Black Caesars and Foxy Cleopatras: A History of Blaxploitation Cinema by Odie Henderson

From Harlem to Hollywood, and vice versa

Black Caesars and Foxy Cleopatras: A History of Blaxploitation Cinema was published in 2024. The author is Odie Henderson, film critic for the Boston Globe, who I think is probably right around my age. While I, however, grew up watching Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood movies in a small town in Wisconsin, Henderson grew up watching Pam Grier and Fred Williamson movies in Jersey City and Times Square. Henderson brings to this history a nostalgic enthusiasm for the genre but also an extensive knowledge of the film industry. For each movie he discusses, Henderson provides a wealth of behind-the-scenes stories about the making of the picture and the careers of those involved in its production.

In the first chapter, Henderson provides an overview of Black American cinema, pre-Blaxploitation. The bulk of the book then covers the years 1970 to 1978. Henderson considers Cotton Comes to Harlem to be the birth of the Blaxploitation genre (when Hollywood realized they could make money off of Black films) and The Wiz to be the nail in its coffin. In between, he highlights every major Blaxploitation film, as well as some lesser-known obscurities. Along the way, a number of subgenres are examined, such as horror films, westerns, rom-coms, high school dramas, women in prison, and of course, gangster/crime movies, like those starring the aforementioned Grier and Williamson.

I’ve seen at least half of the films discussed here, and after reading this book, I’d like to see the rest. Henderson provides plot summaries of all the movies he covers in the book. His synopses include spoilers, and they do often give away the endings of the films. By the time you get to the end of this information-rich genre survey, however, it’s unlikely you’re going to remember the difference between the conclusions of Uptown Saturday Night versus Let’s Do It Again or Hammer versus Bucktown. There is so much film criticism, film history, and film trivia crammed into this book. Throughout, Henderson’s prose is a joy to read, delivering a wealth of information in an addictively fun narrative, with just enough period slang to keep things cool while maintaining film-critic dignity and avoiding overly ostentatious cleverness. He intersperses the film-talk with a few stories of his youth, how he grew up watching these movies, but this is definitely not a memoir. It’s closer to an encyclopedia of the genre, although arranged chronologically. Henderson also includes a few brief interviews with a movie producer and a couple of fellow film critics.

My interest in Blaxploitation films springs mainly from their soundtracks, an important aspect of any film in this genre. Artists like Isaac Hayes (Shaft), Curtis Mayfield (Super Fly), Marvin Gaye (Trouble Man), James Brown (Black Caesar), Willie Hutch (The Mack), Bobby Womack and J. J. Johnson (Across 110th Street), Roy Ayers (Coffy), the Staples Singers (Let’s Do It Again), and The Impressions (Three the Hard Way) created some of the best soul music of the ‘70s in their scores and soundtracks. Although this is primarily a film book, Henderson does cover the music that accompanies the films he discusses. Perhaps as much as fifteen percent of the text might be concerned with music. There’s an entire chapter on Black concert films, and a sidebar on “The Top Ten Best Blaxploitation Songs.”

As a fan of 1970s cinema, I really enjoyed Black Caesars and Foxy Cleopatras. The only way to make this book better would be to make it bigger by adding more lesser-known films. Henderson has certainly got the biggest and best movies of the era well-covered. Inspired by this fun and fascinating study of the genre, I’ll be hunting down many of these movies on streaming services and YouTube.

Star Trek Movie Memories by William Shatner and Chris Kreski

The conflicts and compromises behind the film franchise

Star Trek Movie Memories was published in 1994, just after actor William Shatner ended his career as Captain Kirk in the Star Trek franchise. This book is the sequel to Star Trek Memories, published the preceding year, in which Shatner recounts the making of the original Star Trek television series. In Star Trek Movie Memories, Shatner provides his behind-the-scenes perspective on the making of the six Star Trek feature films featuring the original cast, as well as the Star Trek: Generations film, in which he made his final appearance as Kirk along side The Next Generation cast. Both books were cowritten by Shatner and Chris Kreski, a former television writer.

Much like the volume that preceded it, Star Trek Movie Memories is not so much a collection of personal anecdotes of Shatner and his costars, but rather a production history of these seven Star Trek motion pictures. In addition to Shatner’s recollections, Shatner and/or Kreski interviewed many of the cast and crew to get their side of the story. Leonard Nimoy’s voice is once again quite prominent in this volume. In many ways, Nimoy had a more active creative role than Shatner in the building of the film franchise, and Shatner gives his old friend credit where it is due.

When comparing the two Memories books sheerly on the basis of subject matter, the making of movies in the 1980s is not nearly as interesting as the making of a groundbreaking sci-fi television series in the 1960s. Much of the text in this Movie Memories volume has to do with battles over script changes, contract negotiations of the actors and writers, and meddling by Paramount studio executives. This second book, however, does include more personal reflections from Shatner, and it reads more like it was written in Shatner’s voice. There is a touching chapter in which he describes the hard times in his career between the end of the television series and the beginning of the movie franchise. He also talks about his marital problems and his relationship with his daughters. Shatner closes the book with a candid examination of his coming to terms with the bittersweet feelings engendered by the death of Kirk and the end of his involvement with Star Trek.

It still feels, however, like Shatner is holding back a bit for diplomacy’s sake, particularly in regards to his castmates. It’s common knowledge that there has been some bad blood between the fictional captain and his crew over the years, but Shatner has a tendency to focus on the bright and sunny side of their relationships. He mentions at one point, for example, that James Doohan and Walter Koenig held a grudge against him, which made their joint participation in Generations difficult, but he never reveals the history behind that animosity. No longer does Shatner hold back on Gene Roddenberry, however, who was duly credited in the first book for his creation of Star Trek but is portrayed as the nemesis of the Star Trek franchise throughout this second book.

Reading Shatner’s first Star Trek Memories book made me want to go back and watch the original television series. Likewise, Star Trek Movie Memories inspired me to binge-watch the six original-cast motion pictures. Like a good DVD commentary, this book proved to be a valuable companion volume to the film series. Star Trek Movie Memories is not always as exciting or as forthright as the reader might hope, but like its predecessor it is a very informative book and a welcome trip down memory lane for even casual Star Trek fans. You don’t have to be a Trekkie zealot to enjoy it.  

Bondarchuk’s War and Peace: Literary Classic to Soviet Cinematic Epic by Denise J. Youngblood

The history behind the masterpiece

Though I am a lover of classic literature, I haven’t yet had the courage to tackle Leo Tolstoy’s mammoth novel War and Peace. Recently, however, I did see the Russian film adaptation directed by Sergei Bondarchuk, which was released in four parts from 1966 to 1967. This film is a true masterpiece of cinematic historical fiction that combines epic battles with intimate human drama. The artistic and technical aspects of the film are superb, and the grand scale of the production truly staggers the mind. The 2019 Criterion Collection DVD set includes a 45 minute interview with historian Denise J. Youngblood, an expert on Russian war films. I enjoyed her commentary so much that I decided to read her 2014 book Bondarchuk’s War and Peace: Literary Classic to Soviet Cinematic Epic. 

Youngblood’s Criterion Collection presentation focuses primarily on the making of Bondarchuk’s film, while her book expands the discussion to include literary and film criticism, adaptation theory, historiography, and the actual historical events upon which the novel and its films are based. The text is organized in a very logical manner. Chapter 1 covers most of the making-of material. If you’ve seen the Criterion Collection interview, then you’ve already heard about 80 percent of what’s here, but the book still contains plenty of new and interesting details. Chapter 2 discusses the definition of an epic, and whether Bondarchuk’s film qualifies as one. This hinges not only on the grand scale of the story and production but also on how well it embodies the culture and national spirit of Russia and the Soviet Union. Chapter 3 discusses Bondarchuk’s War and Peace as an adaptation, how it compares to Tolstoy’s novel, and the decisions Bondarchuk made in interpreting the source material. In Chapter 4, Youngblood examines how well the film reflects historical reality. Chapter 5 compares Bondarchuk’s film with director King Vidor’s 1956 adaptation of War and Peace, an American film that was very popular in Russia. Chapter 6 covers Bondarchuk’s follow-up film, Waterloo, another grand historical epic of the Napoleonic Era. Finally, a brief conclusion sums up, on a somewhat tragic note, the remainder of Bondarchuk’s career.

There is a lot of comparing and contrasting going on in this book: Bondarchuk vs. Tolstoy, Bondarchuk vs. Vidor, War and Peace vs. Waterloo, both films vs. history. The very nature of film studies requires that a large portion of the content be devoted to plot summaries (spoilers included, of course). Therefore, if you’ve read Tolstoy’s novel and have seen all these films, much of the text may be telling you things you already know. Such recapping is necessary, however, for Youngblood to illustrate the conclusions she draws, and her synopses are interspersed with enlightening observations on filmmaking technique. One also learns quite a bit about the history of Russia’s war against Napoleon’s France, as well as the cultural climate and cinematic history of the Soviet Union. Youngblood’s comprehensive knowledge in history, film, and Russian studies allows her to make revealing interdisciplinary connections between the three fields.

With about 130 pages of text and half that much in notes, bibliography, and index, Bondarchuk’s War and Peace is not a cumbersome read for the general reader. I am neither a historian nor film scholar, just a film and literature buff, yet I found Youngblood’s prose quite accessible and never boring. Anyone who appreciates Bondarchuk’s film will enjoy the fascinating behind-the-scenes and between-the-lines details that Youngblood delivers in this comprehensive study.
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Epic Films: Casts, Credits and Commentary on More Than 350 Historical Spectacle Movies, Second Edition by Gary Allen Smith

An entertaining and informative guide for the sword-and-sandal fan
If you like movies about gladiators, centurions, argonauts, and apostles, then Gary Allen Smith has compiled the book for you. I am an enthusiast of ancient-world movies myself, and Epic Films is the best viewer’s guide that I have found on the genre. In the second edition, Smith catalogs 353 historical epics, providing cast and credits for each, as well as descriptive copy including plot outlines (with spoilers, unfortunately) and interesting behind-the-scenes anecdotes on the making of many of these films. Smith’s personal critiques are insightful and articulate, though the book really should have had a better proofreading because it does contain a lot of typos.

The second edition of Epic Films was published in 2004. Ridley Scott’s Gladiator is the most recent major film to be profiled, while Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy is mentioned as being in production at the time of publication. Smith mostly skips over the silent era, with a few exceptions. He does include D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance, for example, but not the 1914 Italian epic Cabiria. Beyond the dawn of the talkies, the book covers all periods of cinematic history amply, from the Golden Age of Hollywood to the Italian peplum films of the 1960s to the modern era of digital special effects, including many made-for-TV movies and miniseries that have long been forgotten. Smith does not confine himself to ancient Greece and Rome, biblical epics, and caveman films. He explains in his introduction that his definition of epic covers history up to around the year 1200. This allows for the inclusion of more medieval fare, such as stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The lion’s share of the entries, however, focus on ancient times, and when adventures from the Middle Ages are included, such as El Cid or Braveheart, they definitely qualify as epics. Noticeably absent are the Arabian Nights genre, such as The Thief of Baghdad or The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad. Asian history is represented solely by Genghis Khan, the Mongols, and the Tartars, and, through Hollywood’s fault rather than Smith’s, Kings of the Sun is the only film about the ancient Americas. Mostly Smith focuses on American, British, French, and Italian productions, with an occasional outlier like the Polish film Pharaoh.

Most of the books published on this genre of film have been scholarly monographs by film studies or cultural studies professors, such as The Ancient World in Cinema by Jon Solomon. The only other film-by-film guide I’ve seen is a book called The Encyclopedia of Epic Films, which, although it may have Ben-Hur on its cover, considers everything from Spider-Man to Star Wars as epics. Smith’s Epic Films, on the other hand, is aimed at the general reader who just enjoys grandiose cinematic depictions of prehistoric, ancient, and medieval times. Smith proves himself a very knowledgeable guide and offers much to learn for even the most avid fans of sword-and-sandal cinema. I have only watched about a third of the movies covered in this book, and it has yielded quite a few fortuitous discoveries of interesting films yet to be seen.

Though one might quibble here and there about a film that was or was not included, Smith deserves to be commended for putting together what is likely the most authoritative and user-friendly guide to the genre. Film fans who just can’t get enough of Hercules, Maciste, Samson, Goliath, Ursus, Odysseus, Spartacus, Cleopatra, Jesus, or the various Caesars are sure to enjoy this book. It is high time for a third edition.
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Deliverance by James Dickey

A literary masterpiece, whether you’ve seen the film or not
The film Deliverance is one of my top ten favorite movies of all time, and after recently rereading the James Dickey novel for I think the third time, I would have to count it among my all-time favorite books as well. Published in 1970, Deliverance is certainly one of the greatest novels of the second half of the 20th century. Fans of the film will find the novel every bit as riveting as its cinematic adaptation, and the book also provides a deeper insight into the characters, setting, and plot elements. Ed Gentry (the Jon Voigt character) narrates the story in the first person, which gives the reader an intimate connection to his thoughts and feelings during what develops into a very tense and harrowing experience. The course of events before and after the canoe trip is more thoroughly explored than in the film, and the reader learns a lot about the characters’ everyday lives—their occupations, their families, their everyday personalities—making it all the more compelling when they are forced to fight for those lives.

For those who have never seen the film, Deliverance is the story of four men who decide to take one last canoe trip on a soon-to-be-dammed wild river in a remote North Georgia wilderness. The adventure is more than they bargained for, however, when the party is attacked and forced to fight for their survival. Deliverance is a gripping adventure novel, but it is also an insightful examination of modern masculinity. Ed Gentry is happy to skate through a life of good-enough contentment that borders on complacency. His friend Lewis Medlock (the Burt Reynolds character), on the other hand, only feels alive when he is pushing himself to the limits of survival. Though more of an everyman realist, Ed can’t help but admire Lewis for his uncompromising machismo. For Ed, the canoe trip is his chance to embark on some sort of Lewis fantasy camp. When things get out of hand, however, what started as grown-ups at play in the wild turns deadly serious, and Ed finds himself faced with the greatest challenge of his life.

Deliverance is the best wilderness survival film ever made. Truly good wilderness adventure movies are hard to find, and the same is true for literature. Dickey may be the best wilderness adventure writer since Jack London. Reading this book gives one a visceral experience of the beauty and deadliness of the wild. Dickey makes the reader feel the woods, the river, and the rocks like few authors can. In addition, he brings a rich psychological depth to the characters that is on a par with writers like Hemingway or Steinbeck. Though the first person narrative occasionally veers into stream of consciousness, the book never succumbs to modernist excesses of verbal cleverness. The prose is taut and relevant, and the gripping story never relents.

Another unique aspect of Deliverance is that, unlike most action/adventure stories, after the life and death struggle takes place, the survivors must return to civilization and explain themselves. This adds another dimension of realism to the story that really elevates it above typical genre fiction into the realm of great literature. Author James Dickey (who played the sheriff in the movie) considered himself first and foremost a poet. He only wrote three novels, which is a shame considering how great this book is. His subsequent novels, Alnilam and To the White Sea, didn’t quite measure up to the same standard of greatness, but Deliverance will always stand as a masterpiece of modern American literature.
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Bob Dylan: Like a Complete Unknown by David Yaffe

Four topical essays: two hits, two misses
David Yaffe’s 2011 book Bob Dylan: Like a Complete Unknown is divided into four chapters, each of which is a thematic essay focusing on one aspect of Dylan’s art. The subjects are Dylan’s singing voice, Dylan and film, Dylan and blackness, and Dylan and plagiarism. Yaffe attacks these topics in a manner neither chronological nor systematic, but rather in a free-form style that often mimics the cadence of Dylan’s own writing, cherry-picking whatever bits of his encyclopedic knowledge of Dylanology is required to support each essay’s thesis.

The first two chapters were quite disappointing. Though I would consider myself an ardent fan of Dylan’s music, I’m certainly not a scholar on the subject, nor would I even call myself an aficionado, yet still I learned almost nothing new about Dylan from these first two essays. They are not so much about Dylan as they are about Yaffe’s opinions on Dylan. Their primary purpose is not to educate the reader but to showcase Yaffe’s writing, as if a clever turn of phrase were of the utmost importance. The chapter on Dylan’s vocal development is really just Yaffe giving you a summary of Dylan’s recording output while coming up with creative adjectives to describe the singer’s voice, “adenoidal” being the author’s oft-repeated favorite. The chapter on Dylan’s life in film also yielded little new information. The reader learns more about Martin Scorsese and Todd Haynes than about Dylan himself.

Fortunately, the latter two essays are a vast improvement over the first half of the book. Here is where the reader begins to see how a music critic approaching Dylan from a cultural studies perspective can actually enlarge your understanding of the man’s music. Essay number three, “Not Dark Yet,” examines Dylan’s relationship to African American musical culture, his periodic adoption of a “blackish” performing persona, and even his preference for African American women. Yaffe enlightens the reader on music history and makes insightful points, like when he draws parallels between Dylan’s emulation of black blues singers and the history of 19th and early 20th century minstrel shows. The final chapter focuses on accusations of plagiarism against Dylan and his penchant for alluding to or lifting from existing lyrics and melodies. Here one learns much about the sources of inspiration for many of Dylan’s songs. Though Yaffe points out there is some truth to the plagiarism rap, particularly in the case of Dylan’s borrowing from a contemporary Japanese novelist, in general Yaffe sees Dylan’s cut-and-paste songwriting in a positive light (as do I) and portrays Dylan as an artist who has deftly mined the public domain to become a master sonic assemblagist, a sort of Robert Rauschenberg of American music.

Yaffe finishes the book with a list of what he considers the 70 most important Dylan songs. His choices are not unexpected and pretty much trumpet the usual suspects, with selections heavy on the Bringing It All Back Home, Blonde on Blonde, and Blood on the Tracks albums. He doesn’t really draw attention to any unsung gems, so again, not much to learn here. Every fan has probably already made up his or her mind what Dylan songs are the best. Likewise, if you are conversant enough in Dylanology to want to read this book, chances are you already know much of what is contained herein. Still, there are nuggets of insight here and there to make it worthwhile for hardcore fans.
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Marvel Comics: The Untold Story by Sean Howe

From excelsior to excess
At first I was a little skeptical about the subtitle of Sean Howe’s 2012 book Marvel Comics: The Untold Story. I grew up reading Marvel Comics and have read other books on the company’s history. After finishing Howe’s version, however, I’m happy to report that his investigative journalism into Marvel’s past is quite impressive, and the book makes for a truly fascinating read.

For the first couple chapters, I wasn’t so sure. In Chapter 1 Howe covers the entire history of Marvel, formerly known as Timely Comics, up through the 1950s. That’s the entire Golden Age in less than 30 pages! Howe isn’t really concerned, however, with the myriad genres that Timely used to publish—western, horror, romance, funny animals, and so on. This is really a history of what Marvel is most famous for—the superheroes, beginning with the Silver Age pantheon created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and in some cases, Steve Ditko. Chapter 2 covers the birth of the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Thor, the Avengers, X-Men, and Spider-Man. Howe’s recaps of origin stories and mythologies get a little long-winded, leaving one to wonder when the “untold story” is going to begin.

From that point on, however, the book really hits its stride and becomes incredibly addictive, with vivid details and surprising revelations on every page. This isn’t a literary history of Marvel’s creative glories, but rather a true business history, replete with mergers, acquisitions, and struggles for administrative power. I’ll confess some of the financial and legal details were over my head, and at times, I could have used a little less detail. Over the course of superhero comics history, writers and artists continually defected from Marvel to DC and back again, and Howe keeps you apprised of each and every arrival and departure. Nevertheless, it’s better to commit sins of excess than omission, and Howe’s thorough, behind-the-scenes exposé of life inside the Marvel bullpen is probably the next-best thing to working there.

Though written in the third person, the book has the feel of an oral history, likely because Howe interviewed about 150 former Marvel employees. Howe lets all sides get their two cents in without passing judgment. The long-fought battle between Lee and Kirby over creative ownership of certain characters, for example, is handled in a fairly balanced manner. Howe diligently follows the trail of rancor, and neither party comes out smelling like a rose. Stan the Man comes across as somewhat pathetically clueless, while King Kirby is depicted as taking his justifiable grievances to delusional excess. In general, Howe subtly favors individual creators over big business, but he always presents both sides of an argument.

Though Howe celebrates the company’s creative triumphs, his overall picture of the Marvel empire is rather unflattering. As he charts the trajectory of the publisher through boom and bust periods, he makes it pretty clear that over time the company has sacrificed creative quality in favor of commercialism, diluting the integrity of its treasured characters for a quick buck. As one of the many fans Marvel lost in the ‘90s, I have a tendency to agree with him, which is perhaps why I enjoyed the book so much. There are other good books on Marvel history out there, like the self-congratulatory Marvel Chronicle: A Year by Year History or Mark Evanier’s excellent biography Kirby: King of Comics, but if you’re looking for one book that’s going to give you the clearest, most complete picture of the Marvel story, this is it.
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BadAzz MoFo’s Book of Spaghetti Westerns by David F. Walker

Only for the “uninformed”
The introduction to this book explains that BadAzz MoFo is the name of a magazine devoted to pop culture, focusing in particular on blaxploitation films. In 1999, author David F. Walker published a spaghetti western edition of the ‘zine, the contents of which comprise this ebook. It contains reviews of 40 different western films, most of which were filmed in Europe by Italian directors during the 1960s. The most valuable thing about this book is its table of contents, which provides a good, varied list of spaghetti westerns that interested parties should see. Most of the reviews are favorable, but not all. They are somewhat loosely arranged in categories—Sergio Leone films, Sergio Corbucci films, films starring Franco Nero, Lee Van Cleef, Terrence Hill/Bud Spencer team-ups, and kung fu westerns, for example.

The reviews themselves are not very enlightening. I’ve seen about half the films covered in the book. For the movies that I have seen, Walker doesn’t provide a whole lot of insight into their production or reception. For the movies that I haven’t seen, I usually chose to skip the paragraph of plot synopsis, so as to avoid spoilers. Walker has certainly watched many spaghetti westerns, but beyond that it doesn’t seem that he’s done much research on the topic other than checking the Internet Movie Database to see what other films were made by certain actors and directors. The reviews are mostly just Walker’s opinions about what’s good, similar to those you might find posted by the Average Joe on Amazon or Netflix. To his credit, he does provide a few insightful comments about the leftist political undertones in many of these films. Although these reviews all appeared in a magazine together, for some reason they’re written as if they were meant to be read individually. The result is that they’re relentlessly repetitive. The most disappointing aspect of the book is that Walker doesn’t really even like spaghetti westerns all that much. He repeatedly stresses that with the exception of a few notable films—the Leones, the Corbuccis—almost all the movies produced in this genre were junk. True lovers of spaghetti westerns, however, are capable of finding much to appreciate in even the lowliest examples of the genre, despite all their faults.

Walker often refers to those who know less about spaghetti westerns than he does as “the uninformed,” though half the time it’s misspelled as “the uniformed.” The book was edited by Spell Check, if it was edited at all. There are lots of typos and missing words. Stylistically, Walker aims for an intelligent but irreverent tone, but often comes across as merely juvenile. It’s hard to take his criticism seriously when he resorts to phrases like “unless you can perform oral sex on yourself, I just ain’t impressed,” or “What do spaghetti westerns and pornos have in common?” Given the book’s title, I didn’t expect the intellectual discourse of a Pauline Kael or Roger Ebert, but I did expect a certain level of education on the subject, perhaps expressed from a Quentin Tarantino-esque perspective. Unfortunately, only newcomers to the genre will really gain much insight from this shallow take on the topic. Spaghetti western enthusiasts hoping to learn more would be better off investigating online sources like Wikipedia, IMDb, or the Spaghetti Western Database.
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