Cotton Comes to Harlem
Harlem's African-American population is being ripped off by the Rev. Deke O'Malley, who dishonestly claims that small donations will secure parcels of land in Africa. When New York City police officers Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson look into O'Malley's scam, they learn that the cash is being smuggled inside a bale of cotton. However, the police, O'Malley, and lots of others find themselves scrambling when the money goes missing.
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- Cast：
- Godfrey Cambridge , Raymond St. Jacques , Calvin Lockhart , Judy Pace , Redd Foxx , Emily Yancy , John Anderson
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Reviews
This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place
Great Film overall
A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.
An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.
Although Shaft/Sweet Sweetback are usually credited as the blaxploitation movies that kickstarted the funky genre, Cotton Comes to Harlem from one year earlier deserves that honour. A suitably entertaining action/comedy romp that has a great first half hour which it never quite manages to equal again. Of note is that the villain is a black corrupt preacher type and not whitey. Ossie Davis combines some great lines with cool music, some nice location shots of Harlem that add an air of guerilla authenticity, a freewheeling car chase, a junkyard shootout and good ole fisticuffs. It's never boring but some scenes are better than others, as if two different movies (one good, one average) are duking it out and the result is a draw.
Ossie Davis's early blaxpoitation pic has clearly been made on a shoestring budget and, despite its excellent source material, fails to deliver a coherent or engaging plot. Probably of more interest as a time capsule of Harlem in the late sixties/early seventies, the plot sees a couple of tough-talking police detectives, Coffin Ed (Godfrey Cambridge)and Gravedigger (Raymond St. Jacques) hunting for a bale of cotton containing $87,000. The money has been swindled from Harlem's poor black people by slick Marthin Luther wannabe Reverend Deke O'Malley (Calvin Lockhart). The film is fairly typical of its genre, although it hasn't really nailed down the street smart characters yet (at times it is played like a comedy, which just doesn't sit right with the material): Women get naked and beaten up by the men, and the white characters are either incidental or stupid.
"Sweet Sweetback's Baad Asssss Song" has usually been credited as the first blaxploitation film, but wasn't "Cotton Comes to Harlem" released even before that? Anyway, the latter has African-American cops Gravedigger (Godfrey Cambridge) and Coffin Ed (Raymond St. Jacques) investigating whether local clergyman Deke O'Malley (Calvin Lockhart) is really what he seems.Of course, the movie is really an excuse to show black people breaking away from The Man's white-people mores. And they do just that. My favorite scene is when a white cop goes up to a room with a black woman and both of them proceed to strip. She suddenly runs away and when he tries to follow her, he gets locked out of the apartment completely naked. I just try to imagine being one of the black Brothers or Sisters looking at this idiotic honky walking around.Anyway, "Cotton Comes to Harlem" is silly but lovable. If we can be certain of only one thing, it's that Ossie Davis was as great a director as he was an actor. And Redd Foxx (before "Sanford and Son") plays a great supporting role.
I've been curious about this film since it came out, when I was nine, and since I got lost in Harlem alone, when I was eleven. After finally seeing it, at age forty two, I think my perspectives are just slightly different than they would have been, had I watched it when it was first released. For one thing, when I was a pre-teen, the film would have validated some of the lines we used to use in games of cops and robbers, like `calling all cars,' or `stop in the name of the law!' As an adult, I instead find myself wondering why the police never heard of phrases like `officers in pursuit in need of backup.' Also, at age nine, I probably wouldn't have questioned whether or not the police were within their rights, when they did things like park themselves in a woman's apartment for days so they could wait for her criminal boyfriend to show up, without any kind of warrant or authorization to do so.However, if you overlook all the obvious points that the writers obviously overlooked, this is an interesting, entertaining film that was a pioneer in it's time. The scene with the "bag headed" cop was brilliant, hilarious and a genuine classic. And of course, one look at this film and you'll never again ask yourself what inspired Norman Lear to cast the relatively unknown Redd Foxx as an old junk man.
