2/10
Let The Revolution Pass You By
11 February 2009
Imagine an exploitive remake of The Defiant Ones with a black chick and a white chick attached to each other. Set the story on some Caribbean island where the drug dealers rule and the revolution has arrived. And have the black woman be from Huggy Bear's stable of ladies and the white woman be a watered down Patty Hearst and you've got Black Mama, White Mama.

In those waning days of the drive-in theater this item must have been a big old hit. All the hot buttons of the Seventies are pushed in this one. Even though they both fill out their clothes better and will get a few whistles from the males in the audience no one is ever going to mistake Pam Grier and Margaret Markov for Sidney Poitier and Tony Curtis. All right, Halle Berry and Jamie Lee Curtis.

Margaret and Pam are prisoners where the guards and the warden look lasciviously at the new fish arriving. Margaret is a rich girl from the state who took up 'the revolution', whilst Pam's your basic high priced call girl who's been servicing the local drug kingpin and grew tired of it and tried to leave the island.

Margaret's fellow revolutionaries ambush the bus transporting them from the women's prison to town, but they get lost in the escape. Both have their different agendas, but like Sid and Tony they can't quite agree on whose agenda comes first. Makes for some interesting times as the police, the drug dealers, and the revolutionaries are all looking for these two illfated chain buddies.

Just so you don't get any wrong ideas the head of the revolutionaries and Markov's kanoodling partner is named Ernesto played by Filipino actor Zaldy Zshornack. The whole mess was shot in the Phillipines who were getting their own film industry started.

Nice location photography in the Phillipines is all that Black Mama, White Mam has to recommend it. But if you're a fan of really bad black exploitation flicks, this is one for you.
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