Blaxploitation Education: Cleopatra Jones

Pam Grier wasn't the only badass Blaxploitation heroine.

Cleopatra Jones
Written by Max Julien and Sheldon Keller
Directed by Jack Starrett
1972

Some Blaxploitation movies featured gritty realism, focusing on the street-level concerns of the Black community. Others took the form of fairly standard Hollywood action movies, although they usually at least acknowledged the racism that Black people face and other issues that affected them, such as the devastation that drugs were wreaking across urban areas in the 1970s. Cleopatra Jones falls into the latter camp, making for a pretty fun experience that’s ultimately incredibly lightweight, with only a few nods at social commentary and a notable lack of stakes even with a plot that involves the takedown of a drug kingpin.

However, the plot itself is one of the less notable things about this movie. It’s an attempt to anoint a new action star, a hero who could stand alongside the likes of Jim Brown and Richard Roundtree. The title character is played by Tamara Dobson, who seemed to be poised for fame but apparently didn’t make much of a splash outside of this movie and its sequel. She’s perfectly fine here as a tough government agent who can handle everything from shootouts and car chases to martial arts, although her character is pretty one-note. She’s cocky and confident, in control of every situation and always displaying a bright smile as she takes down any bad guys who attempt to cross her. But there’s no depth to her character and little in the way of vulnerability; with no real challenges, she just strides through the movie overcoming every obstacle put in her way, barely even breaking a sweat. Which, again, is fine, and not that different from, for example, Jim Brown’s character in Slaughter (which was also directed by Jack Starrett). So yes, women can also play that type of unflappable action hero, but the movies that they feature in are going to be less memorable than the ones that have real drama and touch on actual issues.

The story here sees Cleopatra Jones acting as a government agent of some sort. In the opening scene, she arrives in Turkey in a helicopter to oversee the firebombing of a poppy field by the local military, cutting off the supply of heroin to dealers in the United States. Why she had to be there to do this is unclear, but her role in the operation is enough to get her on the bad side of a Los Angeles drug kingpin, who swears vengeance and decides to hit her where it hurts.

Said kingpin is known as Mommy, and she’s played by Oscar winner Shelley Winters (The Night of the Hunter, The Diary of Anne Frank, Lolita, The Poseidon Adventure, etc.) in an incredibly over-the-top performance that lets you know what kind of movie you’re watching as soon as she comes on screen. She spends most of her screentime screaming at or hitting her various henchmen, calling Cleopatra a bitch (and at least one racial slur), and stomping around chewing scenery. She’s pretty hilarious, but all of her scenes are so comical that it’s nearly impossible to take any threats she presents seriously.

Mommy decides to get revenge on Cleopatra by attacking something she cares about: a charity known as B&S House, which is sort of a community center that’s leading the fight against drugs and providing treatment for addicts. It’s run by Cleopatra’s boyfriend Reuben (Bernie Casey, from Hit Man, Black Gunn, and other Blaxploitation movies), and it seems to be an upstanding and positive force in the community, but all it takes is a call to the cops to spark a destructive raid that threatens its operations. This is just about the only bit of social commentary in the movie, with the police smashing down the door of the building and starting to tear everything up as they search for drugs, while also roughing up the occupants and almost executing a guy for resisting. It’s an all-too-familiar scene for anyone who has some knowledge of how the police treat Black people.

However, that’s about the extent of this movie’s attempt to look at the real-world concerns of the Black community. This outrage compels Cleopatra to return to town, and the rest of the plot involves her fending off attacks from Mommy’s minions and eventually tracking her down for a climactic showdown. There’s no attempt to look at the unjust treatment of Black people by law enforcement, and due to her status as a government agent and her connections with a non-racist police captain (Dan Frazer), she doesn’t encounter any obstacles in her quest, and she’s mostly free to engage in various bits of action with the bad guys who regularly attack her.

These attacks start as soon as she gets into town, with some of Mommy’s thugs attempting to ambush her at the airport. They try to stake out the terminal and get the drop on her, but she turns the tables by coming through the baggage claim, beating them up, and managing to grab a gun and shoot one of them. When the cops show up and try to apprehend her, she simply pulls out her government ID, flashes it at them with a smile, and walks away. Other action scenes include an attempt to shoot her after she meets up with Reuben, but she reveals that she has a secret panel in her Corvette that contains a bunch of weapons, and she grabs an Uzi and blows the guys away. Later, there’s a pretty enjoyable car chase through the L.A. river, but as usual, Cleopatra manages to evade her pursuers without allowing them to even get off a shot at her (in a nice detail, she keeps running her car through the water, splashing the car behind her and preventing one of the thugs from being able to lean out the window and fire his machine gun).

In addition to the frequent action, there’s plenty of wacky character work from a variety of supporting characters. A subplot involves a turf war between Mommy and one of her drug dealers, a guy named Doodlebug. With a name like that, you know he’s going to be played by Antonio “Huggy Bear” Fargas (Across 110th Street), who turns in a pretty hilarious performance as a flamboyant criminal who gets too big for his britches. Esther Rolle (from Don’t Play Us Cheap and the TV show Good Times) appears in one scene as an informant who compliments Cleopatra’s style and also offers the services of her sons, two karate experts who can help out with crimefighting when they’re not arguing with each other. The supporting cast makes everything pretty lively, and they’re all having fun delivering lines from a screenplay that was co-written by Max Julien, star of The Mack.

Really, the whole movie is put together pretty well, from the action and the performances to the funky score by J.J. Johnson and the catchy theme song sung by Joe Simon. The costume department also gives Dobson a series of stylish outfits, and while some of the fur-lined capes and coats are a bit much, most of what she wears are great examples of 1970s style. The movie looks good, and it’s very enjoyable from beginning to end, but it’s so feather-light that it just didn’t make much of an impact. It seems like it’s mostly been forgotten outside of a title that can be referenced whenever somebody wants to give a character a name that sounds like it would come from a Blaxploitation movie. There’s a reason some movies stand the test of time and some are mere footnotes, and after seeing this one, it’s not hard to understand why it’s one of the latter.

Blaxploitation Education index:

UpTight
Cotton Comes to Harlem
Watermelon Man
The Big Doll House
Shaft
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song
Super Fly
Buck and the Preacher
Blacula
Cool Breeze
Melinda
Slaughter
Hammer
Trouble Man
Hit Man
Black Gunn
Bone
Top of the Heap
Across 110th Street
The Legend of N***** Charley
Don’t Play Us Cheap
Shaft’s Big Score!
Non-Blaxploitation: Sounder and Lady Sings the Blues
Trick Baby
The Harder They Come
Black Mama, White Mama
Black Caesar
The Mack
Book of Numbers
Charley One-Eye
Ganja & Hess
Savage!
Coffy
Shaft in Africa
Super Fly T.N.T.
Scream Blacula Scream