gavin6942 When her boyfriend is brutally murdered, after refusing to be shaken down by the local gangsters running their protection racket, Sugar Hill (Marki Bey), decides to call upon the help of aged voodoo queen Mama Maitresse; Sugar entreats her to call upon Baron Zamedi, the Lord of the Dead, for help in gaining a gruesome revenge.Whether or not this is a blaxploitation horror film, I have no idea. There is definitely a theme of the black heroine (a poor man's Pam Grier) taking on white crooks. And the police detective has a pretty impressive fro going on. But the line between blaxploitation and a film that just happens to have black stars is a blurry one in the 1970s...What I do know is that this is a fun picture from Sam Arkoff and AIP. Not particularly scary and never taking itself too seriously, we get about half a dozen people attacked (one at a time) by a zombie horde. And these are real zombies -- the voodoo kind -- not those flesh-eating zombies that have taken over the horror world today.Not the best film, not the worst, but definitely one that probably gets overlooked too often and is worth a peek for those who are into the voodoo zombies and already saw the bigger name films like "White Zombie" or "Serpent and the Rainbow". I get the impression that this film was an influence on Adam Green's "Hatchet" series, though that may just be my imagination.Interestingly, despite being made after George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead", this film finds its roots more in the racially-inspired zombies of the 1940s and 1950s. Namely "King of the Zombies" (1941), "I Walked With a Zombie" (1943) and "Zombies of Mora Tau" (1957).

morrison-dylan-fan When I recently saw someone on the IMDb Horror Board writing about a fun 1970's Zombie film that they had recently gotten hold of ,which was a blend of horror,avenging Femme Fatale and Blaxploitation.I felt that this would be the perfect film to watch,for an introduction to the Blaxploitation genre,which I have heard about in interviews with such film makers as Quentin Tarantino over the years. The plot:Since she has started dating a successful night club owner named Langston,Diane "Sugar" Hill has been imagining that for the next few years she and Langston can live happily together,whilst continuing to build on the success of the night club.Due to the increasing popularity of the night club,some local gangsters start to get very interested in getting their hands on the club,in anyway possible.Due to not wanting the bad influence of the gangsters to enter the club,Langston tells them that the only way they will even get the slightest chance to get their hands on the club,would be over his dead body.After having become infuriated with Langston reply,the gangsters beat him up,until he is dead.When Sugar Hill finds out that the man she has loved her whole life has been killed,Hill realises that she must do everything possible,to make sure that the gangsters never get their hands on the night club.This leads Sugar to thinking that she has to try and match the firepower of the gangsters.Sugar then decides to go and visit her Voodoo practising mother,who,from feeling the anger and the fuel for vengeance inside her daughter,Hills mother offers her something that none of the gangsters will ever see coming:an army of the living dead...View on the film:For his last ever screenplay,writer Tim Kelly does a very entertaining mix of multiple genres,which helps to make the film lively for the whole of its running time,with the mix of Blaxploitation, action scenes,a terrific Femme Fatale and a suitable light horror touch giving the movie some real voodoo magic.With the Voodoo Zombies,make up artist Hank Edds (who would next do make up work for Chinatown) sadly makes all of the Zombies eyes look like huge silver golf balls!,which disappointingly leads to each of the Zombies not being that distinctive from each other. From the moment she appears in the film,dressed in a head-turning green outfit Marki Bey becomes the centrepiece of the film,with Bey sizzling in every scene and impressively being able to handle the glamorous soft side, and also show her ultra-tough fighting aggressive side of Diane "Sugar Hill.Final view on the film:A very entertaining genre mash- up,with a shining,sassy performance from the beautiful Marki Bey.

funkyfry A pretty good idea that remains basically no more lifelike than Sugar Hill's zombies, because of a lack of imatination on the part of the film-makers I would assume. You have some good people in the movie, Marki Bey is beautiful and has cool screen presence at least, but none of the actors are getting much help from the director. Most of the cast under-plays, while some like Don Pedro Colley are too far over the top to match the rest of the film. Some of AIP's late 70s horror/black action films are very good, such as "J.D.'s Revenge", but this one feels flat in all the wrong places. Even the unintentional humor is few and far between.Basically the story is about Sugar Hill (Bey) using black magic to get a bunch of zombies to kill mobsters. Said mobsters made Sugar very angry by killing off her idealized nightclub-owning man (Larry D. Johnson). Luckily though her backup boyfriend (Richard Lawson) is a cop.Can't say much that's good about this movie so best not to say much at all. It might have some redeeming qualities that require multiple viewings to pick up, like a lot of exploitation films. But it doesn't really aspire to be more than it is, and that's not really a good sign. It seems a bare bones film in every way, and much of the blame lies with the director probably.

Leroy Gomm A beautiful woman named Sugar who has ties with Hatian voodoo practitioners seeks supernatural vengeance after her boyfriend is beaten to death by the local mob boss and his gang of thugs for refusing to sell his bar and nightclub. Barganing with the undead voodoo priest Baron Samedi, Sugar resurrects her own mob of zombie slaves and methodically takes her revenge. For fans of blaxploitation this is a must see film. Marki Bey is stunningly beautiful, and though Sugar has made an evil pact with the devil we still want to see justice carried out. For zombie fans used to gut munching and gore, these traditional voodoo zombies might seem a bore, however they are effective and creepy here. Don Pedro Colley's Baron Samedi is a wonderfully over the top voodoo man, while Robert Quarry and Richard Lawson help round out a familiar cast of early 70's film stars.