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Sheba, Baby

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    Ian Jane
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  • Sheba, Baby



    Sheba, Baby
    Released by: Arrow Video
    Released on: February 16th, 2016.
    Director: William Girdler
    Cast: Pam Grier, Rudy Challenger, Austin Stoker, D'urville Martin
    Year: 1975
    Purchase From Amazon

    The Movie:

    A rare PG rated film in Pam Grier's seventies filmography, Sheba, Baby is also one of the least interesting on a technical level and on an exploitative level as well. This time out, directorial duties are handled by the late William Girdler, the man behind Abby and Grizzly. While a decent director in his own right (and responsible for some pretty nutty movies in his day), this entry in Grier's seventies output lacks the over the top menace that made Jack Hill's earlier collaborations with Pam Grier as much fun as they were. Sheba, Baby is not without its moments, however… and if you go in expecting PG rated material, it's plenty entertaining.

    Grier plays a private investigator named Sheba Shayne who gets a call from her father (Rudy Challenger) when he needs her help. It seems that the small town in Kentucky she grew up in is having some pretty serious problems with the local mobsters and they're set on moving in on her dad's legitimate loan business. Sheba's not going to stand for this, no way.

    So of course, Sheba shows up looking fine and ready for action. Shortly after she hits town, however, the mobsters welcome her with a car bomb and set the stage for what she's about to dish out to them - violent revenge! Along the way, foxy Sheba starts to fall for a guy named Brick (Austin Stoker), her father's business partner. He's a brother to the cause and it doesn't take long before they team up. Together they're going to have to fight with all they've got to keep the dirty mobsters from stealing from them what so many good people have worked so hard to build up…

    While the action is there, the film doesn't go nearly as far as movies like Foxy Brown and Coffy (the movies Grier really made a name for herself with) do and if it isn't necessarily fair to expect that, it's almost impossible not to. Really, it's a shame as there are scenes where the movie seems like it's trying to push things in a harder and grittier direction, but it never really goes for it. There are allusions to sex and violence but most of what happens is off screen or simply implied. Explosions and gun battles are there, but they're not on the same level as they were in Coffy or Foxy Brown. It all feels very lukewarm; even if the movie does feature a great chase/fight scene in an old amusement park and then later features a very well put together Pam Grier strutting about in a wet-suit.

    That being said, Grier is quite good in the lead, and it's always fun to see D'Urville Martin show up in a picture, this time as one of the heavies. The movie plays with the formula that made the movies like Foxy Brown and Coffy so good but fails to deliver what audiences wanted out of these films - sex and violence in a flashy urban setting. As crass as that sounds, when you remove the exploitation out of an exploitation picture, you more or less neuter it. There are moments in here where Grier shines, but the story doesn't give her as much to do as we want. It is, however, nicely shot and all set to a great score by Alex Brown and Monk Higgins and some nice location photography from cinematographer William L. Asman. It's polished and slick looking and it moves at a good pace. There's enough to like here that Sheba, Baby is definitely worth checking out, so long as you go into it with the proper expectations.

    Video/Audio/Extras:

    Sheba, Baby looks excellent in AVC encoded 1080p high definition framed at 1.85.1 widescreen. This is a very colorful movie, sometimes ridiculously so, and all of those quirky seventies hues are reproduced beautifully here. Black levels are rock solid and detail is typically very strong, as is texture, and there's a good amount of depth to the image. Typically this is a very strong presentation that offers a very serious upgrade over the previous DVD release from the MGM that came out years ago. It's very clean, there's not much in the way of actual print damage to note, while grain is as prominent as it should be without ever becoming distracting.

    The English language LPCM Mono track sounds very good. The track provides clear dialogue without any noticeable background hiss or noise at all. The score is reproduced very nicely here too, with good range and fidelity. The levels are well balanced, and there are no problems with any hiss or distortion to note. Optional English subtitles are provided.

    That previous MGM DVD was barebones, but this Blu-ray debut from Arrow is fairly stacked. First up is a commentary track with David Sheldon moderate by Mondo Digital's Nathanial Thompson. This is a strong track that starts out with a bit of background on Grier's relationship with AIP before then getting into the nitty gritty of what Sheldon did on this picture. There's some discussion of Girdler's other movies (Abby comes up), Sheldon's work on the screenplay, his own experiences working for AIP, and the different characters that appear in the movie as well as the actors who portrayed them. A second commentary gets Patty Breen (from the website http://www.williamgirdler.com) onboard to talk about the film. This is understandably more focused on the late Girdler's work but before she gets into that she talks about how and why she came to start a website dedicated to Girdler and how she came to be in touch with a lot of his associates over the years. She then goes on to note the influence of the film on Tarantino's Jackie Brown, her thoughts on Grier's performance in the film, critical observations in regards to what works and sometimes what doesn't work in the film, notes on the fashions and styles on display in the film, how this relates and contrasts with some of Girdler's other movies and more.

    From there, we move on to the first featurettes, Sheldon, Baby, which is a video interview shot with producer and screen writer David Sheldon in which he spends fifteen minutes talking about his work on this feature and his relationship with director William Girdler. He starts by talking about how he got into the movie business, his thoughts on Pam Grier, how he came on board to work on this picture and a fair bit more. It covers a lot of the same ground as Sheldon's commentary, but it's still a decent addition to the disc. This is followed by a documentary called Pam Grier: The AIP Years, which is a piece in which Chris Poggiali talks about Grier's seventies classics, particularly her work for American International Pictures. This twelve minutes piece is a pretty solid primer on what made Grier's movies unique and important and the whole AIP scene of the time.

    Rounding out the extras are a theatrical trailer for the feature, a still gallery, animated menus and chapter selection.

    The Final Word:

    Sheba, Baby isn't the best of Grier's work for AIP but it's still very much worth seeing if you're a fan of the picture's leading lady or into blaxploitation pictures in general. Arrow's Blu-ray gives fans a very nice HD face-lift and offers a fairly stacked selection of supplements too. A very nice upgrade over the previous DVD release.

    Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!




















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