EmmaMae

Emma Mae (aka Black Sister’s Revenge) (1976)

When a country girl is brought to live with her cousins in Los Angeles she learns a few hard lessons about city life. She hooks up with a no good drug dealer, but doesn’t realize that he is using her. When he gets in a fight with the cops she jumps in, not knowing any better. When he gets tossed in jail she organizes the community to raise money for a lawyer to get him out, only to have the man stop her at every turn. In desperation she organizes a group and robs a bank to get the money! All of this happens only for him to jump into the arms of another woman the minute he is released. But Emma Mae shows everyone what a louse he is when she beats him down and walks away.

I have some real issues with Emma Mae. I don’t want to say the plot is directionless, because it is telling a cohesive story. It just takes way too long to get there, which makes for a very slow movie. I’m also not sure what kind of movie Emma Mae wanted to be. It starts off telling the story of a naive girl, and then abruptly becomes some kind of crime movie, only to then show Emma Mae teaching the city folk a lesson. These transitions happen without warning and are very confusing when they happen. This is just bad storytelling and derails any chance the movie had of being good. The performances aren’t very good either. This is the only credit for leading lady Jerri Hayes, and for good reason. Her performance is wooden with a delivery that borders on screeching the dialogue at times. When the actress that you are counting on to carry the movie is this bad you know you are in for some trouble and this movie proves that point. Maybe if she was surrounded by a better cast it would have worked, but none of the cast seems to have a clue as to what they are doing.

The one thing that really impressed me about this movie is how well it was made on what appears to be a shoestring budget. The director, Jamaa Fanaka, manages to pull off not only great interiors but also nighttime exterior shots with equal skill. If you haven’t watched a lot of lower budget movies this is one of the places where they always fail. Lighting is always an issue on cash strapped productions, so when I see one done well I have to point it out. That said I think some of the shots the filmmaker went for were just out of his reach. None of the police wear matching uniforms, all the cars are “unmarked” and the shootouts are poorly done. I don’t know how they could of told this story without trying to film these scenes, but it would have worked much better.

This movie does have a following and I suppose I can understand why. It is different from most of the other blaxsploitation movies I’ve seen. And trust me it is a blaxsploitation movie with the “man” always keeping them down and the police being crazy. But for me it just doesn’t deliver the cool factor that I’m used to when I sit down to watch one of these. Maybe I’m missing the point, but I just didn’t like it and can’t recommend it.

1 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer