Tweet
Released by: Vinegar Syndrome
Released on: July 26th, 2016.
Director: Matt Cimber
Cast: John Daniels, Eli Haines, George Flower, Meri McDonald, Lola Falana
Year: 1975
Purchase From Amazon
The Movies:
In 1975, Matt Cimber directed two low budget Blaxploitation pictures that have rightly gone on to be considered cult classics. Vinegar Syndrome pairs them together for their Blu-ray debut.
The Candy Tangerine Man:
The first feature introduces us to a tough talking pimp dubbed The Baron (John Daniels). A pair of cops named Dempsey (Richard Kennedy) and Gordon (George 'Buck' Flower) have been trying to put him away for a while not, and they figure when he lets an undercover cop dressed in drag into his car they'll nail him, but nope. He's a slippery one. He's also pretty demanding, insisting that his girls take home at least a couple of hundred bucks each and every night they walk the streets.
Intending to take a bit out of The Baron's business are a mobster named Vincent Di Nunzio (Mikel Angel) and another pimp named Dusty Compton. It seems that The Baron crossed them when he won and then freed an underage hooker named Heather (Feng Lan Linn) in a pool match, and they're not happy about that. Di Nunzio sends some of his goons after our 'hero' only to find out that The Baron's candy colored Rolls Royce has been tricked out with some machine guns! Two dead mobsters later and they decide on an alternate plan - get the cops to deal with him. Meanwhile, a hooker named Denise (Barbara Bourbon) gets ideas of her own while The Baron does what he can to keep his professional life separate from the life he shares with his wife Clarice (Marilyn Joi) and two kids. When Di Nunzio goes too far, The Baron sets out to get his bloody revenge…
This one doesn't reinvent the wheel and it's pretty erratic in both tone and pacing, but hot damn if it isn't an entertaining picture. John Daniels plays the gruff and cranky pimp just as well as he plays the happy husband - it's a bit of a dual role and his solid screen presence is used well. He'd go on to play the lead in Black Shampoo a year later. The rest of the cast are pretty great too. Marilyn Joi looks great here although the movie might have benefited from giving her more screen time. Buck Flowers and Richard Kennedy are a lot of fun as the bumbling cops and hey, check out Pamela Mann herself, Barbara Bourbon, as a sneaky hooker.
The movie exploits the typical Blaxploitation traits well - pimping and pandering are the order of the day, everyone's got some pretty damn flashy outfits, there's some surprisingly grisly violence in the last half and the movie has an absolutely killer soundtrack. The locations work well here and give things the right sort of urban look that a movie like this needs to succeed. The occasional comedic moments seem out of place against the darker turn that the movie takes in its last half but this is good stuff.
Lady Cocoa:
Our second feature stars the lovely Lola Falana (who showed up in Terence Young's The Klansman!) in the titular role of Lady Cocoa. When the movie begins, she's behind bars but that all changes when she finally agrees to help out the fine state of Nevada. How? By testifying against her gangster boyfriend, Eddie (James A. Watson Jr.) in a court of law in exchange for some freedom!
With this, the movie sets into motion a screwy scheme where cops Ramsey Muller (Alex Dreier) and Doug Fuller (Gene Washington) take her from the state pen to Carson City. Fuller and Cocoa are going to pretend to be newlyweds out to enjoy their honeymoon at a casino (where Buck Flower pops up again as a sloshed gambler!). Here they meet up with and befriend another couple, Arthur (Gary Harper) and Marie (Millie Perkins) but soon learn the cold hard truth - Eddie and his squad of goons is onto Cocoa's plan and they're none too happy about it.
According to some text that precedes the feature, this one was shot entirely on location in Nevada so we get plenty of great footage shot in and around some mid-seventies era casinos. This gives the movie a pretty cool look, and the funky soundtrack helps out here too. The movie goes at a pretty good clip, telling its story efficiently and giving us enough character development and backstory for Cocoa to make her interesting enough.
Again, we get a pretty decent cast here. Dreier and Washington are decent as the two cops and Watson is pretty solid as our lead's beau. It's always fun to see Flower show up, even if he's only here for a minute, and hey, check out Mean Joe Green as one of Eddie's bad dudes. Really though, this is Lola Falana's show from start to finish. She's got charm to burn and it doesn't hurt things at all that she's a stone cold fox. We like her here, she plays a cool character with plenty of style and really makes this movie her own.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Presented on a 50GB Blu-ray disc, Vinegar Syndrome presents both movies in AVC encoded 1080p high definition framed at 1.85.1 widescreen in transfers taken from new 2k scans of the surviving 35mm elements (it would seem that the negatives are long gone). The Candy Tangerine Man is in fairly rough shape, there are scratches and splices and jump cuts evident throughout and plenty of print damage too, but the detail is there and the transfer is solid even if the elements were clearly beaten up. Lady Cocoa looks quite a bit cleaner, taken from a print that was obviously in much nicer shape. There's still some damage here and there and a sequence where some color fading pops into the picture but as you can see from the screen caps below it looks the better of the two. Either way, the transfers are solid representations of some iffy source material. Compression artifacts are a non-issue and there are no problems with noise reduction or edge enhancement. Aside from the aforementioned faded scenes, color timing looks pretty good here too.
The English language DTS-HD Mono tracks, which come with optional subtitles in English only, follow suit. Expect some hiss and some pops and the occasional drop out during the first feature, with the second sounding quite a bit cleaner with better balance.
A director's video introduction is for The Candy Tangerine Man that runs about four minutes or so. Here Cimber talks about a real life pimp who was the inspiration for the lead character, some of the cast and crew involved in the film and what happened to the original elements for the film. Cimber also provides a commentary track for Lady Cocoa where he's joined by assistant director/actor John Goff. This is a solid track that actually does a pretty good job of covering both films, which makes sense as they were shot so closely together. There's lots of talk about the different cast members that pop up in the films, the locations, where the ideas for each feature came (everyone loves a good Sammy Davis Jr. story, right?), and loads more. They even cover the involvement of the illustrious Bethel Buckalew and talk up George Buck Flowers a bit too. It's a fun commentary, really packed full of great memories and stories - if you're at all curious about either one of these films make sure to take the time to give it a listen. Static menus and chapter selection for each feature are also included.
As this is a combo pack release we also get a DVD that includes both movies with the same extra features. Both the Blu-ray and DVD discs fits inside a standard sized clear keepcase that comes with some reversible sleeve art showcasing The Candy Tangerine Man on one side and Lady Cocoa on the flipside.
The Final Word:
Vinegar Syndrome's Blu-ray double feature release of Matt Cimber's The Candy Tangerine Man and Lady Cocao might not present the films in as sparkly clean shape as some of the labels other releases, but unless better elements surface this is probably as good as it is going to get. The movies themselves are a lot of fun, there's loads of entertainment value here for Blaxploitaiton mavens to dig into, and the commentary is aces.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
