Sheba, Baby (1975)

Produced at the tail end of the blaxploitation boom—and in the waning days of leading lady Pam Grier’s initial popularity—this lackluster action flick is quite a comedown after the funky heights of previous Grier joints including Coffy (1973) and Foxy Brown(1974). Wham-Bam-Thank-You-Pam plays Sheba Shayne, a Chicago-based private investigator who returns to her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, when she gets word that her dad is being hassled by local gangsters. Before long, Sheba’s dad falls victim to gun-toting thugs, so Sheba—with a little help from her pop’s business partner, Brick Williams (Austin Stoker)—unloads you-messed-with-the-wrong-mama vengeance on crime boss Pilot (D’Urville Martin) and his associates. Grier spends Sheba, Baby talking tough while looking great (her knockout figure is on ample display in costumes like the wetsuit she wears for the movie’s last half-hour), but Sheba, Baby is unmistakably second-rate. The dialogue is trite, the production values are mediocre, and the supporting performances are awful. Even the requisite funk/soul soundtrack, often a saving grace for shaky blaxploitation movies, is uninspired. Grier’s nomrally forceful acting falls victim to the general crappiness, because she often seems as if she’s delivering lines she’s just learned—it almost feels as if the movie comprises rehearsals instead of takes. Director/co-writer William Girdler was far more comfortable with in the horror genre, and after making this picture, he banged out a trio of demented creature features (from the campy 1976 gorefest Grizzly to the wigged-out 1978 supernatural flick The Manitou). For Sheba, Baby, he’s unable to conjure the needed vibe of frenetic violence and urban grime—the picture moves too slowly, the textures all feel phony—and it doesn’t help that Sheba, Baby is rated PG instead of R. Really, what’s the point of trafficking in a sleazy genre if not to present sleaze?

Sheba, Baby: LAME

Boss Nigger (1975)

Blaxploitation stalwart Fred Williamson was well on the way to becoming a bad-movie auteur by the time he wrote, produced, and starred in this brazenly titled Western, so Boss Nigger features his signature elements of a take-no-guff protagonist and substandard storytelling—in Williamson’s cinematic world, attitude is everything and quality is a needless luxury. Presumably conceived as a dramatic riff on the previous year’s comedy blockbuster Blazing Saddles, this blaxploitation joint employs the same narrative contrivance as the earlier film—a black man becomes sheriff of a frontier town, much to the chagrin of the white locals. However, instead of being installed in the job through political chicanery, as in Blazing Saddles, Boss (Williamson) seizes the vacant sheriff’s position in order to hunt down a rival—and also to tilt the race-relations scales in favor of African-Americans. “Sorry, we can’t stay for supper,” Boss says in a moment indicative of the film’s obviousness, “but we got us mo’ whiteys to catch.” Much of the picture comprises uninspired scenes of Boss and his comic-relief sidekick, Amos (D’Urville Martin), humiliating white people while they pursue a criminal named Jed Clayton (William Smith), a standard-issue Western villain who kills for fun and profit. All of this should be diverting in a trashy sort of way, but the movie is too enervated to enjoy. Director Jack Arnold, a veteran whose career stretches back to sci-fi classics including The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1955), seems utterly disinterested in his work (Can you blame him?), and the generic funk score clashes with Arnold’s old-fashioned visuals. Plus, Williamson’s script lacks both restraint and taste—during the climax, for instance, Williamson features Boss getting crucified by the bad guys.

Boss Nigger: LAME