JACK HILL: THE EXPLOITATION AND BLAXPLOITATION MASTER, FILM BY FILM calum waddell (McFarland)
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Waddell’s written several previous books on exploitation fare, and he covers every one of Hill’s films in detail here, from the famous Foxy Brown to the utterly forgettable Track of the Vampire. He tells who worked on each of these projects and how the financing and distribution worked. He provides thorough plot summaries and offers his opinion on whether the movie is good or bad. And he supplies lengthy interviews with important figures, including delightful discussions with Hill himself about his entire oeuvre.
And yet despite all this welcome information, Waddell never quite manages to make it clear why he wrote this book in the first place. What is it about Hill’s movies that thrills him? The closest he comes to a statement of purpose is in the introduction, where he claims the “time is right for this book” because of Grindhouse, the 2007 pseudo-exploitation double feature by Richard Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino that supposedly increased interest in the real thing.
Waddell has a bit more success reclaiming blaxploitation efforts like Coffy and Foxy Brown, both of which feature Pam Grier on a vendetta against assorted scumbags. These movies at least showcase a black woman kicking white-boy butt, and so can be seen as some sort of revolutionary statement. Still, no matter how much you mutter about undermining authority and Reaganomics, you just can’t turn Coffy into Putney Swope—or even into Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. If you’re looking to fight the power, you probably shouldn’t be writing about Jack Hill.
review
