Blaxploitation Movies: 12 Reboots, Parodies, And Originals To Explore (2023)

FAQs

How many blaxploitation films are there? ›

In time, these films would be called "blaxploitation." And while it has long been debated exactly which film launched the blaxploitation era, the financial success of Melvin Van Peebles's Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and Gordon Parks's Shaft helped open the flood gates for the more than 200 films that are now ...

What is Blaxploitation in film history. Blaxploitation movies were made by black filmmakers with black actors for black audiences. These films provided the first on-screen opportunities for audiences to see black characters presented as the heroes taking down white villains.

One of the biggest criticisms of blaxploitation is the glamorization of characters that are pimps, drug dealers or prostitutes. This ghetto glamorization elevated these lifestyles and only reinforced negative stereotypes about black people and the bla ck community.

The NAACP, Southern Christian Leadership Conference and National Urban League joined to form the Coalition Against Blaxploitation. Their influence in the late 1970s contributed to the genre's demise.

The film is a parody of and homage to the blaxploitation genre and its era. It had a trailer and funding even before a script was written. Black Dynamite was shot in 20 days in Super 16 format.

The audiences had voted with their wallets and despite criticism from some Black critics that called the film was derogatory and obscene, the genre of Blaxploitation was officially born. Co-founder of the Black Panther party Huey P. Newton, said it was the first “truly revolutionary black film ever made”.

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971), an independent production written, filmed, directed, and produced by Melvin Van Peebles (who also plays the title role), is generally considered the first blaxploitation film.

The blaxploitation era ended around 1976, but its influence continues.

Foxy Brown is a 1974 American blaxploitation film written and directed by Jack Hill. It stars Pam Grier as the title character who takes on a gang of white drug dealers who murdered her boyfriend. The film was released by American International Pictures as a double feature with Truck Turner.

The '70s Blaxploitation movies combined pride with protest, but The Harder They Fall is dishonorable dissent — a crabs-in-the-barrel, black-on-black crime fantasy that lacks the horror of gangs-in-the-hoods movies from the 1990s.

Was blaxploitation a good thing? ›

The Blaxploitation genre ended around 1975 when it became clear that people weren't interested in it anymore. Another reason for this is that the genre made use of stereotypes and racist language and because it wasn't taken very seriously at all, it is now considered being one of the worst movie genres ever created.

The screenplay was also influenced by blaxploitation films, but Tarantino said Jackie Brown is not a blaxploitation film. Jackie Brown alludes to Grier's career in many ways. The film's poster resembles those of Grier's films Coffy and Foxy Brown and includes quotes from both films.

Blaxploitation is a film genre that emerged in the United States in the early 1970s when many exploitation films were made specifically (and perhaps exclusively) for an audience of urban black people; the word itself is a portmanteau of the words “black” and “exploitation.”

: the exploitation of Black people by producers of Black-oriented films. often used before another noun. blaxploitation movies.

: the exploitation of sex in the media and especially in film.

Hardware Wars

This is the granddaddy of all Star Wars parodies. Released in 1978, only 18 months after the release of A New Hope, this is considered to be the first widely successful parody of the Star Wars franchise.

Black Dynamite is a black martial artist and former CIA operative turned anti-hero vigilante. He is a part-time pimp who runs a whorephanage, a combination brothel and orphanage.

Writer/director Carl Jones announced today Black Dynamite has been canceled after two seasons. Just last month the show ended its second season on a high note with an hour-long musical on police brutality featuring Tyler, the Creator and Erykah Badu.

Still, for some, it is easy to forget that Blade was not only part of '70s Blaxploitation but also (twenty-five years later) single-handedly gave birth to the modern iteration of mega-successful Marvel movies.

Is The Last Dragon blaxploitation? ›

'THE LAST DRAGON' — Celebrating 35 Years of Family Friendly Blaxploitation. Inclusion and representation are important aspects when creating a film, but when that movie is intended for a specific audience it's even more imperative to mirror the core viewership.

Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry (May 30, 1902 – November 19, 1985), better known by the stage name Stepin Fetchit, was an American vaudevillian, comedian, and film actor of Jamaican and Bahamian descent, considered to be the first black actor to have a successful film career.

Although he never won an Oscar, Lincoln Perry was America's first black movie star. But for that distinction, Perry paid a heavy price -- he is best known as the character of Stepin Fetchit, a befuddled, mumbling, shiftless fool.

Since the late 1960s, few mainstream films have been shot in black-and-white. The reasons are frequently commercial, as it is difficult to sell a film for television broadcasting if the film is not in color. 1961 was the last year in which the majority of Hollywood films were released in black and white.

The term "blaxploitation" was coined by Junius Griffin, the then-head of the Los Angeles National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), in the early 70s as a criticism for the less-than-positive images of African Americans depicted in the genre, and his influence would later contribute to its ...

Color Becomes Standard

By the late 1950s, most Hollywood productions were being shot in color—so much so that by the mid-1960s new black and white releases were less a budgetary choice than they were an artistic choice.

Nina Mae McKinney: Hollywood's First Black Movie Star opens with the premiere of a 35mm restoration print of King Vidor's all-Black musical Hallelujah!, her feature debut from 1929, in which she starred as a wisecracking Jazz Age flapper who gets caught in a deadly love triangle.

1963: First Black actress to star in a TV drama

Legendary actress Cicely Tyson made history as the first African American star of a television drama with her role as secretary Jane Foster on East Side/West Side.

What Western on Netflix has an all Black cast? ›

It is one of few Westerns whose principal cast members are all black. Its characters are loosely based on real cowboys, lawmen, and outlaws of the nineteenth-century American West. Mihai Mălaimare Jr. The Harder They Fall premiered at the BFI London Film Festival on October 6, 2021.

With a cast led by Black actors, including Idris Elba and Regina King, Jeymes Samuel's upcoming film “The Harder They Fall” stands in stark contrast to the white-dominated world of classic Westerns.

In the early 1970s, films like Blacula, Sugar Hill, and Ganja & Hess brought a horror flair to blaxploitation cinema, staking a claim on genre that was decidedly African-American. Get Out follows in that tradition, and in a sense takes things even further.

Ryan Coogler: Ryan Coogler is best known for directing “Black Panther,” which turned out to be the highest-grossing film of all time by a Black director.

Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) is often credited with creating the basic premise of the genre, though Bob Clark's Black Christmas (1974) is usually considered to have started the genre while John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) was responsible for cementing the genre in the public eye.

Exploitation films are made cheap for easy profit. “Easy” because they are almost always genre films relying on time-tried formulas (horror, thillers, biker movies, surfer movies, women-in-prison films, martial arts, subgenres like gore, rape-revenge, slashers, nazisploitation, etc.).

Films shot for and screened at grindhouses characteristically contain large amounts of sex, violence, or bizarre subject matter. One featured genre were "roughies" or sexploitation films, a mix of sex, violence and sadism. Quality varied, but low budget production values and poor print quality were common.

This marks the first time that Quentin Tarantino hasn't had a cameo, if you don't count his answering machine greeting on Jackie Brown's (Pam Grier's) telephone, in one of the films he's written and directed. Tarantino had roles in Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994).

The heyday of blaxploitation films was the early-to-mid-1970s, although blaxploitation films continue to be made today and have been a source of inspiration for many of our generation's top filmmakers.

How many Pitch Black movies were there? ›

To date, there are three live-action Riddick movies, as well as one animated movie. The Riddick films – which were produced between 2000 and 2013 – include: Pitch Black (2000) The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury (2004)

The numbers and dates of the Blaxploitation period in Hollywood vary. Many scholars categorize the peak years for the genre as between 1969 and 1974, although releases as early as 1961 and as late as 1985 are often classified as Blaxploitation films. By some estimates nearly 300 films in the genre were released.

Although he never won an Oscar, Lincoln Perry was America's first black movie star. But for that distinction, Perry paid a heavy price -- he is best known as the character of Stepin Fetchit, a befuddled, mumbling, shiftless fool.

Sam Lucas became the first Black actor to be cast in a leading role in a mainstream film, appearing in the 1914 film Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Do The Right Thing premiered in 1989 and shared many elements of blaxploitation films from the 70s and 80s. Blaxploitation was a subgenre of exploitation films: movies that capitalized on the success of a certain trend of the time, specific genres, or explicit, sometimes offensive content.