I remember when this movie premiered on TV, and I begged my mom to let me stay up and watch it because the preview featured a man in an oriental mask chasing Esther Rolle out to the end of a pier. It actually gave me nightmares for a few days. It re-ran on cable when I was a teenager and it became something of a "midnight movie" around my neighborhood. It's dated and hilarious, with a great, tv-movie-style canned jazz soundtrack and Esther Rolle being as sassy and irreverent as ever. In one scene, a mugger attacks her on the street and she's able to fend him off by repeatedly hitting him with her purse. He eventually runs off, screaming, "You're crazy, lady!" In the before-mentioned "pier" scene, she manages to knock the oriental-mask-wearing assailant off the dock by rocking it back and forth with her own weight. Still later, she throws Pine Sol in his face and warns, "You better run!" when he takes off crying in pain. After repeated viewings, my friends and I started talking back to the screen and acting out scenes from the film in our living rooms. I'd give anything to have a video copy of it today, but it's relatively hard to come by.
Review of See China and Die
