Black Caesar

After breaking into crime in his youth as an errand-boy for white criminals (and having his leg broken by a corrupt, racist cop who thinks he's been shortchanged), shoeshine boy Tommy Gibbs (Fred Williamson) grows up with aspirations to be a gangster. Carrying out a sample hit for the mob, he wheedles his way into the organization, protecting himself by stealing a set of ledgers with the names of all the crooked politicians on the payroll, including the cop who crippled him as a kid, John McKinney (Art Lund), now a powerful official.

While murdering his way to the top professionally, Gibbs sees his personal life crumble. Estranged from his father (Julius Harris), he alienates his mother (Minnie Gentry) and his girlfriend Helen (Gloria Hendry) with his life of crime, eventually attempting to mollify Helen by bankrolling her attempt to become a popular singer in California. But while away, Helen falls for Gibbs's childhood friend Joe (Philip Roye), an honest and educated man who disdains Gibbs for his criminal lifestyle.

Roughed up and kicked out by Gibbs, Helen and Joe get married and try to quietly raise their two kids. Unfortunately, McKinney shows up and threatens their children, forcing Helen to go back to Gibbs, reconcile for one night, and make a wax impression of the key to his safe deposit box. Once the ledgers are in McKinney's hands, Gibbs is shot, but survives. Joe is killed while coming to help him, and Gibbs finds himself confronted by McKinney. The two scuffle, McKinney is killed, and Gibbs stumbles back to his childhood home, only to be mugged and murdered by a gang of street toughs.

Larry Cohen had written extensively for television throughout the 1960s and penned several movies towards decade's end before making his directorial debut with BONE (1972). AIP producer Sam Arkoff, impressed by Cohen's handling of that film's single black actor (Yaphet Kotto), asked if Cohen had any ideas to cash in on the currently booming blaxploitation trend. Coincidentally, Cohen had an outline for a story in the mold of the Warner Bros. gangster classics of the 1930s--commissioned, Cohen has said, for Sammy Davis Jr., but never paid for. The script was intended not as a then-typical black-man-beats-whitey's-system parable, but the tale of a morally bankrupt individual who buys into the existing white power structure and fights his way to the top (even as his personal relationships are a shambles), only to come crashing down again. And the film works on that level, with Gibbs portrayed as a thoroughly dislikable and manipulative character, a ruthless and dangerous but ultimately lonely man--but it also plays to the grindhouse blaxploitation audience as well, with its climactic moment consisting of Gibbs being forced at gunpoint to shine the shoes of the racist cop who's been tormenting him since childhood. Gibbs turns the tables by bashing McKinney with his shoeshine box, painting him in blackface with shoepolish and forcing the man to sing "Mammy" before being killed.

Cohen has since stated that the entire film was built around that scene. Yet his script, as usual, is laced with witty and quirky moments, details, subplots, and set pieces. Gibbs introduces himself to the mob boss by dropping the severed ear of a hit victim in the boss's pasta. He hands his lawyer an exorbitant check, buying the man's apartment and everything in it, including the clothing and the maid. He tosses furs one by one off the balcony, then offers the apartment to the maid--his mother, it turns out. She however wants nothing more than to remain a maid, and Gibbs winds up living alone in the white man's apartment, among the white man's things. Paralleling the rise-and-fall structure and the turnabout beatings that bookend the film (cop beats Gibbs/Gibbs beats cop), Helen is initially introduced as a decoy (singing the song "Big Daddy," coauthored by coproducer--and Cohen's wife--Janelle Cohen) while Gibbs sneaks up to kill the original owners of the ledgers. She then reappears to help steal the books back from him, proving herself no more honorable or trustworthy than he is, her betrayal leading to the deaths of Gibbs and her husband. There are no heroes, just different degrees of criminal complicity.

According to Fred Williamson, the film was shot in about 10 days. It's a bit choppy and rough around the edges, with poor voice-overs (often not even sounding like the actors) attempting to cover continuity mismatches and missing transition shots. When Gibbs is shot on the crowded streets of midtown, then chased by an assassin (played by associate producer James Dixon), Williamson is frequently filmed from a distance, stumbling through crowds that clearly had no idea they were in a movie. It doesn't look glossy, but definitely adds a certain gritty ambiance to the film. As does the James Brown soundtrack, excellent if a little heavy-handed (Gibbs's mother's funeral song: "Mama's Dead"; opening and closing theme: "Down and Out in New York City"; played as Gibbs stumbles wounded to his childhood digs: "I Wanna Go Home").

Cohen has stated that when BLACK CAESAR became an instant hit, he personally went around to theaters and trimmed off the last few moments of the film, so Gibbs doesn't die. All currently available video version however show him killed. Yet, he's no worse for wear in the sequel, HELL UP IN HARLEM (1973), which picks up moments before BLACK CAESAR leaves off. (Graphic violence, sexual situations, nudity, extreme profanity.) leave a comment