Darktown Strutters

Syreena (Trina Parks), one of a quartet of singing, dancing, motortrike-riding black women in outrageous costumes, is searching for her mother, Cinderella (Frances Nealy). Also missing are numerous prominent black leaders. In between making fools of the racist police, making fools of motorcycle-riding Ku Klux Klansmen in full costume, and making fools of the girls' dopey boyfriends, Syreena discovers that her mother ran an abortion clinic before she disappeared. Following leads to a home for runaways, Syreena is captured by the KKK and brought to the mansion of Commander Cross (Norman Bartold), magnate of the Sky Hog barbecued-ribs empire. Dressed in pink tights, a hooded white cape and pig ears, the Colonel Sanders-lookalike has the missing people locked in his dungeon, where he is cloning the black leaders and impregnating runaways with their seed. With a machine named Annie he intends to accelerate the clones' growth and replace the leaders with their lookalikes, who will support his political will. Cinderella had discovered his plot and founded her abortion clinic to undermine it.

Syreena escapes and is chased by the KKK; after eluding them she rounds up all her friends and returns to the mansion, where they engage a small army of men dressed identically to Cross. With chains, bombs, and pancakes, Syreena and her crew fight their way to Annie, as the machine ejects not a black leader, but a full-size replica of Cross, dressed in diapers.

The movie is one-third over before it occurs to anyone that they might want to include a plot. Prior to that, it consists of disconnected scenes of Syreena and her gang engaging the clownish police (including Officer Tubbins, continually getting stuck in doorways) in ineptly acted, shot, and edited pie-fights and sped-up chases. Ostensibly a no-budget blaxploitation version of HEAD (1968), HELP (1965), or HELLZAPOPPIN' (1941)--with conscious allusions to TV's "Laugh-In" and "Batman"-- the "story" unfolds as a haphazard collection of tenuously related comedy skits and songs. Unfortunately the humor is limp and the Stax soundtrack just plain lousy. There's a silent, Harpo-like character named V.D. (Dewayne Jesse), a drug dealer with a ice-cream wagon called the "pot-sicle," and a motorcycle daredevil called Awful Knawful. "Junior said his first half-word today," offers one of the entertainers at the full-fledged minstrel show in the Cross mansion museum of black stereotypes. "His first half-word?" "Yeah: mother."

Trina Parks enjoyed her 15 minutes of fame as half the memorable female martial arts team of Bambi and Thumper that roughed up Sean Connery's James Bond in DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER (1971). DARKTOWN STRUTTERS makes its own vaguely feminist statement by depicting all white males as racist and stupid, all black males as sexist and stupid, and the proto-disco diva heroines--in their spangles, sequins, and Flash Gordon headgear--as simply stupid. Virtually unrecognizable as one of the buffoonish cops is Roger Corman favorite Dick Miller, while several of the other actors (Roger E. Mosley, Christopher Joy, Sam Laws) previously appeared in HIT MAN (1972), written and directed by George Armitage. Armitage had worked in television before joining American International Pictures and scripting the episodic post-apocalypse musical oddity GAS-S-S-S-S! (1970), the penultimate film directed by Corman and one of his few to lose money. When Corman angrily split with AIP (in part over their handling of GAS-S-S-S-S!) to found New World studios, Armitage followed, writing, directing, and acting in a selection of exploitation pictures. He retired from films after penning DARKTOWN STRUTTERS, but in 1990 reappeared with MIAMI BLUES, and subsequently directed GROSSE POINTE BLANK (1997).

The extremely prolific William Witney began directing in the 1930s, cranking out serials featuring the Lone Ranger, Zorro, Dick Tracy, Fu Manchu, and others before switching to features, most of them Westerns. In the mid-1950s he switched again to contemporary crime, and then juvenile delinquency, his 1958 output consisting of YOUNG AND WILD, JUVENILE JUNGLE, THE COOL AND THE CRAZY, and THE BONNIE PARKER STORY (the latter two for AIP). He slowed down in the 1960s and made a number of films produced by Roger Corman's brother Gene. Someone must have figured that Witney's experience with Roy Rogers musical westerns and THE GIRLS ON THE BEACH (1965) with the Beach Boys and Lesley Gore qualified him to direct the "Singin'... Dancin'... Struttin'" (the ad forgot "Stinkin'") spoof DARKTOWN STRUTTERS. It would be Witney's last film. (Violence, sexual situations, substance abuse, profanity.) leave a comment