Shaft
1971 · USA · 97m
Obscurity: canon. watchable legallyGordon Parks directs a solid detective film. Isaac Hayes does the rest.
Blaxploitation
1971–1976 · 29 films catalogued
Black-led American genre films, 1971 to 1976. A real industry moment, shut down as soon as something bigger came along.
Roughly two hundred films in five years, with Black leads, made largely for Black urban audiences, keeping several studios solvent along the way.
Melvin Van Peebles financed Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) independently and proved the audience existed. MGM's Shaft, the same year, proved a studio could monetise it. Crime films dominated, but the cycle also produced horror (Blacula), westerns (The Legend of Nigger Charley) and martial arts crossovers.
The argument about the name
Junius Griffin, then head of the Beverly Hills NAACP, coined "blaxploitation" in 1972 as an attack. His charge was that white-owned studios were extracting money from Black audiences while recycling pimps and pushers. That criticism has force.
So does the reply. These films employed Black actors, directors, composers and crews at a scale the industry would not match again for twenty years, and gave Pam Grier and Gordon Parks careers.
Why it ended
Not because the audience left. Jaws and Star Wars arrived, the studios learned what a crossover blockbuster earned, and a targeted audience started to look small.
Where to start
Coffy for Pam Grier. Super Fly for Curtis Mayfield, whose score spends its runtime arguing with the film it is in.
Read more
- Blaxploitation, 1971 to 1975
Melvin Van Peebles caught gonorrhea on his own set, filed a workers' comp claim, and bought more film stock with the settlement. Four years later the studios had mined the audience out and moved on.
Blaxploitation films on file
All 29 Blaxploitation films →
Blacula
1972 · USA · 93m
Obscurity: known. watchable legallyWilliam Marshall plays it completely straight and almost saves it.
Foxy Brown
1974 · USA · 87m
Obscurity: known. watchable legally. banned somewhereCoffy again, louder and worse written. Grier is still magnetic.
Coffy
1973 · USA · 87m
Obscurity: known. watchable legallyPam Grier's arrival. Jack Hill knows exactly what he has.
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
1971 · USA · 93m
Obscurity: known. watchable legallyFinanced independently, structured like nothing else, and it changed the industry.
Super Fly
1972 · USA · 93m
Obscurity: cult. watchable legallyCurtis Mayfield's score critiques the film it's in. Remarkable object.
Across 110th Street
1972 · USA · 102m
Obscurity: cult. watchable legallyGrim, well acted, and the best film in the cycle by some distance.
Black Caesar
1973 · USA · 87m
Obscurity: cult. watchable legallyLarry Cohen shooting Harlem guerrilla-style. James Brown scores it.
Cleopatra Jones
1973 · USA · 89m
Obscurity: cult. watchable legallyTamara Dobson, six feet two, government agent. Shelley Winters overacts gloriously.
Black Belt Jones
1974 · USA · 87m
Obscurity: cult. watchable legallyJim Kelly karate-chops the mob to save a Watts dojo. Blaxploitation meets kung fu, joyfully.
Black Mama White Mama
1973 · USA · 87m
Obscurity: cult. watchable legallyThe Defiant Ones with Pam Grier, shot in the Philippines by a Filipino who actually knew the terrain.
Cotton Comes to Harlem
1970 · USA · 97m
Obscurity: cult. watchable legallyTwo Harlem detectives chase a stolen fortune hidden in a bale of cotton. The one that opened the door.
Hell Up in Harlem
1973 · USA · 94m
Obscurity: cult. watchable legallyLarry Cohen's weekend sequel to Black Caesar, rougher and more berserk than the original.
The Spook Who Sat by the Door
1973 · USA · 102m
Obscurity: cult. watchable legallyThe most political film the blaxploitation boom made, pulled from cinemas and buried for thirty years.
Abby
1974 · USA · 89m
Obscurity: cultThe blaxploitation Exorcist. A minister's wife is possessed by a sex demon. Warner Bros sued.
Dolemite
1975 · USA · 90m
Obscurity: cult. watchable legallyTechnically inept and completely irresistible. Boom mics in every other shot.
Scream Blacula Scream
1973 · USA · 96m
Obscurity: cult. watchable legallyThe rare sequel that adds Pam Grier and a shred of dignity.
Trouble Man
1972 · USA · 99m
Obscurity: cultCool to the point of refrigeration, scored by Marvin Gaye the one time he ever bothered.
Truck Turner
1974 · USA · 91m
Obscurity: cult. watchable legallyIsaac Hayes in front of the camera for once, and Nichelle Nichols swearing.
Ganja & Hess
1973 · USA · 113m
Obscurity: cult. watchable legallyAn art film that was sold as a vampire picture. Recut and buried for decades.
J.D.'s Revenge
1976 · USA · 92m
Obscurity: cult. watchable legallyA dead 1940s gangster possesses a mild law student. Blaxploitation crossed with the supernatural.
Sugar Hill
1974 · USA · 87m
Obscurity: cult. watchable legallyRevenge via Haitian zombies. The best of the blaxploitation horror crossovers.
The Mack
1973 · USA · 110m
Obscurity: cultHalf drama, half documentary of 1970s Oakland. The real players are in it.
Detroit 9000
1973 · USA · 106m
Obscurity: obscure. watchable legallyA biracial cop pairing hunts jewel thieves in Detroit. Tarantino re-released it for a reason.