My family and I started watching classic blaxploitation movies from the 1970’s on Turner Classic Movies several years ago. There is a sub-genre of these films that are horror films too. Blackula and Scream Blacula, Scream are probably the most famous of these films. One of the lesser known of these films is called Sugar Hill.
The main character in this film is Diana “Sugar” Hill whose boyfriend owns a popular nightclub with a voodoo theme. A white man kills her boyfriend when he won’t sell him the club. Sugar inherits the club but still won’t sell to the white man. Sugar calls on her grandmother to get in touch with voodoo powers to take revenge on the white man and all his pals that killed her boyfriend. She is introduced to voodoo priest Baron Samedi who helps extract revenge in a variety of ways.
There are several things that make this film fun. First, Baron Samedi is the same voodoo priest character that appears in the James Bond film Live and Let Die. It is played by Don Pedro Colley here instead of Geoffrey Holder but they look and sound very much alike. Sugar Hill’s grandmother Mama Maitresse is played by actress Zara Cully, best known as Grandma Jefferson on the television series The Jeffersons. We also enjoy referring to her character as Mama Mattress. Some of the fun from the film comes from the dialogue. Most memorable is Sugar calling one of her white victims “Honk”. I’m sure this was short for honky, but I don’t think it ever caught on in the 1970’s. Its also interesting to hear the racial slurs coming so casually from the racist white characters in the film.
The rest of the fun comes from the variety of ways that Sugar Hill’s victims are killed. One dies during a massage. Another is eaten by pigs. But the most interesting one is killed by a possessed chicken foot that hops on him. That’s it. The victim is scream in horror. It doesn’t appear that the chicken foot is scratching him. I think it’s more likely that he screams himself to death.
This is actually a really good film that I highly recommend.