary interest for me — and I think for most viewers — is the chance to see Grier before her special star qualities truly came to fruition.