Sugar Hill (1974)

While George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) might have propelled the zombie into the front ranks of movie monsters, transforming it from the supernaturally created shambling brainless and aimless hulk of tradition, into a ravenous, unstoppable cannibal intent upon eating your brains, you could still throwbacks to their earlier cinematic incarnation.  Sugar Hill (1974) being one such example, returning its zombies to their roots as creatures of Voodoo, the raised living corpses of slaves transported from Guinea to the US.  Its traditional zombies aren't the film's only notable feature, as Sugar Hill is also an AIP Blaxploitation film, with its action firmly set in the seventies and racial politics to the fore in its plot.  Having already given us a pair of popular Blaxploitation horror films featuring the vampire Blacula, it doubtless seemed only logical to follow those up with a black zombie movie (someone had already done Blackenstein (1973), which had done poorly at the box office).  After all, Voodoo and zombies were, by tradition, part of black culture, (never mind that Voodoo was a belief system practiced by a specific demographic of the overall black population, in movie terms all black people had to know at least one Voodoo priest, didn't they?), plus, just as importantly, Voodoo imagery had recently featured prominently in the 1973 Blaxploitation-themed Bond movie Live and Let Die.  Consequently, a Voodoo-themed Blaxploitation zombie movie must have seemed an obvious move.

Sugar Hill's scenario is classic Blaxploitation: Diana 'Sugar' Hill's man is murdered by white mobsters (with one token black hoodlum in the gang) who want to take control of his New Orleans nightclub.  It's thesort of set up used in many a female-led Blaxploitation picture, particularly if it starred Pam Grier, but whereas Pam Grier would have armed herself to the teeth and gone out and kicked whitey's ass in a flurry of violent action, the titular heroine of Sugar Hill instead summons Baron Samedi, Voodoo Lord of the Undead, (a character also featured heavily in Live and Let Die), in order to get his help in exacting revenge, using his zombie army.  This part of the plot features some of the film's most effective and eerie scenes, as former Voodoo Queen Mama Maitresse leads Hill from her dusty and overgrown mansion into a misty bayou to invoke Baron Samedi.  The zombies - silver eyed and covered in earth and cobwebs and still wearing their slave shackles - are raised in an impressive scene featuring them up out of their graves.  After this, the film settles down into a regular revenge plot, as the mobsters are killed, one by one, by the zombies.  The murders are zesty and often inventive, including decapitations, strangulation during a massage and being fed to pigs, but never particularly graphic.  Things are complicated by Hill's ex-boyfriend, a police detective, investigating the murders, who begins to suspect a Voodoo connection, putting himself in the firing line.

Sugar Hill is certainly an unusual take on Blaxploitation.  Whereas other attempts at wedding the horror and Blaxploitation genres had tended to focus on more less conventional horror tropes and stories, simply changing the race of the main protagonists and using urban settings, Sugar Hill puts its horror elements firmly in the service of a conventional Blaxploitation revenge plot.  This gives the film a far grittier and realistic feel than the likes of the Blacula films, while at the same time making the horror elements feel all the more unsettling, as the supernatural in the form of zombies and Voodoo suddenly encroach upon the very real world of gangsters and organized crime.  It is to the film's credit that these elements never feel as if they are jarring against each other, with the weirdness simply seeping into the action, without too much in the way of obvious sensationalism as the plot unfolds.  The zombies, for instance, don't come crashing through doors and windows, but shamble out of the shadows, menacingly.  The portrayal of Baron Samedi is also fairly restrained, in direct contrast to Geoffrey Holder's energetic and flamboyant performance in Live and Let Die, only going in for the full supernatural histrionics while he's in his own domain, the bayou, providing a somewhat subtler, but nonetheless, unsettling presence as he gradually invades the real world, turning up variously in the guise of a cab driver or bar tender. 

Overall, the horror elements, while generally effective, are curiously old fashioned, carried out without blood and gore or even much in the way of shock effects - the zombies simply appear, with little or no build up, having usually already been lurking at the murder scene awaiting their victims.  The essentially mechanistic revenge plot, with victims meeting their inevitable ends one by one, also mitigates against the generation of any real suspense.  Individual scenes, nonetheless, are very atmospheric, with director Paul Maslansky (in, I believe, his only directorial credit, being better known as a producer, with hits including the Police Academy films), making good use of his Houston locations, (standing in for New Orleans).  Indeed, his direction integrates the supernatural elements into the Blaxploitation story rather well, maintaining a pleasing, matter-of-fact feel to the film, eschewing the usual sorts of flourishes and visual cliches often associated with horror scenes in low budget movies.  There's something about the film's pace and feel that is curiously old fashioned, reminiscent of something made in the thirties or forties.  The film is less than subtle, though, when it comes to its racial sub-text, Tim Kelly's script thumpingly pushing the fact that Hill's instruments of revenge against her white oppressors are the living corpses of slaves at every juncture.  The biggest 'star' name featured in the film is Robert Quarry, who gives a smooth and effective performance of the mob boss, while Marki Bey, in the title role, makes for a sufficiently spiky heroine.  There is notable support from Zara Cully as Mama Maitresse and Don Pedro Colley (later the kick ass sheriff of the neighbouring county in The Dukes of Hazzard) as Baron Samedi.  Sugar Hill is a pretty solid Blaxploitation film, but is somewhat less satisfactory as a zombie or horror movie.  You can't help but feel that the whole Voodoo vs gangsters scenario is never really developed to its full potential and that those rather disturbing-looking, cobwebby, zombies are underused.  That said, it is a lot a fun and looks pretty good into the bargain.