The immensely popular film with urban audiences follows this storyline with a sequel called ‘Hell Up in Harlem.’ It pays tribute to Warner Brothers’ 1930s gangster movies and gives those Cagney mad dog hoodlum thrillers a splashy update by raising the level of graphic violence to a new high and moving the scenery to black Harlem. Cohen’s quirky ideas about justice and morality prove to be the film’s best asset, along with a charismatic hardboiled performance by Fred Williamson. But it gets your attention as it keeps the emotions brewing on a steady boil so that you can feel the black man’s pain of not being able to belong to the establishment without feeling like an outsider. Edgar Hoover”/”God Told Me To”) is the writer-director-producer of this kick-ass, low-budget, blaxploitation film that’s shot in only a few weeks and in too crude a way to be taken for anything more serious than a clever reworking of the old-fashioned gangster film. “It plays to urban black audiences’ fears and fantasies.”Ĭult director Larry Cohen (“It’s Alive!”/”The Private Files of J. music: James Brown cast: Fred Williamson (Tommy Gibbs), D’Urville Martin (Reverend Rufus), Gloria Hendry (Helen), Philip Royce (Joe), Art Lund (McKinney), Val Avery (Cardoza), Minnie Gentry (Gibbs’ mother), Julius Harris (Gibbs’ father), Omer Jeffrey (Tommy as a boy), Patrick McAllister (Grossfield) Runtime: 96 MPAA Rating: R producer: Larry Cohen MGM 1973) BLACK CAESAR (director/writer: Larry Cohen cinematographers: Fenton Hamilton/James Signorelli editor: George Folsey, Jr.
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