Sugar Hill (1974)
7/10
Hill of the Dead
10 July 2011
Warning: Spoilers
When I recently saw someone on the IMDb Horror Board writing about a fun 1970's Zombie film that they had recently gotten hold of ,which was a blend of horror,avenging Femme Fatale and Blaxploitation.I felt that this would be the perfect film to watch,for an introduction to the Blaxploitation genre,which I have heard about in interviews with such film makers as Quentin Tarantino over the years.

The plot:

Since she has started dating a successful night club owner named Langston,Diane "Sugar" Hill has been imagining that for the next few years she and Langston can live happily together,whilst continuing to build on the success of the night club.Due to the increasing popularity of the night club,some local gangsters start to get very interested in getting their hands on the club,in anyway possible.

Due to not wanting the bad influence of the gangsters to enter the club,Langston tells them that the only way they will even get the slightest chance to get their hands on the club,would be over his dead body.After having become infuriated with Langston reply,the gangsters beat him up,until he is dead.When Sugar Hill finds out that the man she has loved her whole life has been killed,Hill realises that she must do everything possible,to make sure that the gangsters never get their hands on the night club.

This leads Sugar to thinking that she has to try and match the firepower of the gangsters.Sugar then decides to go and visit her Voodoo practising mother,who,from feeling the anger and the fuel for vengeance inside her daughter,Hills mother offers her something that none of the gangsters will ever see coming:an army of the living dead...

View on the film:

For his last ever screenplay,writer Tim Kelly does a very entertaining mix of multiple genres,which helps to make the film lively for the whole of its running time,with the mix of Blaxploitation, action scenes,a terrific Femme Fatale and a suitable light horror touch giving the movie some real voodoo magic.

With the Voodoo Zombies,make up artist Hank Edds (who would next do make up work for Chinatown) sadly makes all of the Zombies eyes look like huge silver golf balls!,which disappointingly leads to each of the Zombies not being that distinctive from each other.

From the moment she appears in the film,dressed in a head-turning green outfit Marki Bey becomes the centrepiece of the film,with Bey sizzling in every scene and impressively being able to handle the glamorous soft side, and also show her ultra-tough fighting aggressive side of Diane "Sugar Hill.

Final view on the film:

A very entertaining genre mash- up,with a shining,sassy performance from the beautiful Marki Bey.
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