Black Mama, White Mama (1973)

People are voting emotionally.

Don't listen to the negative reviews

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Exploitation gem with one of the all-time classic titles. Ebony & ivory beauties Pam Grier and Margaret Markov play two convicts at a prison work camp in the Philippines. The two don't get along very well but wind up chained together. As they are being transported to another prison, rebel friends of Markov try to rescue her. When the army shows up, Grier & Markov go all Poitier & Curtis and take it on the run still chained together.Grier is great and Markov is fine. Sid Haig also hams it up, which is fun to watch.. Blonde Lynn Borden steals the show as a prison matron who is into chicks and pervs on them showering through a peephole. I've seen quite a few women-in-prison movies and this character is a constant in almost all of them but usually they are played by women who are more "butch" than the sexy Ms. Borden. Pretty Laurie Burton plays the somewhat nicer matron who is lovers with Borden but doesn't approve of her "side action." Too bad these two aren't in the whole movie. I'd probably rate it higher just for them.The first half-hour is pretty much what you expect from a women-in-prison flick. There's nice eye candy with many lovely ladies showing what they've got. None lovelier than the foxy Pam, of course. There's a shower scene, cat fights, teases of lesbianism, and sadism. But most of the movie is the two women on the run, not in the prison. Which is a shame as the movie isn't quite as much fun after the escape. Still worth seeing for fans of '70s exploitation flicks or just fans of sexy Pam Grier.

From story authors Jonathan Demme & Joe Viola, screenwriter H.R. Christian, and the prolific Eddie Romero, comes this diverting Filipino chase movie that puts an exploitative spin on the premise of "The Defiant Ones".It starts out as your average women in prison flick, with blonde revolutionary Karen Brent (Margaret Markov) and black prostitute Lee Daniels (Pam Grier) meeting. While escorted away from the prison, they are shackled together. They soon make their break for freedom, often arguing over methodology and directions but coming to rely on each other and even care for each other.Director Romero makes this a pretty lively affair, and it's worth noting that things take on a rather tongue in cheek tone at times. The ample humour helps to make this quite easy to watch, with Pams' frequent co-star Sid Haig given a meaty role which he plays with relish: a flamboyant, horny, loud talking dude in a cowboy costume. Romeros' pacing is effective, and the action scenes are fairly intense; there are some brief bursts of bloody violence. The location shooting is excellent, and the supporting cast features some familiar faces from Filipino exploitation cinema: Eddie Garcia, Alfonso Carvajal, Bruno Punzalan, and the always welcome Vic Diaz, who's a hoot as an oily crime lord. Sexy Lynn Borden has the role of a lustful prison guard. Stars Markov and Grier look fantastic and get some great chemistry going.The true highlight of the movie definitely has to be the sequence where Markov and Grier masquerade as nuns; it provides the biggest laughs. But it must be said that Romero knows how to get down to business, delivering delectable nudity in the obligatory shower scene that occurs no more than four minutes into the movie.All in all, this is solid entertainment that should please fans of the A.I.P. drive-in flicks of the 1970s.Seven out of 10.

Black Mama, White Mama (1973) ** (out of 4)Silly if mildly entertaining rip-off of THE DEFIANT ONES only with females. Pam Grier plays the black girl and Margaret Markov is the white one, they hate each other but must come together to escape prison and eventually go on the run trying to do get done what they need to live peaceful. This film was shot in the Philippines by a director known for creating some low-budget horror films including MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND and BRIDES OF BLOOD. He brings a nice atmosphere to the film as he obviously knows the land very well and the Philippine settings really add a lot to the movie. With that said, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed that they didn't achieve a tad bit more considering some the camp talent they had involved here. For starters, both Grier and Markov fit into their roles very nicely. Both look extremely sexy and they work well off of one another even if neither one gives what one would call a good performance. We also have Sid Haig playing a bounty hunter and he adds some additional entertaining especially in one scene where he goes up to a father and takes his two daughters into a bedroom. The film has been labeled as a blaxploiation pic but that's really not true as Grier is the only black member in the entire cast. The racial elements from the original film have pretty much been taken out and the main reason the two hate one another is that Markov was willing to sleep with a female guard to get off work detail! Future Oscar-winner Jonathan Demme was credited with co-writing the story that the screenplay was based on and one would have thought a little more imagination would have gone into everything. We get a few nods to the original film and one to COOL HAND Luke but the screenplay and story really don't add anything fresh or original. The movie does feature non-stop nudity and we get the shower scene with all the female prisoners. I think the film would have done a lot better had it gone for more instead of trying to simply tell a bad story. The nudity is fine, the cast is fun but in the end there's just not enough here to make this a complete entertainment. It was a nice touch having Grier in white panties and Markov in white.

The title pretty much lets you know what you're getting. It's a grade-C howler but not as blatantly funny as I was hoping. Directed by exploitation film specialist Eddie Romero from a story that originally came from Jonathan Demme (long before directing "Silence of the Lambs" and "Philadelphia"), this low-budget 1972 action movie was obviously filmed in the Philippines but set in some anonymous third world country. Playing hooker and small-time drug dealer Lee Daniels, blaxploitation superstar Pam Grier plays the first half of the title role, while long-forgotten Margaret Markov is the other half, Karen Brent, an unlikely Patty Hearst-like political revolutionary looking to partner with her comrades to overthrow the oppressive local government. Naturally antagonistic toward each other, they are in a women's prison camp where they wear inexplicably bright yellow mini-skirts as uniforms. Run by a closeted warden and lecherous matron, the prison is just an excuse for a lengthy shower scene and some half-hearted cat-fighting as Lee and Karen are pitted against each other. Of course, they escape but shackled together a la "The Defiant Ones" and continue the cat-fighting until they attack a couple of nuns to steal their habits.Meanwhile, various groups of unsavory men are in pursuit - the loutish drug lord looking for Lee who stole $40K from him, the rather passive revolutionaries looking for Karen, and the incompetent police (who suffer the humiliation of exposing their privates to the drug lord). Needless to say, everything eventually comes to a head but not before gratuitous nudity by a number of Filipino women, a dog wears Karen's panties and some of the worst of 1970's men's fashion (one beer-bellied revolutionary wears a leather halter top with a straight face). There is a rather sad ending, but what's truly sad is how much of the potential black comedy is missed entirely in this hilariously preposterous exercise. Sadly, Grier is disappointing in this outing because her character is not allowed much to do beyond dealing with all the "jive", while Markov is an Amazonian blonde whom I am convinced is trying desperately to be credible. Since no one displays any talent for acting, the rest of the cast is not worth noting, except balding, bug-eyed Sid Haig, who uses his standard psycho persona as the drug lord. The 2003 DVD contains only the original trailer as an extra.