Black Shampoo (1976)

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Blaxploitation is a seriously underrated genre. Bottom line, it you enjoy blaxploitation you'll love 'Black Shampoo' he's one bad mother... shut your mouth.Actually the hero Mr. Jonathan isn't a vigilante. He's just the only straight hair stylist at a salon catering to desperate white housewives. Inevitably Mr. Jonathan ends up giving his clients more than just shampoo, that is if their daughters don't get to him first.Mr. Jonathan gets into a tussle with a give turkey heroine smugger whom wants Mr. Jonathan's love interest back as his black sex slave. When Mr. Jonathan tries to defend her, their salon is vandalized by thugs.The whole thing ends in a bloody showdown involving chainsaws, axes, and pool sticks. Surprisingly violent.So the plot's light but 'Black Shampoo' delivers on the classic blaxploitation is promises.The recent film 'Black Dynamite' failed as a parody of blaxploitation because it failed to realized that blaxploitation is funny enough on its own.

John Daniels, fresh his triumphant portrayal of a smooth mack daddy pimp in the immortal "The Candy Tangerine Man," does his charmless macho black stud muffin on wheels shtick once again as Mr. Jonathan, a tough, irresistible, and extremely promiscuous hairdresser who happily does the deed with his lovely, wealthy, and predominantly white distaff customers. Mr. Jonathan's carefree hedonistic Los Angeles existence gets disrupted when a bunch of pernicious Italian gangsters led by despicable greaseball Joe Ortiz trash his Sunset Strip beauty salon and try to steal his foxy main squeeze Tanya Boyd away from him. Not one to idly tolerate being pushed around, Mr. Jonathan breaks out a handy chainsaw to kick some major syndicate butt! Cheesy, low-rent, and fabulously addle-pated, this honey rates highly as one delectably dopey blaxploitation combination of dippy soap opera and sleazy revenge action: Greydon Clark's unskillful direction manages to be quite savory in a schlocky stupid sort of way, there's plenty of torrid quasi-pornographic sex scenes and mouth-watering full-frontal female nudity (Mrs. Boyd in particular looks blazing hot in her birthday suit), the priceless godawful dialogue will leave you in stitches ("So, Mr. Jonathan, is it true that you are the best in the West?"), the other two male beauty salon employees are hysterically offensive and politically incorrect limp-wristed gay stereotypes (one of these homosexuals winds up having a hot curling iron crammed right where the sun doesn't shine!), the cinematography by Dean Cundey and Michael J. Mileham alternates between the slick and the shoddy with heart-warming frequency, Gerald Lee's get-down funky-grinding score sounds like it belongs in a raunchy 70's X-rated flick, and the climactic outburst of last reel action delivers oodles of bloody excessive violence. Overall, this riotously rancid chunk of prime 70's drive-in junk offers enough seamy thrills to appease even the most jaded "I've seen it all" aficionado of vintage Graze Z exploitation fare.

Right before director Greydon Clark did "Satan's Cheerleaders", he made this 1976 violent blaxploitation cheese ball about a salon owner/gigolo, Mr. Johnathan (John Daniels, who looks like a smaller, african american Lou Ferrigno) getting revenge on the white mobsters who kidnap his secretary/girlfriend, beat up his gay hairdressers and trash his salon. This has plenty of cheezy acting, especially from the stereotypical gay hairdressers. The film is definitely not boring, except for some romantic 70s montages in the middle. There's plenty of sex, nudity, and violence resulting in a conclusion that involves chainsaw mutilations and a pool cue impaling! It shouldn't dramatically disappoint fans of the genre, but don't expect laughs like the Dolemite films. After you see it once, you probably won't come back to it. Its good for a cheap rental on bad 70s night. Black Shampoo goes mostly for a serious tone, although it has problems staying there. How serious can you take an angry hairdresser?

one of the better low budget blaxploitation films of the 70s. Great bits as the hero comes home to his beauty parlor to find it ransacked and his gay hairdressers kidnapped! He gets vengeance a la chainsaw.