Sheba Baby
directed by William Girdler
directed by William Girdler
When I was growing up there were only two reasons to watch a Pam Grier film. And those reasons usually weren't well written fast paced dialogue or state of the art special effects.
Sheba Baby moved away from the sleaze a bit. Perhaps Grier felt some kind of way about the until then cinematic overemphasis on her physical attributes.
In any event this older Grier vehicle significantly toned down any camera leering at Grier in favor of extended action sequences. This movie was rated PG and not R, though it's still probably not something I'd want to watch with female relatives.
It's worth pointing out that there weren't too many actresses doing this kind of work at the time. Grier's characters during her successful seventies run were almost always confident direct women who didn't take too much stuff from anyone, male or female, Black or White, and were quite capable of getting their own revenge when needed. Sheba Baby is no different in that regard.
This is a movie which because of the relatively low budget and occasionally meandering 70s feel is perhaps ripe for a remake, though I might not want to see a remake with today's cultural hostility between men and women.
Anyhow, for its times this was a decent, not great, movie. Aside from Grier and a few others the acting is well, not the best. But you don't watch action movies for the acting, do you?
Sheba Shayne (Grier) is a Chicago based private investigator who returns to her hometown of Louisville. Her father Andy (Rudy Challenger) owns an insurance company.
Thugs are trying to drive him out of business. Andy, being the protective father that he is, doesn't want to admit that anything is wrong or God forbid let his little girl get involved. However when his car is bombed and his office shot up Andy is in no position to stop Sheba from investigating and handling things her way.
Best believe some people are going to get shot. Sheba and her father's younger partner, the debonair Austin Stoker (Brick Williams) start up their old thang they had back in the day.
Austin is supportive of Sheba but isn't sure that massive retaliatory violence is the best solution. The people they're up against play for keeps. Austin doesn't want Sheba to get hurt.
The initial antagonist gangster is the comically evil Pilot (D'Urville Martin, whom I remembered from a host of blaxploitation movies) but Sheba thinks that Pilot is too stupid and too small time to be the brains behind the operation. She continues her investigation. She's going to step on some toes and hurt some feelings in Louisville, including those of the police. The police do a lot of yelling about how vigilantes mess things up for everyone but are mostly useless.
Car chases, foot chases, shootouts, boat chases, and karate fights ensue. For the most part the Sheba character could have been rewritten for a male actor without losing too much from the storyline, which presumably was the point. It is enlightening, nostalgic, and occasionally laugh out loud funny to see what clothing and hair styles were considered "in" circa 1975.
