Mean Mother (1974)

Best movie of this year hands down!

I love this movie so much

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This movie essentially begins with two soldiers named "Beauregard Jones" (Dobie Gray) and "Joe" (Dennis Safron) who decide to desert while serving overseas in Vietnam. While Beauregard takes a tramp steamer to Spain, Joe flies under a fake passport to Italy as part of a gold smuggling operation. Upon reaching their destinations Beauregard accidentally crosses the Syndicate and has to leave Spain with them hot on his heels due to their mistaken belief that he has stolen some valuable merchandise from them. So with limited assets and nowhere else to turn he decides to travel to Italy in search of Joe. Meanwhile, in Italy, Joe has managed to make ends meet by doing odd jobs here and there for the same people who hired him as a smuggler and has met a beautiful woman named "Therese" (Luciana Paluzzi) in the process. But even though he would like to settle down and raise a family with her he realizes that being an army deserter carries its own risks and would be a serious liability for the two of them. And then Beauregard suddenly shows up with problems that threaten all of their plans and aspirations. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that I initially thought that this was a standard "Blaxploitation" movie from the 70's with a plot which would probably follow the usual pattern . What I didn't know was that this film borrowed heavily from another movie titled "Run for Your Life" and essentially morphed into something that it was never initially intended to be. This helps to explain the meandering plot and the choppy effect from one scene to another. That said, although I admired the manner in which the makers of this film managed to cut-and-paste scenes from another movie to create something entirely different, I have to say that the overall picture lacked balance and solidity. Additionally, while the acting was tolerable, the special effects and action scenes definitely had room for improvement as well. In short, about the only thing going for this movie was the presence of Luciana Paluzzi and to a lesser extent Marilyn Joi (as Beauregard's girlfriend "Joy"). Other than that this film was rather cheap and uninspired and because of that I have rated it accordingly.

Mean Mother (1974)* (out of 4)Another patch job from director Al Adamson and producer Sam Sherman. This here was originally a Spanish movie directed by León Klimovsky but Sherman bought the U.S. rights but when he realized it wouldn't sell, he hired Adamson to shoot new footage and turn it into a Blaxploitation film. The story centers on two Vietnam men, one white and one black (Clifton Brown), who go AWOL and get into a life of crime, which adds up to nothing. Whenever you take one film, edit it down and then try to add new scenes around it, more often than not you're going to be left with some incomprehensible mess, which MEAN MOTHER certainly is. With that said, I've actually seen worst from Adamson who was used to mixing and matching movies since it was something he'd do throughout his career. I think what keeps this film slightly entertaining is the fact that both films are just so different yet seeing them together just as a unique and weird feel to it. I will also admit that I thought Adamson did a decent job at mixing the two together and especially when you consider how this type of thing should never be done and especially with these two stories. Still, the film is a complete mess with the typical low-budget bad acting, bad direction and bad cinematography. This is to be expected whenever the director's main job is to get a film in the can for cheap and not to be trying to make some sort of masterpiece. As awful as the film is there's still something that unique to the work of Adamson and it rings true here. I don't think anyone would consider him a good filmmaker but you've got to at least give him credit for trying anything to try and bring a film together.

After seeing Grindhouse last weekend, I wanted to see something that came from the real grindhouse or drive-in of the '70s. A movie with the title Mean Mother looked like something up my alley. It seemed to have started that way with Our Hero Beauregard Jones making a drug deal with his contact that goes sour and has him kicking the bad guys' butts, but then we meet his white buddy from the Vietnam War and many of his exploits gets the lion's share of the story when they're separated. Too bad, though when it does get back to Jones, there's also his girlfriend Tracy King (better known as Marilyn Joi) who's there as eye candy but what eye candy! She's worth seeing when, after getting tied up, she convinces her white captor to set her free in exchange for some hanky panky with plenty of nudity provided on screen. I should note that Our Hero is played by Clifton Brown a.k.a. Dobie Gray whose best known hit song was "Drift Away" ("Give me the beat, boys, to free my soul. I wanna get lost in your rock-n-roll and drift away...") Also Italian redhead Luciana Paluzzi, who is best known as Fiona Volpe in the James Bond film Thunderball, plays the white buddy's doomed girlfriend Therese. Like I said, there's plenty of boring stretches involving the white buddy but by the end it's back to Jones for an action packed ending (of the low budget kind anyway) that should make you at least glad you saw this once...

I can usually find something good, or worthwhile, in most movies. Here, I can say Lucianna Paluzzi's the best thing about this show. BUT, even she couldn't save it. The stunt work was pathetic, I probably did this good, or better, as a kid and this was supposed to professional???!!! Everything was done slowly, without it being slowed down to show the fast action, it was DONE SLOWLY, poorly choreographed and executed. It was just embarrassing. The black guy, who wound up having most of the action/fight scenes, was SO out of shape you could see why his stunt work wasn't better. The acting was on par with the stunt work. If you want to catch another 70's black action flick because you want to have complete knowledge of the genre, here's the worst. If you want something entertaining, get Black Godfather, Cotton Comes To Harlem, or any Fred Williamson flick, these were at least good, and you'll be glad you skipped this one.