DAVID BIANCULLI

Founder / Editor

ERIC GOULD

Associate Editor

LINDA DONOVAN

Assistant Editor

Contributors

ALEX STRACHAN

MIKE HUGHES

KIM AKASS

MONIQUE NAZARETH

ROGER CATLIN

GARY EDGERTON

TOM BRINKMOELLER

GERALD JORDAN

NOEL HOLSTON

 
 
 
 
 
COTTON COMES TO HARLEM
August 9, 2014  | By David Bianculli

MGM HD, 8:00 p.m. ET

 

This 1970 movie is a comedy romp very much of its time – a prototypical “blaxploitation” movie that isn’t really exploitive at all – just taking conventions of both buddy cop movies and comedy romps, handing them to an almost entirely African-American cast, and setting the whole thing in Harlem at the very end of the Sixties. The on-location photography alone, capturing a world and a time not often documented by mainstream cinema, makes this film, directed and co-written by Ossie Davis, worth seeing. But mostly, watch it for the performances. Godfrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques, as the sarcastic cops on the case, are sharply funny, as is Calvin Lockhart as the scheming con-man “Reverend” who’s pushing a “back-to-Africa” travel scam to the trusting, poor Harlem residents. And Judy Pace, in a small but indelible role, subdues a white cop assigned to guard her in a way that I still remember, quite fondly, almost 45 years later. And there’s more: Redd Foxx plays a junk dealer, in a role that predates and prefigures his Sanford & Son role by two years, and Galt MacDermot provides the jaunty music, only three years after doing the same for the seminal Sixties rock musical, Hair.

 
 
 
 
 
Leave a Comment: (No HTML, 1000 chars max)
 
 Name (required)
 
 Email (required) (will not be published)
 
QNGON
Type in the verification word shown on the image.