There are all other legends, and then there is Pam Grier. She became the first and greatest Black female action hero of the Seventies, in blaxploitation classics like Coffy and Foxy Brown. She reigns as one of the all-time iconic Hollywood stars, from her Quentin Tarantino collaboration Jackie Brown to her new TCM podcast and her excellent memoir Foxy.
Pam Grier spent an afternoon with Rolling Stone to talk about how she changed the game for Black women in the movies. She also had a lot to say about jamming with Jimi Hendrix,...
Pam Grier spent an afternoon with Rolling Stone to talk about how she changed the game for Black women in the movies. She also had a lot to say about jamming with Jimi Hendrix,...
- 12/27/2022
- by Rob Sheffield
- Rollingstone.com
Here’s something I never expected to see: I ran to the blaxploitation attraction Willie Dynamite because I like actress Diana Sands, and it’s her last picture in a too-short career. But the main character on view, a gaudy fur-wearing pimp, is played by none other than Roscoe Orman, well known to a couple of generations of kids as none other than ‘Gordon’ in the long-running TV show Sesame Street. It’s like watching MisterRogers play Hannibal Lecter!
Willie Dynamite
Blu-ray
Arrow Video
1974 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 102 min. / Street Date January 8, 2019 / Available from Arrow Video / 39.95
Starring: Roscoe Orman, Diana Sands, Thalmus Rasulala, Joyce Walker, Roger Robinson, George Murdock, Albert Hall, Norma Donaldson, Juanita Brown, Royce Wallace, Tol Avery, Robert DoQui, Slim Gaillard.
Cinematography: Frank Stanley
Film Editor: Aaron Stell
Original Music: J.J. Johnson
Written by Ron Cutler & Joe Keyes Jr.
Produced by Richard D. Zanuck, David Brown
Directed by Gilbert Moses...
Willie Dynamite
Blu-ray
Arrow Video
1974 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 102 min. / Street Date January 8, 2019 / Available from Arrow Video / 39.95
Starring: Roscoe Orman, Diana Sands, Thalmus Rasulala, Joyce Walker, Roger Robinson, George Murdock, Albert Hall, Norma Donaldson, Juanita Brown, Royce Wallace, Tol Avery, Robert DoQui, Slim Gaillard.
Cinematography: Frank Stanley
Film Editor: Aaron Stell
Original Music: J.J. Johnson
Written by Ron Cutler & Joe Keyes Jr.
Produced by Richard D. Zanuck, David Brown
Directed by Gilbert Moses...
- 1/8/2019
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
“Even for criminals you’re just a particularly poor reflection on womanhood.”
Caged Heat screens Friday, June 9th at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood). This is the first film in their ‘Tribute to Jonathan Demme’ The movie starts at 8:00pm.
Who doesn’t love a good Women’s prison film? – Chained Heat, Hellhole, Ilsa She Wolf Of The SS, The Big Bird Cage, The Big Doll House, Reform School Girls, and The Concrete Jungle all sit proudly on my Wip (Women in Prison) DVD shelf. One of the very best of this beloved subgenre is Caged Heat (1974), a wonderful exploitation masterpiece and the directing debut of Oscar-winner Jonathan Demme, that has everything you could possibly hope for in a Women-In-Prison movie: nudity, shower catfights, lesbian coupling, race wars, murder, chain-swinging, switch-blade slashing, and shock therapy!
Chained Heat stars Erica Gavin (of Russ Meyer’s Vixen fame) as Jackie,...
Caged Heat screens Friday, June 9th at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood). This is the first film in their ‘Tribute to Jonathan Demme’ The movie starts at 8:00pm.
Who doesn’t love a good Women’s prison film? – Chained Heat, Hellhole, Ilsa She Wolf Of The SS, The Big Bird Cage, The Big Doll House, Reform School Girls, and The Concrete Jungle all sit proudly on my Wip (Women in Prison) DVD shelf. One of the very best of this beloved subgenre is Caged Heat (1974), a wonderful exploitation masterpiece and the directing debut of Oscar-winner Jonathan Demme, that has everything you could possibly hope for in a Women-In-Prison movie: nudity, shower catfights, lesbian coupling, race wars, murder, chain-swinging, switch-blade slashing, and shock therapy!
Chained Heat stars Erica Gavin (of Russ Meyer’s Vixen fame) as Jackie,...
- 6/5/2017
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Stars: Roscoe Orman, Diana Sands, Thalmus Rasulala, Joyce Walker, Roger Robinson, George Murdock, Albert Hall, Norma Donaldson, Juanita Brown, Royce Wallace, Judith Brown | Written by Ron Cutler | Directed by Gilbert Moses
Blaxploitation movies have a strange place in movie history. Often nostalgically looked at as being cool and oozing in style, they also have an exploitative feel to them, hence the name. Willie Dynamite is a so-called Blaxploitation movie that looked to do something different, which in some regard puts it at conflict with itself…
Willie Dynamite (Roscoe Orman) is a pimp at the height of his success. Making money and having a successful group of ladies under his control he is living the dream. When crooked cops start to take down his empire and the other pimps start to steal his territory, is it time for him to change his ways?
When you think of good Blaxploitation movies you...
Blaxploitation movies have a strange place in movie history. Often nostalgically looked at as being cool and oozing in style, they also have an exploitative feel to them, hence the name. Willie Dynamite is a so-called Blaxploitation movie that looked to do something different, which in some regard puts it at conflict with itself…
Willie Dynamite (Roscoe Orman) is a pimp at the height of his success. Making money and having a successful group of ladies under his control he is living the dream. When crooked cops start to take down his empire and the other pimps start to steal his territory, is it time for him to change his ways?
When you think of good Blaxploitation movies you...
- 2/7/2017
- by Paul Metcalf
- Nerdly
Caged Heat screens Saturday November 22nd at 8pm as part of The St. Louis International Film Festival. There will also be a concert by Stace England and the Screen Syndicate, who play an album of songs inspired by Roberta Collins, one of the film’s stars. The Venue is Kdhx (3524 Washington Boulevard St Louis, Mo 63103)
I love Women’s prison films – Chained Heat, Hellhole, Ilsa She Wolf Of The SS, The Big Bird Cage, The Big Doll House, Reform School Girls, and The Concrete Jungle all sit proudly on my Wip (Women in Prison) DVD shelf. One of the very best of this beloved subgenre is Caged Heat (1974), a wonderful exploitation masterpiece and the directing debut of Oscar-winner Jonathan Demme, that has everything you could possibly hope for in a Women-In-Prison movie: nudity, shower catfights, lesbian coupling, race wars, murder, chain-swinging, switch-blade slashing, and shock therapy!
Wow! You’re probably...
I love Women’s prison films – Chained Heat, Hellhole, Ilsa She Wolf Of The SS, The Big Bird Cage, The Big Doll House, Reform School Girls, and The Concrete Jungle all sit proudly on my Wip (Women in Prison) DVD shelf. One of the very best of this beloved subgenre is Caged Heat (1974), a wonderful exploitation masterpiece and the directing debut of Oscar-winner Jonathan Demme, that has everything you could possibly hope for in a Women-In-Prison movie: nudity, shower catfights, lesbian coupling, race wars, murder, chain-swinging, switch-blade slashing, and shock therapy!
Wow! You’re probably...
- 10/27/2014
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Caged Heat screens Saturday November 22nd at 8pm as part of The St. Louis International Film Festival. There will also be a concert by Stace England and the Screen Syndicate, who play an album of songs inspired by Roberta Collins, one of the film’s stars. The Venue is Kdhx (3524 Washington Boulevard St Louis, Mo 63103)
I love Women’s prison films – Chained Heat, Hellhole, Ilsa She Wolf Of The SS, The Big Bird Cage, The Big Doll House, Reform School Girls, and The Concrete Jungle all sit proudly on my Wip (Women in Prison) DVD shelf. One of the very best of this beloved subgenre is Caged Heat (1974), a wonderful exploitation masterpiece and the directing debut of Oscar-winner Jonathan Demme, that has everything you could possibly hope for in a Women-In-Prison movie: nudity, shower catfights, lesbian coupling, race wars, murder, chain-swinging, switch-blade slashing, and shock therapy!
Wow! You’re probably...
I love Women’s prison films – Chained Heat, Hellhole, Ilsa She Wolf Of The SS, The Big Bird Cage, The Big Doll House, Reform School Girls, and The Concrete Jungle all sit proudly on my Wip (Women in Prison) DVD shelf. One of the very best of this beloved subgenre is Caged Heat (1974), a wonderful exploitation masterpiece and the directing debut of Oscar-winner Jonathan Demme, that has everything you could possibly hope for in a Women-In-Prison movie: nudity, shower catfights, lesbian coupling, race wars, murder, chain-swinging, switch-blade slashing, and shock therapy!
Wow! You’re probably...
- 10/27/2014
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Stars: Pam Grier, Antonio Fargas, Peter Brown, Terry Carter, Sid Haig, Juanita Brown, Harry Holcombe | Written and Directed by Jack Hill
With Shaft hitting it big in the cinema in 1971, grabbing an audience spanning both age and race, producers scrambled to find the next big blaxploitation franchise and star. In walked Jack Hill with his 1973 effort Coffy. Starring Pam Grier as a vigilante nurse, the film was a runaway hit for American-International Pictures who commissioned Hill to come up with a follow-up. Originally conceived as a sequel to Coffy, Aip decided at the last minute it did not want to do a sequel and thus Foxy Brown was born…
Foxy Brown stars Pam Grier as the street-smart yet intensely sexy titular character, whose undercover-agent boyfriend is gunned down on the orders of evil drug kingpins. Racked with grief and anger she stops at nothing to exact a thrillingly brutal revenge.
With Shaft hitting it big in the cinema in 1971, grabbing an audience spanning both age and race, producers scrambled to find the next big blaxploitation franchise and star. In walked Jack Hill with his 1973 effort Coffy. Starring Pam Grier as a vigilante nurse, the film was a runaway hit for American-International Pictures who commissioned Hill to come up with a follow-up. Originally conceived as a sequel to Coffy, Aip decided at the last minute it did not want to do a sequel and thus Foxy Brown was born…
Foxy Brown stars Pam Grier as the street-smart yet intensely sexy titular character, whose undercover-agent boyfriend is gunned down on the orders of evil drug kingpins. Racked with grief and anger she stops at nothing to exact a thrillingly brutal revenge.
- 6/6/2013
- by Phil Wheat
- Nerdly
While he may be best known for his low-budget, science fiction pictures, nothing truly says Roger Corman or his New World Pictures brand quite like the prison, or in the case of both Jackson County Jail and Caged Heat, women-in-prison, film.
Paired together in a brand new addition to Shout! Factory’s long running DVD line known as Roger Corman’s Cult Classics, the two cult features have finally seen the light of day in a relatively respectable single DVD set, that while the films themselves may not be perfect, they are unlike anything you’ll ever get a chance to check out.
The real star of the set here is the cult classic, Caged Heat. Directed by Jonathan Demme (Something Wild), the film follows Jacqueline Wilson, who is sent to a women’s prison following a conviction on drug charges. Joining a crew of fellow inmates, the team fights against the warden,...
Paired together in a brand new addition to Shout! Factory’s long running DVD line known as Roger Corman’s Cult Classics, the two cult features have finally seen the light of day in a relatively respectable single DVD set, that while the films themselves may not be perfect, they are unlike anything you’ll ever get a chance to check out.
The real star of the set here is the cult classic, Caged Heat. Directed by Jonathan Demme (Something Wild), the film follows Jacqueline Wilson, who is sent to a women’s prison following a conviction on drug charges. Joining a crew of fellow inmates, the team fights against the warden,...
- 3/29/2011
- by Joshua Brunsting
- CriterionCast
Sundance Film Festival
PARK CITY -- Powerful is an inadequate word to describe the impact of Katrina Browne's "Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North," an examination of her forebears, the DeWolf family of Bristol, Rhode Island, the largest slave traders in U.S. history. This is a topic America has been avoiding for generations. Now, fittingly in this bicentennial year of the abolition of the slave trade by Thomas Jefferson, Browne's clear-headed film represents an intense and searing call for national dialogue. It also coincides with a number of political movements in and out of Congress to examine the history of race in America and the topic of reparations.
Festival dates and then theatrical distribution will start the film's exposure. But television is the best avenue for people to share the filmmaker's journey with family members into a heart of utter darkness.
A grandmother's confession alerted Browne at an early age to the family's infernal legacy. She does research. From 1769 to 1820, DeWolf ships sailed to the coast of Ghana to trade rum and other goods for slaves who were then sold in the New World or brought to family sugar plantations in Cuba. The sugar was then transported back to Bristol to make more rum in family distilleries. They had shrewdly put together what today would be described as a vertically integrated corporation.
But it wasn't just the DeWolfs. The entire town of Bristol, the historic heart of the trade, was involved. This film forever buries the myth of Southern guilt. Slavery was legal for 200 years in the North and the North dominated the trade. As a political favor, none other than President Jefferson appointed an in-law to head the Bristol customs office so the DeWolfs could continue the trade long after its abolition. Can you imagine a more depressing historical fact than that?
Browne wrote to 200 descendents, inviting them to join her on a journey to trace this legacy. Nine members did. Starting with the grand mansions, warehouses, company records, artifacts and a slave gravesite in Rhode Island, the group flies to Ghana to tour slave forts with their nearly impenetrable dungeons. They move on to Cuba, where they discover the ruins of a DeWolf plantation building.
The film is no travelogue, however. Each encounter with scholars, artists and guides who reveal more and more about the DeWolf legacy leaves family members shaken to the core. And angry. They debate and argue this legacy's meaning and what to do with this knowledge. They seek dialogue with locals in Ghana. One family member is stunned when an African-American woman refuses to shake his hand. She didn't want to encounter whites in a place she considers sacred.
They turn to the film's co-producer, Juanita Brown, who is black. She gently but firmly gives them a few hard truths about how African-Americans feel about this past and about white Americans' unwillingness to own up to the privilege they enjoy that stems in part from slavery.
The first two-thirds of the film delivers the historical shocks and often painful insights. The final third, and most important part of the film, shows the family galvanized to action, in their own church, which bears a heavy responsibility for its support of the trade, and in other political arenas. One family member, Thomas Norman DeWolf, who was on hand for the film's Sundance debut, has authored a book, "Inheriting the Trade," that reflects his experiences during filmmaking.
The film's key point is that the nation can no longer afford collective silence and willed amnesia about slavery. It must confront these issues if race relations are ever going to progress in the U.S. "Traces of the Trade" is a place to start.
TRACES OF THE TRADE: A STORY FROM THE DEEP NORTH
Ebb Pod Productions
Credits:
Director/producer: Katrina Browne
Writers: Katrina Browne, Alla Kovgan
Executive producer: Elizabeth Delude-Dix
Director of photography: Liz Dory
Co-producer: Juanita Brown
Editor: Alla Kovgan
No MPAA rating, running time 86 minutes...
PARK CITY -- Powerful is an inadequate word to describe the impact of Katrina Browne's "Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North," an examination of her forebears, the DeWolf family of Bristol, Rhode Island, the largest slave traders in U.S. history. This is a topic America has been avoiding for generations. Now, fittingly in this bicentennial year of the abolition of the slave trade by Thomas Jefferson, Browne's clear-headed film represents an intense and searing call for national dialogue. It also coincides with a number of political movements in and out of Congress to examine the history of race in America and the topic of reparations.
Festival dates and then theatrical distribution will start the film's exposure. But television is the best avenue for people to share the filmmaker's journey with family members into a heart of utter darkness.
A grandmother's confession alerted Browne at an early age to the family's infernal legacy. She does research. From 1769 to 1820, DeWolf ships sailed to the coast of Ghana to trade rum and other goods for slaves who were then sold in the New World or brought to family sugar plantations in Cuba. The sugar was then transported back to Bristol to make more rum in family distilleries. They had shrewdly put together what today would be described as a vertically integrated corporation.
But it wasn't just the DeWolfs. The entire town of Bristol, the historic heart of the trade, was involved. This film forever buries the myth of Southern guilt. Slavery was legal for 200 years in the North and the North dominated the trade. As a political favor, none other than President Jefferson appointed an in-law to head the Bristol customs office so the DeWolfs could continue the trade long after its abolition. Can you imagine a more depressing historical fact than that?
Browne wrote to 200 descendents, inviting them to join her on a journey to trace this legacy. Nine members did. Starting with the grand mansions, warehouses, company records, artifacts and a slave gravesite in Rhode Island, the group flies to Ghana to tour slave forts with their nearly impenetrable dungeons. They move on to Cuba, where they discover the ruins of a DeWolf plantation building.
The film is no travelogue, however. Each encounter with scholars, artists and guides who reveal more and more about the DeWolf legacy leaves family members shaken to the core. And angry. They debate and argue this legacy's meaning and what to do with this knowledge. They seek dialogue with locals in Ghana. One family member is stunned when an African-American woman refuses to shake his hand. She didn't want to encounter whites in a place she considers sacred.
They turn to the film's co-producer, Juanita Brown, who is black. She gently but firmly gives them a few hard truths about how African-Americans feel about this past and about white Americans' unwillingness to own up to the privilege they enjoy that stems in part from slavery.
The first two-thirds of the film delivers the historical shocks and often painful insights. The final third, and most important part of the film, shows the family galvanized to action, in their own church, which bears a heavy responsibility for its support of the trade, and in other political arenas. One family member, Thomas Norman DeWolf, who was on hand for the film's Sundance debut, has authored a book, "Inheriting the Trade," that reflects his experiences during filmmaking.
The film's key point is that the nation can no longer afford collective silence and willed amnesia about slavery. It must confront these issues if race relations are ever going to progress in the U.S. "Traces of the Trade" is a place to start.
TRACES OF THE TRADE: A STORY FROM THE DEEP NORTH
Ebb Pod Productions
Credits:
Director/producer: Katrina Browne
Writers: Katrina Browne, Alla Kovgan
Executive producer: Elizabeth Delude-Dix
Director of photography: Liz Dory
Co-producer: Juanita Brown
Editor: Alla Kovgan
No MPAA rating, running time 86 minutes...
- 1/23/2008
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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