“Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” tells the story of a black man whose rage against corrupt white authorities eventually reaches a boiling point, leaving two racist cops dead and him on the run to the Mexican border.
The virtually plotless, avant-garde romp through 1970s Southern California is often cited as the inspiration for “blaxploitation” movies like “Superfly,” “Shaft” and “Cleopatra Jones.”
The story, if you could call it that, follows the title character, a stoic, sexually charged badass, as he eludes authorities. After discovering his sexual prowess at the age of just 13, Sweetback becomes a renowned sexual performer. At one point, he finds himself asked to turn a militant over to two crooked cops. Rather than betray his friend, Sweetback kills the cops and hits the road (in a series of psychedelic montage sequences reminiscent of a less-polished “Taxi Driver”).
He survives on his wits (and on live lizard!).
Like Sweetback, the film succeeded, despite the deck being stack against it. Van Peebles struggled to fund the project, and then was only able to premiere the movie in two theaters — one in Atlanta, the other in Detroit.
After the film resonated with the black community in those cities, it exploded.
Van Peebles noted in a recent interview that perhaps the most significant aspect of the cult classic was that the hero actually lives to fight another day.
“It was inconceivable that a heroic black character would live,” Van Peebles said. “There was a humongous change after that.”
