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Cotton Comes to Harlem spearheaded the blaxploitation revolution in the early 1970s: These were mainstream studio films; a number of which were made by black filmmakers; intended primarily for an urban black audience. Ossie Davis; an actor known for his roles in films as diverse as Malcolm X and Bubba Ho-Tep; directed and co-wrote the script for this slam-bang action-comedy; adapting a prime slice of pulp material from expatriate novelist Chester Himes. The topnotch cast consists largely of black actors and spotlights a handful of up-and-coming faces; most noticeably a pre-Blazing Saddles Cleavon Little and Redd Foxx just before Sanford and Son made him a household name. What's more; Cotton Comes to Harlem emphasizes; more emphatically even than your standard blaxploitation fare; the tumult of race relations in the era of the civil rights movement; and also deals frankly with internecine tensions within the black community in Harlem. Starring Godfrey Cambridge, Raymond St. Jacques, Redd Foxx, Calvin Lockhart, Cleavon Little. 97 min. English.
