Thursday, October 15, 2015

31 Days of Halloween - Day 15 - Movie 1




When a nightclub owner is murdered for not selling to a local criminal, his girlfriend, Sugar (Marki Bey) turns to an old voodoo queen for help. Summoning Baron Samedi, Sugar makes a pact with him for revenge using Samedi's army of the undead.

Sugar Hill (1974) is a perfectly entertaining supernatural revenge thriller. The plot structure is pretty much by the numbers for this type of story.  It does have its tongue too far in cheek to ever really be effective as a horror movie. The bad guys, led by Robert Quarry,  are vile and racist, so their offing one by one is something to cheer. Baron Samedi is a little too much the clown to be effective as an intimidating supernatural power, but the stylized zombies, with their grease paint emaciation and bulging silver eyes are great. Covered in webs, and when they emerge from the ground, leaves and pine needles, they really do convey the idea of genuinely rising up from their graves.







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