A Few Of My Favorite Things is a series that appears most weekends on Driven By Boredom. Each week I talk about three of my favorite things from a specific genre of film, music, or something else all together. Each favorite thing is accompanied by a video and a description of why it is one of my favorite things. Click here for more favorites.

Welcome to the first addition of A Few Of My Favorite Things. To start things off I am going to talk about my three favorite Blaxploitation films. I probably know more about Blaxploitation that anyone you have ever met. I have seen over 50 Blaxploitation films and in college wrote a 20 page research paper on the genre. For those not familiar will Blaxploitation film, or Exploitation film let me give you a quick explanation. Exploitation films are not called exploitation because they exploit anyone… they are called this because they exploit certain elements in a film that are sure to sell tickets. These elements include violence, sex, action, or after 1971 all black films. Some of the more notable exploitation genres are slasher flicks, women in prison, spaghetti westerns (will be featured on this site soon), Sexploitation, biker films, and kung fu films. These films were made cheaply and mostly badly. As long as you had a good trailer and had the elements of your genre you could pretty much sell the film. In 1970 there had not been many films made for a black audience. People did not really think that you could market to that crowd. Melvin Van Peebles thought otherwise. In 1971 at great risk to himself he wrote, directed and stared in a film called Sweet Sweetback’s Baaadasss Song. I am not a huge fan of the film, but it changed everything forever. Aside from starting the career of Earth Wind and Fire, the movie showed Hollywood that there was a black audience to exploit. In 1972 Shaft and Superfly were released to great commercial success. After that EVERYONE wanted to make black films. Between 1972 and 1975 nearly 100 of these films were made before people got sick of the low production values and rehashed plots. A sequel to Blacula may have been to much for anyone to handle. That being said, without these films modern black films and urban culture would be so different from what it is now. So now that you know what’s what… let’s get to my favorites after the break.

1. Superfly – 1972
Superfly is one of my favorite movies of all time. It is one of the slickest things ever. It is about a drug dealer trying to get out of the game with one big score. He is out against the mafia and the cops and his rivals. This movie along with The Mack pretty much started gangster culture in the US. These movies glorified pimps and drug dealers and changed everything. The Curtis Mayfield soundtrack might be the best soundtrack of all time. (Take that Harder They Come).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmZjD2UWoso[/youtube]

2. The Spook Who Sat By The Door – 1973
This movie was so revolutionary and upsetting to White America that it got pulled only days after its release. It was lost completely for 30 years until a print was found in a vault and restored and released on DVD. I was lucky enough to catch a screening of if at a film festival in VA before it came out. The film blew me away. It is about a fictional first black (spook) CIA agent (spook) who was one of the best CIA agents the government had, but they kept him working in the copy room because of his race. He eventually quits the CIA and starts training street kids in Chicago and sets up a country wide guerrilla organization. The movie ends like no movie I have ever seen and is by far the most militant of all the blaxploitation films I have ever seen. You need to see this movie.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLKSyy5AwtQ[/youtube]

3. Fight For Your Life – 1977
Fight for your life came out in 1977 and is only loosely considered a Blaxploitation film. Still, it is one of the most fucked up films I have ever seen and I would consider it Blaxpoitation. The only reason I say it is loosely Blaxploitation is because the starring role is a white guy (William Sanderson) and a good amount of the film focuses on him and his gang. That is until they take a break from their killing spree to hold up in a black family’s house. They kidnap the family and torture them, until of course they fight back and take sweet sweet revenge. This movie has to be seen to believed. Also on the DVD I have it has trailers marketed to different crowds. It has this one which I guess is the primary trailer and then it has one aimed at white audiences and one aimed at black audiences. The film has had many different names including: The Hostage’s Bloody Revenge, Blood Bath at 1313 Fury Road and I Hate Your Guts. So great. NSFW warning: This trailer has a tiny bit of nudity in it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXDHcLwiJzY[/youtube]

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