The Devil Wears Bellbottoms

Sugar Hill (1974)
AKA The Zombies of Sugar Hill, Voodoo Girl

The news about the Blackwater company and their $1000 a day subcontractors in Baghdad, beholden neither to American nor Iraqi law, is such classic conspiracy theory fodder that I bet even the 9/11 nuts are feeling some residual smugness right now. I would hate to see anyone’s paranoid fantasy confirmed, especially my own, but I’ve got to say it (with apologies to Patton Oswalt): shadowy conspiracies are so common now, they’re amusing. It could come out next week that the government has a zombie hit-squad and I’d double over laughing. It would be the unhinged laughter of a lunatic, however, since that schtick was already taken by Sugar Hill, the first blaxploitation horror movie. It’s a fantastic movie where racist pigs get fed to the pigs and the Grim Reaper wears a spangled jumpsuit. It’s a wild story, but 100% fantasy- how reassuring in these troubled times.

The first blaxploitation horror movie looks as schizophrenically awesome as the image the words “horror” and “blaxploitation” paint in the imagination. Dark shadows, crumbling mansions and spooky graveyards mix casually with Superfly quality costumes. The men wear glorious jewel-toned polyester suits with massive bell bottoms and scalloped lapels, and Marki Bey does an admirable Pam Grier impression throughout (though no one can wear a jumpsuit and an Afro quite like Pam Grier). The soundtrack is appropriately funky, though only one song stands out, the title track “Supernatural Voodoo Woman” by the Originals.

Below its glittery, funky veneer, Sugar Hill is a pretty dark film. It has a strong revenge story element; a Mafia-type gang killed Sugar’s man, so they must be killed one by one by Sugar and her undead posse. The many assassination sequences blend together into a hallucinatory whole, reminiscent of the Japanese revenge classic Lady Snowblood, but without the arty color motifs. A product of the American International Pictures shit factory, the plot and dialogue appear to have been written on the back of a paper bag the day before shooting started. Sugar Hill is definitely carried by its spirit, its soul, if you will (sorry, I can’t resist every bad pun).It’s got lots of “fuck the man” attitude to make you want to stand up and cheer; the zombies are the reanimated corpses of former slaves, ready to turn the tables on the racist mobsters. It’s karmic- or it would be in a better written movie.

The spirit of Sugar Hill is best embodied by the character of Baron Samedi, voodoo god of the dead. Don Pedro Colly throws himself at the role with abandon. He’s the protector of graveyards who loves women and rum infused with hot peppers. Colley plays him comic, laughing loudly and bounding about the screen, paint on his face and a feather in his ear, a large, relaxed physical presence that steals every scene he’s in. By AIP’s assembly-line standards, he’ll do as a god, and this as a realistic depiction of voodoo, in anthropological detail if not in intention. A good example is the scene where one of the Mafia guys (they’re all pretty interchangeable) gets attacked by an animated chicken foot. Chicken feet are, in fact, used as fetish objects by the voodoo faithful, but the scene is done with so little class it manages to be both hilarious and offensive. At least Baron Samedi is a colorful and entertaining character. Bey doesn’t have much to work with in Sugar, remarkably one-dimensional despite her double life: fashion photographer by day, voodoo mistress by night. The same can be said of the other actors, but the cast is in good spirits and it shows.

The best characters don’t even speak- the zombie hit squad! Despite their slowness they pop up in all kinds of places- a corn field, a dark nightclub, a massage parlor- bearing machetes. They stumble around covered not in blood but cobwebs, magically unharmed after centuries in the grave. Their eyes are black, hard and shiny, like bug eyes; like in White Zombie, this goes a long way towards making these shamblers scary. I wouldn’t recommend sitting through Sugar Hill in its entirety, but with a remote control in hand it’s a funky good time.