1/24/07 Cleopatra Jones (1973)Last night’s State of the Union address was mostly notable for President Bush’s comments on earmarks and deductions for health insurance. Read about that somewhere else. Tamara Dobson is dead, and our nation has yet to sufficiently mourn.
She was no Pam Grier, but Dobson had the stature to be a proper blaxploitation star. The 6’2” model had her proper breakout as the star of 1973’s
Cleopatra Jones and 1975’s
Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold. Her fans reasonably anticipated an inevitable comeback. Instead, Dobson finally passed away after a slow decline that began with a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis in 2000.
In lieu of a call from Quentin Tarantino, Dobson saw herself become a cultural touchstone when Beyoncé Knowles starred as “Foxxy Cleopatra” in 2002’s
Austin Powers in ‘Goldmember.’ The two
Cleopatra Jones films are also notable for Dobson taking on two consecutive cast members of
The Poseidon Adventure (Shelley Winters and Stella Stevens, respectively) as lesbian villainesses.
For our purposes, the original
Cleopatra Jones is Dobson’s right-wing triumph. The film opens as Our Heroine steps off a helicopter while sporting a fur coat that would scare PETA into submission. This International Sista of Mystery has the clout to put together a coalition of superpowers (does France count?) to wipe out a poppy field in Turkey. This serves two purposes: Pissing off butch crime lord Mommy (Shelley Winters) and letting the audience know that this isn’t your standard blaxploitation.
Cleopatra Jones isn’t taking on The Man. She is The Man. She’s so proud of her job that she even sports official government plates on her car when she gets back to her hometown of Los Angeles. Mommy has used corrupt cops to close down the B&S House, a community establishment run by Cleopatra’s close personal friend Reuben (Bernie Casey, who could add gravitas to any film except
Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde). Having lured her out of Turkey, Mommy’s next big idea is to murder Cleopatra and get the opium trade back on track.
Things go wrong when Mommy’s henchmen fail to kill Cleo when she arrives at the airport. At least we can see why Ms. Jones is so proud of her government credentials. She gets to shoot a bunch of creeps wearing wide lapels, and strolls right on to the taxi stand. She probably doesn’t have to wait in line there, either.
Jones then meets up with Captain Crawford of the LAPD. (He’s played by one of many fine character actors that you’ll be happy to see throughout the movie. We won’t name them all.) He’s another sign that
Cleopatra Jones is some corporate blaxploitation—specifically, Warner Bros. He’s an exceptionally sharp token white good guy. Cleo doesn’t have a hard time convincing Crawford to give her 72 hours to prove that the B&S House staff is innocent of any drug charges.
Then she gets to the ’hood and convinces the local black militants to cool their Molotov cocktails. From there, it’s sheer brilliance in blaxploitation. You’ve got plenty of memorable characters and a dirt bike chase that would show up again in
Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. And you’ve got guns, guns, guns. A lot of them are hidden away in a convenient secret department in the door of Cleo’s Corvette.
The fur keeps flying, and the drug dealers remain villainous. Keep in mind that
Super Fly had only come out a year before. That film celebrated drug dealing so much that Curtis Mayfield felt compelled to sabotage the whole project via the soundtrack. (That’s what “Freddy’s Dead” was all about.) Dobson might’ve gone on to a brighter career if the
Cleopatra films hadn’t met so much suspicion from the hipster critics and the target audience. To be fair, Hollywood wasn’t even interested in making enough room for Pam Grier—and she could actually pass as a martial artist.
Speaking of which, Dobson was coached for her fight scenes by the legendary Bong Soo-han. He died a couple of weeks ago, so may he rest in peace, too. We don’t know his politics, but he was pretty great as the villain in the kung-fu parody part of
Kentucky Fried Movie.
Make it your own: Did we mention that Shelley Winters died last year? Jerry Mathers has
the last laugh. Anyway, there goes any decent commentary tracks on a future Special Edition. The current
Cleopatra Jones DVD is strictly bare bones, so you might just want to pick up
a cheap VHS tape.
