Grindhouse Fest: The Black Gestapo (1975)

-Grindhouse Fest is the special section in Celluloid Dimension where you can discover all the goodies from the golden age of exploitation cinema. Have fun!

The Black Gestapo (1975) Directed by Lee Frost

An oxymoronic title, paradoxical politics and a ludicrous social commentary are all part of the impertinent badassery of this irresponsibly hilarious Blaxploitation film à la Nazisploitation. A stunningly far-fetched story about a self-proclaimed General, Ahmed (Rod Perry), a black man who leads a proudly black army calling itself “The People’s Army”. The mission of this revolutionary group that preaches an illogical dialectic – theoretically they reason like Malcolm X but their political praxis is that of national socialism – is to defend the black community from the intimidation and blackmail to which the white mafia viciously subjects them. They respond with the same ferocious violence as their ethnic adversaries, thus breeding a political and thuggish war in the ghetto. Just try to picture this, a bunch of machos, cool black dudes dressed as Nazis marauding through the streets of a modern-day sundrenched Los Angeles. It’s ridiculous stuff. The Black Gestapo by Lee Frost – one of the great exponents of American exploitation cinema, who dabbled in both Blaxploitation and Nazisploitation – is trashy fun but too, and I emphasize this, too derogatory to laugh at without guilt. The inglorious predicament of this failed attempt to make the incompatible compatible is that it faces an onerous dilemma: how to represent this people’s army without them being mistaken for the Black Panther party? That’s the problem folks, the movie just replaces the Nazi symbology with that of the black American rights organizations, which ends up coming across as very tasteless and downright frivolous given the social context of the 70s. Be that as it may, at least it is ironically watchable only from an unduly humorous angle; a banquet of sex, irreverence, barbarity and lousy filmmaking, oh, and I almost forgot, a momentous castration scene.