Movie Details
| Title: | The Human Tornado | |
| Director: | Cliff Roquemore | |
| Year: | 1976 | |
| Genre: | Soul Cinema | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 02.06.08 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 02.06.08 | Weird Wednesday | To quote Micah, Man what a movie. The more blaxploitation movies I see, the more I'm convinced that it's one of the major pinnacles of film as entertainment. These movies all seem to play to their audience with expert precision and astounding power. No other genre puts me in the mood to have a good time faster or easier than the first funky riffs and candid urban hand-helds of a blaxploitation. Take this movie for example: Rudy Ray Moore standing in some random field wearing an assortment of outlandish outfits mugging up kung fu stances as colorfully painted title cards filled with awesome names like Lady Dee and Java pop up and an absolutely stinky funk track lays down. From the get go I'm nodding my head, wide-ass smile on my face. So I'm already signed up to the Blaxploi fan club and watching this movie has got me in a mood to renew my membership for life. The successfull dramas of the period like Cotton Comes to Harlem and Brotherhood of Death are absorbing and interesting, the not-so successfull dramas like Deliver Us from Evil and Brother on the Run are now funny thanks to low production value and dated social trends. Even when they're dead serious like Penitentiary, they still find moments of well-earned brevity aimed right at its audience. I love that you can see the filmmakers' specific goal of showing black folks some familiar terrain with familiar faces and familiar stories and everything clicks together very loudly. Perhaps too loudly for mainstream genre cinema but since they had the fortune of a specific audience and didn't try a goddamn if anyone else cared, the films sing their own tune. Loud. Of all the genres within blaxploitation, I may like the comedies the most. While watching this I was strongly reminded of Thousand Dollar Nigger and how riotous a movie-going experience that was back in the old Alamo. Both of these movies are downright hilarious in a perfect mix of low-down budget, amateur performances mixed in with pitch-perfect powerhouse presences like Rudy Ray or Wildman Steve, and enough just-plain weird elements thrown in to make everyone scratch their head. I think I've already filled my pompous high-brow quota but there's plenty of talk about the nature of movies and how these random surreal overtones approach a "pure" use of the medium to be had if I had an hour to kill babbling at my keyboard. Instead I'll just say that they made everyone bust a gut. So I'm kind of talking about everything but the movie because I know there's no way I can do justice to the film in a few paragraphs; no way i can make a bullet list of all the great moments and get any sleep at all tonight. Instead maybe I'll just leave it as a pristine experience in my memory and as another highlight of my Weird Wednesdays. |
