Movies: Blaxploitation cinema

Tougher than Shaft and smoother than Superfly, this high-voltage sequel to Black Caesar explodes with enough action to incinerate New York City. Packed with machine-gun mayhem and riveting adventure, Hell Up in Harlem is nothing less than a modern-da...

When fellow operatives and friends disappear during a mission in Hong Kong, Cleopatra Jones comes to help. She discovers the disappearance involves The Dragon Lady, a feared lipstick lesbian who runs a casino and the local drug trade....

A doctor in a Watts clinic takes his own medicine and becomes a monstrous white killer of hookers....

With archive film clips and interviews, this brief look at a frequently overlooked historical period of filmmaking acts as an introduction rather than a complete record. It features interviews with some of the genre's biggest stars, like Fred William...

This low budget action film, originally titled "The Return of Dolemite", follows Rudy Ray Moore as Dolemite, who returns from Africa with superpowers gained from drinking Voodoo Juice....

Two Philadelphia con men try to evade gangsters they have conned and cops who are trying to put them in jail....

Harlem's African-American population is being ripped off by the Rev. Deke O'Malley, who dishonestly claims that small donations will secure parcels of land in Africa. When New York City police officers Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson look int...

A slick, smooth-talking, womanizing young black DJ falls hard for an enigmatic woman he's just met. Things take a turn for the worse, though, when she is found dead in his apartment. It turns out that she was killed by the local mob, which is trying ...

Black militants building up an arsenal of weapons in preparation for a race war are betrayed by one of their own....

A pair of tough cops go after the mob who jinxed the martial arts tournament and injured their buddy....

Eddie is a Vietnam veteran who loses his arms and legs when he steps on a land mine, but a brilliant surgeon is able to attach new limbs. Unfortunately an insanely jealous assistant (who has fallen in love with Eddie's fiance) switches Eddie's DNA in...

Vigilante Slaughter comes under attack from Duncan, a local money launderer whose hit-man traps Slaughter in a car at a cliff, but Slaughter escapes, arms himself, and goes after Duncan's hideout....

A black hairdresser's sexual escapades with married customers lead to a confrontation with a jealous mobster....

In 1971, director Melvin Van Peebles turned the figure of the black hero in US cinema upside down with Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song: the story of the making of a seminal movie that initiated the Blaxploitation movement, a short-lived but highly ...

An aspiring dancer and her two wicked sisters resent their mother's love for a foster daughter....

A pair of thieves operate in the American South between 1911 and 1915, stealing from rich, white capitalists, and giving to Mexicans, Native Americans and poor whites....

On the last days of soul in Rio de Janeiro... Groove is everywhere in the night... and Carlos and Tony have unfinished business. A tribute to Blaxploitation, the queer horror jam "His Body" chronicles the supernatural meeting of two ex-lovers on a ni...

When a prominent abortion clinic owner goes missing along with a string of other black community leaders, her singing daughter and her fellow female biker gang members investigate....

A black soldier comes home to Harlem after a tour in Vietnam and discovers that his wife had become a heroin addict and died of an overdose. Infuriated, he gathers three of his ex-GI buddies and they lay out plans to fight the drug dealers....

Dolemite comes to the rescue of Queen Bee, whose nightclub is threatened by the Mafia....