[yasr_overall_rating]
When two troublemaking female prisoners can’t seem to get along, they are chained together and extradited for safekeeping. The women, still chained together, stumble, stab, and cat-fight their way across the wilderness, igniting a bloody shootout between gangsters and a group of revolutionaries.
Stereotypes run wild in “Black Mama, White Mama,” which is confusing as it is unoriginal. Classified as a “Women In Prison” type movie, it plays on the fact that it would like to be watched by men as there are many scenes in the film that sport unneeded nudity and an even more unneeded nudity. So, stereotypes, Lee Daniels (Pam Grier) is the African American character who is a hooker in the film. She runs away from her pimp, on an island, and ends up busted and in prison. Instead of giving her a believable narrative, she is left with a script that gives her an “I’m a misunderstood woman who is weak in some aspects but I’m also independent and hardnosed” character.
On the way to prison she meets Karen Brent (Margaret Markov), a stereotypical white revolutionary complete with the walk and talk. If it seems as though I am hashing these characters as half thought up with the intent just to cash in, I am. It was so much so that it annoyed me, I’d even go so far as to say I was angry. Listen, there is a way to provide comedic relief with stereotypes but this is not it. In the prison, the women are overly-sexualized to the point where it is a hop and a skip away from soft porn. Even though it is classified as a WIP movie, not very much of the movie takes place in a prison, as when the prisoners are being transported to a different facility (because they wouldn’t sleep with a guard) and Lee’s own revolutionary fighters attack the convoy and almost succeed in freeing her.
This causes both Lee and Karen to run amuck in fields trying to escape the law and after a few mishaps and mini adventures they must face most of the entire cast in order to accomplish their goals (which really weren’t described in full detail). I get it, this film is a Fred Ray-type in that it has pointless nudity and, in the end, really makes little to no sense but I’d try to hide that fact.
Available now on Blu-ray & DVD
