Cult Clash: Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971)

by Pete Roberts

"You bled my Momma. You bled my Poppa. But you won't bleed me."

Sweet Sweetback might be what you'd get if Fellini had made a Blaxploitation film. By mixing psychedelic visual imagery and a pulsing soul and funk score, Melvin Van Peebles gives us an exciting, raw cinematic experience from the mind of a black man. This isn't white washed for your viewing pleasure. The film begins with a young Sweetback (Mario Van Peebles) "losing his cherry" to a prostitute. Now that's an opening!

Sweetback (Melvin Van Peebles) is a hustler and sex performance artist who gets picked up by the cops one night after his nightly sex show. The cops pick up another man as well, and they cuff he and Sweetback together, bring them to a secluded area to beat them. Sweetback watches as the cops beat the other man, but finally he snaps and repeatedly hits the cops with his handcuff chain over and over. As he does this, we see the blood appear on the chain.

Sweetback's now on the run from the cops. Melvin Van Peebles directs the film so we not only get the story, but we get an artistic, often surreal glimpse into Sweetback's world. The way Van Peebles shot the film sort of reminded me a little of Easy Rider. Along the way we meet many of Sweetback's friends and aquaintances. In another great scene, Sweetback's friend gets grilled by the cops in a cruel fashion - they shoot their guns off next to his ears so he goes deaf. They scream: "Where's Sweetback?!" as they shoot, the screen changes color and we hear the whistle as if we're losing our hearing with him.

Sweetback seems to move through the film like a sort of soul brother Mercury. He isn't just a character in the film, he represents the struggles of black men anmd women throughout American history. He's every oppressed human being that's had to stand up for doing something they felt was right. The way Melvin Van Peebles mixes sex and violence, you can see that this is the truth and it's coming from the heart. Peebles isn't trying to be soft and nice, it's a projection about what really goes on in people's lives. Their religion, their relationships are all interrupted by constant paranoia.

Later in the film, Sweetback gets confronted by a few bikers and they make him decide on what he wants to do to get out of the situation. Sweetback thinks for a second and says "Fuckin". After all that's what he's best at. The next sequence is one of the most graphic sex scenes in the film as Sweetback and a white biker chick have sex in front of a crowd of bikers.

In the last scenes of the film, Sweetback is wounded from a bullet. He walks through the desert like a gunfighter in the Old West. He pisses on some sand and presses the wet sand on his wound. He also eats a lizard, which is pretty nasty to watch. He slowly recovers on his way to freedom. The end titles come up declaring that "Sweetback is coming back so WATCH OUT!"

Note: Look for an early cameo by John Amos, who later went on to star in the 1970s TV series "Good Times" and in several motion pictures including Lock Up and Die Hard 2.

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasss Song is an original and groundbreaking work of cinema. Melvin Van Peebles essentially made one of the first Black art films. Every film fan should get this and check it out.