Friday, August 05, 2005

Cleopatra Jones

In the event that you haven't noticed or read this blog before, I am definitely on a "Soul Sister" jag this summer. After seeing Jackie Brown, which put me on a Pam Grier kick, I then re-watched Foxy Brown and checked out Women in Cages for the first time. They were both a lot of fun, and when I was browsing at Mondo the other evening, I came across another classic from the era, Cleopatra Jones, which I felt would further my education.

This movie was released by Warner Brothers in 1973 and definitely has a bigger budget than those early Pam Grier vehicles. You know it right off the bat from the credits (Shelley Winters as "Mommy") and the fancier special effects (air fighter bombing a poppy field) and Cleopatra's furry cape (courtesy of Italian superstar designer of the 70s, Giorgio di Sant'Angelo).

Cleo (as everyone calls her for short) is a special agent for the U.S. Government, and her latest triumph (destroying those poppies in Turkey, which would have been worth $30 million in heroin) pisses Mommy (who owned the poppies) off to no end. So Mommy keeps sending goons to try and shut down the community rehab center and do Cleo in, but of course they fail because Cleo is, well, Cleo. (It doesn't hurt that the goons are all pretty bumbling to boot.)

The movie features an excellent star turn from the Amazonian (6'2") former model Dobson. It's a shame that her film appearances have been so few and far between. (I also recommend her as the Duchess in Chained Heat, an excellent women-in-prison movie with Linda Blair and Sybil Danning. ) Her Cleo is a skilled markswoman, expert in kung fu, and wears a headscarf with real flair. She also has a witty, smiling, almost flirty way of telling the baddies that she's going to kill them, is hip to jive lingo with her friends ("Right on!") but uses very precise syntax and diction when dealing with the establishment types or the villains.

Shelley Winters is at her scenery-chewing finest (yes, finest! you don't hire her when you want "understated") as the diabolical, butch lesbian crime boss. Yes, it's the 70's so she's an EVIL lesbian. But you can forgive her because she's such a fun caricature to watch. She wears a series of technicolor wigs that correspond with her series of beautiful ladies-in-waiting, and in the first scene puts her gnarled and dirty foot up on her desk for a footrub from a gorgeous blonde. That's realism, folks. They could have made her foot all pretty and pedicured. Or at least clean. But no, we get a dirty, stinky, corn-ridden foot that's been cramped up in a black clodhopper all day. (Ok, so in this patently unreal film, why did we need that again?)

Also enjoyable is the presence of the blaxploitation-ubiquitous Antonio Fargas--Shaft, Car Wash, and Foxy Brown (as Pam Grier's drug-dealing brother)--as Mommy's underling-turned-nemesis Doodlebug. His huge crooked smirk livens up any movie.

I can't finish without mentioning the excellent car chase sequence that features two of Mommy's thugs racing after Cleo's custom Corvette (the driver's side roof raises up on a hydraulic automatically when her door opens so as not to crush her hair) in the cement-enclosed LA River Basin, which was made even more famous in the chicken scene in Grease a few years later. The goons don't stand a chance against Cleo's Vette as they get blasted with water and end up crashing into a bunch of portapotties (eww.)

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Drinks: Cleo doesn't drink much, if at all, in the movie, but I'd go with something tall, cool, and elegant--how about a mint julep or a Pimms cup?