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Customer Reviews of Black Mama, White Mama

The Big Influence In Life
It's hard to describe the impact this movie has had on my life. I've been considered a bit of a flossing prodigy and I've had a hard time living up to such expectations. This movie, though, set me straight.

What you're going to get from Black Mama, White Mama is a straightforward statement on race relations in the United States. We have two women in America. Both have children. One is black and one is white. It's about the struggles that each have as powerful women in a male dominated society. What it's like to be a strong black woman. And what it's like to be a strong white woman... in a society where you're automatically labeled a B*tch when you tell others what to do and why you don't like them much... it's called being straightforward.

Anyway. Black History Month shouldn't just be about MLK, Jr. Or Malcolm X. It should be about powerful movies like this one, that make a strong statement about race relations between women in America that have children and have to get up everyday and get out of bed and use the bathroom and drink O.J. from the carton.

Enjoyable Ride With Cool Girls Under the Hot Sun
Though an entry of 'Soul Cinema Collection,' "Black Mama, White Mama" does not belong to so-called blaxploitation films. "BMWM"'s idea clearly comes from "The Defiant Ones" and here we see an incongruous pair chained to each other, on the run from the prison for women.

Women's prison? Yes, as avid movie fans know, we have a minor genre dealing with women's prison. Its formula has been the same: cruel wardens, violence among the prisoners, the rigid rules that donimates them, etc., and before the hit of "Coffy," Pam Grier had to serve about two years in this genre. By the time of 1970s the genre has become famous (or notorious) for its violence and nudity, and both stars here also are thrown into women's prison on an unnamed island just after the opening credit. So you know what you see in the next shower room scene.

Thankfully, the prison sequences are not long, and Pam & Margaret soon manage to escape, chained together by the hand, and run and run and ... well, the rest is, as you expect, lots of set-pieces: shootings between guards, gang, and revolutionary guerrillas (!) They are mildly entertaining, especially when Pam is on the screen, but as a whole too familiar to get excited. Still, several scenes are momorable: both stars disguised as nuns, and a very unique way of giving a false scent to a chasing dog by giving a pooch Margaret's underwear. And check out their clothes, especially Pam's (red one); they always look too clean for runaway prisoners!

"Black Mama, White Mama" is worth a look for Pam Grier fans because it seems a miracle now that she survived those Grade-B films to finally be praised by her portraying Jackie Brown with her dynamite performance 24 years later. Another interesting thing about "BMWM" is that the story is co-wriiten by Jonathan Demme, who one year before "BMWH" produced and also co-wrote the same kind of film "The Hot Box," which incidentally features Margaret Markov. (For the record, in another film "Arena" Pam and Margaret both appear.) Demme himself is to direct another women-in-prison movie called "The Caged Heat," his first feature film, in 1974. A long way to "The Silence of the Lambs," isn't it?