Black Caesar & Hell Up in Harlem

Larry Cohen – 1973 – USA

It’s easy to empathize with Larry Cohen’s nostalgia for the great years of American International Pictures, where a simple pitch over the phone to producer Samuel Z. Arkoff could result in a film going into production mere days later.  The low-budget genre films of AIP – (and Roger Corman’s spin-off company New World Pictures) – throughout the 60s and 70s are the loam from which respectable, Oscar-laden New Hollywood sprung.  Cohen is one of the directors who emerged from this scene, flirted with mainstream success, and yet always retained a close bond with his exploitation roots.  A loose remake of the gangster classic Little Caesar (1931), Black Caesar was one of AIP’s forays into the so-called “blaxploitation” market, as was Jack Hill’s Coffy the same year.  Former football great Fred Williamson stars as Tommy Gibbs coming up on the mean streets of New York City, who emerges from prison with a plan to seize a bit of turf to rule on his own.  When the film was made, political correctness was still years away from getting its censorious mitts on movies, so our anti-hero gleefully struts his way through many a violent and lurid encounter, including but not limited to rape.  The film was enough of a hit that AIP ordered a sequel so quickly that it was out by the end of the year.  This time around, Gibbs is portrayed as much more benign; out to rescue his kidnapped son from the clutches of the Mafia.  Cohen filmed Hell Up in Harlem on weekends while shooting his schlocky horror classic It’s Alive (1974) during the week.  Those were the days.