Movies Against Whitey! - Sugar Hill

Somewhere between Night of the Living Dead and The Serpent and the Rainbow lies…Sugar Hill.

1968. If you look at films before that year, any time there’s a reference to zombies, they are voodoo zombies: unfortunate individuals subjected to neurotoxins, seemingly reanimated as simple-minded servants to a master. But once Romero made the scene, we get the flesh-eaters that have become a horror staple ever since. Sugar Hill splits the difference in an interesting way: these zombies are dead…but behave more like the old-school voodoo ones, serving their master without a craving for human flesh. Before we dive too deep, let’s take a look at the synopsis:

Langston Hill is dead. As the Mafia muscles in on his successful club, it’s up to his widow Diana, ‘Sugar’ to her friends, to hang on to her late husband’s legacy.  But she doesn’t stand a chance alone. Entering into a pact with a voodoo priestess and the fabled Baron Samedi, she now has an army of zombies at her command. Her mission: to exact revenge on the men who killed her husband. As mangled Mafia goons start turning up in the morgue, it doesn’t take long for the police to start wondering if Club Haiti has embraced the island’s dark practices…and who will be next.

We’ve already looked at the two films credited with starting the Blaxploitation genre of film, Shaft and Sweet Sweetback’s Badass Song, both premiering in 1971…so by the time we get to 1974, these films were hitting their stride and as such, Hollywood began to take notice. Enter AIP…American International Pictures and producer Samuel Z. Arkoff, themselves no strangers to exploitation cinema, were not going to let this opportunity pass them by. Thus, what we have here isn’t what we typically associate with Blaxploitation films. Instead of black casts and black crews, here we’ve got a white director in Paul Maslansky and of course there’s Arkoff…and a white crew. Including a white writer. Ponder the irony there, black films made by whitey himself.

That said, Sugar Hill still manages to capture the vibe. The main characters are black and the bad guys are white…what more could you ask? Well, it’s got an opening music number with dancers, very dated yet some pretty sexy outfits, especially those of our main character portrayed by Marki Bey and yes, Richard Lawson as Detective Valentine has one very impressive afro. Bey as Sugar does an excellent job of portraying a hard-as-nails woman hell-bent, possibly literally, on getting her revenge. During the film, you don’t really question her single-mindedness, however it’s only as I write this review that I wonder ‘wow, she really didn’t grieve her lost husband much, did she?’ Of course, she doesn’t really have to. With a 91-minute runtime, we have a film that hits the sweet spot for both horror and blaxploitation films: it does what it says on the tin and it doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Now, while Bey is our main character and believable in her role, ultimately, for me anyway, this really is Don Pedro Colley’s show, playing the supernatural Baron Samedi. Colley’s over the top performance in other circumstances would be viewed as campy, but there’s this mix of comedy and sheer menace that he conveys that ends up forming more of the core of this film than anything Bey does or says. I’m not going to say that this is where the tradition of the comedic one-liner after a kill started, but it is a damn fine early example if it isn’t the progenitor. I mean, come on, ahead of one kill he offers one of the Mafia goons a drink…his specialty…a zombie! (Confidentially, my favorite cocktail.) I swear, every scene Colley’s in, even if he doesn’t do anything but laugh maniacally, there was always a smile on my face.

Alright, let’s talk zombies…because we have something very interesting here. The thing that makes these undead different from at least every zombie I’ve ever seen is the fact that these have metallic eyes. The first thing that sprung to my mind was that I wondered if Don Coscarelli is a fan of this movie…because damned if those eyes don’t give off some Phantasm vibes. At times, this also makes said zombies look like the aliens in John Carpenter’s They Live. How this effect was accomplished is the kind of ingenuity that we should be seeing in low-budget films today but just…don’t. They cut ping pong balls in half and coated them in silver paint, then glued them over the zombie performers’ eyes. No doubt a miserable experience for them, but you cannot argue the effect as these zombies come off as some of the creepiest I’ve seen committed to film. Speaking of influencing future films, I can’t help but wonder if Tom Savini was influenced by what we see here in his makeup choices for Dawn of the Dead. The zombie makeup here doesn’t come off quite as blue as Savini’s does…instead actually being a little more successful at portraying the lividity present in dead flesh. And I gotta admit, I liked the aesthetic of having cobwebs on the zombies.

One flaw to the film that we have to talk about is Detective Valentine. Now, none of this is Richard Lawson’s fault at all. He does the best with what he’s handed, but what we have here is one very reactionary cop that’s also trying to get into Sugar’s pants. Granted, it’s clearly conveyed that the two had a thing in the past, but dammit man, her deceased hubby is barely cold and you’re trying to jump them bones already? I get she’s not all weepy or grieving or anything but dude, like, give her a couple of weeks, huh? At least let her finish her revenge plot! And that’s just it, Valentine is on his way to figuring it all out…only to get sidelined in both the lamest yet completely relevant to this film way. I won’t outright say it, but come on, it’s a movie with voodoo…figure it out.

This ends up leading us to the other flaw, the movie just…stops. I mean, again, all the bad guys are dead, so why linger, right? But the rapid dismissal of Valentine and the lack of any repercussions for Sugar (like a Samedi double-cross or some such “price of dark magics” sort of thing) and the final moments of the film almost wrapping up like an old episode of SuperFriends where everyone just stands around laughing…well, none of it feels right. It’s like we needed a little more wind down. Now, don’t get me wrong, some movies can totally pull off a sharp ending like this, but so far the only times I’ve seen that be successful are Shaw Brothers films.

Like I said in the span of this review, ultimately what we get here is right on the movie poster: One bad mutha using the undead and the dark forces of voodoo to go after the mob. Mission accomplished. It’s no frills and doesn’t overstay its welcome, at the same time giving us not only a unique blend of both styles of zombies but also such an unforgettable way of representing them visually. Sure, the kills aren’t too original, but they maintain the theme well and pulled off with good practical effects. And goddamn…Samedi is amazing every time he’s onscreen. Sugar Hill is a great time and easily wins our Happy Cat rating.