The Black Klansman (1966) Online

If ever there was a time and place to utilize the word 'hoot' in reference to a film, the 'Black Klansman' is transcendental material. How is this piece of art not on DVD as of the year 2004? With mighty waving banner of fierce and vengeful fire, the front man of this film undercuts the enslaving white man by going undercover and tearing down the metaphorical burning cross. In a way, this film is to American HISTORY X as SUBURBIA is to SLC PUNK. This is 1966 exploitation baby, and if you've ever heard the 'N' word, you've still never heard it like this! Shocking today even though no one has seen it. Beg, borrow, steal and investigate getting hold of this film directed by the people who brought you film about zombies and machines that grind up women in bikinis. 4 stars.

Black Klansman, The (1966)

** (out of 4)

Well meaning but wondering exploitation film from director Ted V. Mikels. The KKK are striking terror after the Civil Rights agreement so they decide to bomb a church where a black man is killed as well as a little girl. The father of the little girl, a light skinned man, decides to join the Klan so that he can get revenge. I went into this film expecting exploitation trash but the film actually tries to pass a message and doesn't really exploit the seriousness of the subject matter. The opening scenes of the Civil Rights laws being passed are handled well as one black man wants to go to a white diner for coffee. The Klan scenes are well done and show the horrors of the time and there's some interesting discussion about what violence can actually get done. The only problem is that the story runs out of ideas around the fifty-minute mark and that leaves us with nearly forty-minutes of nothing happening until the final where the father finally gets to see the man responsible for his daughter's death.

"The Black Klansman" is a film from Ted Mikels--the same guy who brought us schlock like "The Astro-Zombies", "Blood Orgy of the She-Devils", "Girl in the Gold Boots" (on IMDb's Bottom 100 list), "The Corpse Grinders" and "The Worm Eaters". So, you can only assume that "The Black Klansman" will be a horrible film, right? Well, not really. As I sat and watched the film I was surprised, as the acting was actually pretty good--something you'd NEVER expect! In fact, while this is an exploitation film, it's an awfully good one.

The story is set partially in the South in the 1960s. Despite civil rights laws, the Klan is strong and lynchings and fire bombings continue. And, following one of these incidents, a very light-skinned black man has had enough. He decides he's going to pass as white and infiltrate the mob! What happens next you'll need to see for yourself, but suffice to say that the film ends on a VERY exciting note--very exciting.

Reasonably well-written, very good and natural acting and competent direction. It sure makes you wonder what Mikels could have done if he had tried harder! Well worth seeing.

By the way, if you like this film, try another excellent low-budget film about race from this same era--"The Intruder" by Roger Corman.

Oh, this film has flaws all right: Sloppy edits, phony day-for-night, zero budget, and a lot of bad acting. The ending is a bit syrupy as well. But it takes up fascinating questions and plunges headlong into the dark side of American racism, showing KKK meetings, burning crosses, and violence. It treatment of the race question reminds me of the Roger Korman film "The Outsider," in which William Shatner plays a white racist, but in this case a light-skinned black man goes under cover to join the ranks of prejudice. This film's combination of thematic boldness and slipshod execution makes it wonderfully horrible. Or horribly wonderful, I can't figure out which.

After a black man's daughter is killed by the KKK, he seeks revenge by becoming a Klansman.

This film can be dismissed as an exploitation film, and maybe it should be, but I personally thought it was a strong social commentary on color and race in America. Definitely during the 1960s, but probably even to some degree today (2013).

The real honor of this film has to go to the actor who played Jerry, because he had to balance between looking black and looking white and making this believable. He succeeded. I actually do not know if he was completely white or if he was lighter-skinned and black. I could look it up, but I think that his character makes the point -- it does not matter. If he can be treated as either, then race should not matter.

The legendary schlock director, creator of such memorable productions as "Astro-Zombies" and "The Doll Squad", actually takes himself seriously for this reasonably effective, interesting comment on race relations in the deep South, circa 1966. This is a time when a civil rights law had been passed, and the white people in this story are none too happy about that. Some of the Klansmen in the small Alabama town of Turnerville try to fire bomb a church and kill the daughter of a man named Jerry Ellsworth (Richard Gilden). Jerry, you see, is a light skinned black who realizes that he could pass for white, so he does so and manages to infiltrate the KKK so that he can get his revenge.

One might have a hard time believing that this is the same Mikels who made those other pictures. It works pretty well, and one can get caught up in the story, written by John T. Wilson and Art Names, and be eager to see the antagonists get their just desserts. This is all done in a very straightforward, no frills manner, and it does get a lot of juice from a standout characterization by Max Julien, later star of "The Mack", as a young revolutionary with a "by any means necessary" type of approach. His scenes are the best in the movie. But star Gilden ('Death Valley Days') does a decent job as well. Harry Lovejoy as Rook is good at playing just the sort of guy who deserves his comeuppance. James McEachin (star of the short-lived 'Tenafly' TV series) makes a strong film debut as Lonnie. Look for Byrd Holland, also the makeup artist on this show, in a small role as the mayor, and B movie legend Gary Kent as Wilkins.

Sharp cinematography by Robert Caramico and atmospheric music by Jaime Mendoza-Nava are solid attributes, and the movie comes complete with a theme song that's a real hoot.

I agree with another review here: it would be too easy to dismiss this as mere exploitation; it does have more depth than some people would expect. It's worth a look.

Eight out of 10.

What can be said? This movie is as disturbing now as it was when it was made. But the acting is so irregular. Sometimes it's comically bad which makes it extremely uncomfortable. The ending is also disappointing.

The Black Klansman

The easiest way to gain acceptance into the Ku Klux Klan is to show up wearing a MAGA hat.

Unfortunately, this drama takes place decades before those symbols of hate were manufactured.

In retaliation for a black man sitting at a lunch counter in Alabama, the KKK bombs a black church. Among those killed in the terrorist act is the daughter of Jerry (Richard Gilden), an LA jazz musician, who subsequently gets revenge against the hate group by becoming a member, and tearing it apart from the inside.

One of the few movies to confront racism in America at the time, this low-budget feature from 1966 was directed by schlock horror movie-maker Ted V. Mikels, who avoids blaxploitation clichés to deliver a powerful, albeit problematic production - namely the white actor portraying Jerry.

Incidentally, the first sign that Jerry is a white guy comes when he tries to play jazz. Yellow Light

For its time, this was an unusual film. It's not got a lot of things going for it. The writing is sometimes painful. The acting is usually static. The sets are sometimes just pasted together. The fades/dissolves are dated. The music is more dramatic than the scenes deserve.

But ... but ... but ...

This was an interesting and perhaps brave film to make, where it portrays black Americans not as sympathetic powerless people but in actuality just normal people trying to navigate a dangerous society.

*** SPOILER *** After a mixed-race man's black daughter is killed in a church by Klansman, he decides to go undercover with the local KKK Klaven. The mighty are overturned and secrets are discovered.

Hokey, yes, but really, it was a very honest effort to make a film about something few others have made a film about.

It was a rare occasion in 1960's American cinema that the screen would reflect the social turbulence surrounding the civil rights movement, or the fundamentally tense race relations in particularly in the southern states. The white supremacist organisation, the Ku Klux Klan, was a dominant and violent presence which was largely controlled and operated by the local powers of small towns and cities. Whilst the subject was on the surface of the film adaptation of Harper Lee's Pulitzer prize winning novel, To Kill a Mocking Bird (1962), but the cinema mainstream was hardly representative of social conscience until Stanley Kramer's Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967). But a few low budget b-movies in the early '60's did attempt to tackle the subject. Roger Corman's under- seen William Shatner starer, The Intruder (1962), or Carl Lerner's Black Like Me (1964), whilst unsuccessful, at least attempted an intelligent, left-field approach. So it seems almost astounding with hindsight, that Ted V. Mikels, shlock director of later atrocities like The Astro- Zombies (1968) or The Doll Squad (1973), would produce a film that would formulate a film that is both sensitive and intelligent about the deep- seated racism within southern state America.

The film opens in the small town of Turnersville, a young, dumb kid walks into an all white diner, upsetting the patrons of the establishment by being the wrong colour. This small act leads to the local faction of the KKK to "retaliate" by shooting the boy then throwing Molotov cocktails at a congregation of a black church. This, along with the burning crucifix, was a reality in these small-minded towns. However, on throwing the fiery bottle at the doorway, the perpetrator witnesses a very young girl being hit directly with the weapon. The father of the girl, travelling musician Jerry Ellsworth (also notably of mixed race - but played by a white actor), heads to the town on hearing the news. Jerry takes himself to a hair salon and transfers himself into a white man (for all intents and purposes). He charms his way into the life of KKK head, and infiltrates the organisation, biding his time to reap revenge on the evil that killed his daughter.

It is of course a ludicrous concept, but the film offers quite emotional and sometimes dramatic scenes. Jerry is also accompanied by a white woman, Andrea (Rima Kutner), who is in love with him and wants a baby with him (something that an alternative title for the film overly focused on, I Crossed the Color Line). This alone would have been a controversial inclusion to the film, but it also balanced this with a more critical commentary on vigilante justice, and mob organisation (particularly on the black group formed in reaction to the attack). The opening scenes where the KKK shoot the young black boy are truly shocking for its time and budget, a scene that resembles the later opening scenes of Mississippi Burning (1989), which are shot quite similarly, staring starkly in the face of the victim. This is not to say that the film is wholly satisfactory, in true Mikels style the film is technically horrific; bad editing, uninspired camera work, the inevitable bad arrangement of scenes and characters. But, at its heart is something quite remarkable. Not revelatory, or even particularly exciting, but nonetheless, the central theme of social segregation is still relevant today (shockingly), and surprisingly some of the acting ain't too bad.

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This is a weird one by all accounts. Shortly after the so-called civil rights movement succeeded in forcing through legislation ostensibly to desegregate the country – in practice the Deep South – there is a backlash in Hicksville, USA which results in the Ku Klux Klan bombing a black church and murdering a young girl. The victim is the daughter of a light-skinned black man who is living the dream in Los Angeles. He decides to pass for white, infiltrate the Klan and...does he have a higher purpose, or does he simply want revenge?

The film takes a brave step in portraying a black villain as well, what was called at the time the hate that hate produced. But was hate, or rather race hate, the real problem?

The wisest words in this film appear at around ten and a half minutes. After a black man is refused service in a local diner, one of his friends tells him "No sense in going' where you're not wanted."

The reality is that in the Deep South as everywhere else, society has deeply held social mores which may appear repugnant to outsiders, and when those outsiders take their crusades into these societies, they stir up only hatred and resentment. We can see the same thing happening in some African countries at the moment where the "gay rights" movement is viewed as yet another attempt by the Yankee "Imperialists" to impose their will on the people.

The propaganda today portrays blacks in the Deep South as living in virtual slavery, yet at the very beginning of this film we see a mature black woman driving up to her son in a car. Car ownership by blacks was widespread in 1960s America, indeed in 1955, Chuck Berry wrote a song called "No Money Down" in which he described how he bought his first car on credit before World War Two. Berry grew up in the Deep South.

Rather than forcibly desegregate the Deep South and enforce so-called affirmative action policies on the nation as a whole, the government of the day would have been better advised to give grants to black businesses and entrepreneurs, especially the young. Instead, the welfare system has created a poverty trap that persists to this day for blacks and increasingly for lower class whites.

Having said all that, this film by an independent film-maker better known for making weird stuff about astro-zombies, is a brave attempt at portraying the reality of desegregation, even though it misses the point.

You've heard of those undercover movies with titles like "I Was a Communist for the FBI" (1951) where somebody infiltrates a secret organization. "Astro-Zombies" director Ted V. Mikels' Blaxploitation epic "The Black Klansman" appropriates this strategy. For the record, the original title was "I Crossed the Color Line," but a title like this is pretty flabby. Whoever renamed this movie was on the right track. "The Black Klansman" marked a turning point in Mikels' cinema because it was the last film he lensed in black & white. When the KKK firebombs an African-American church (like the real Klan did a Birmingham church) and a little girl dies from burns, the estranged father learns the ugly truth and vows to exact revenge on the dastards responsible for this atrocious crime. Like all of Mikels' low-budget classics, "The Black Klansman" presents an audacious premise but the execution is bare-bones at best. Mind you, this Civil Rights era thriller was snatched from the headlines, and it succeeds in some respects as a serious movie. Unfortunately, characterization is sketchy. Jazz musician Jerry Ellsworth (Richard Gilden of "The Unknown Terror") is horrified to learn that his little girl died, so he leaves strife-torn Los Angeles and flies out to his hometown in Alabama to ferret out the guilty parties who killed his daughter. Not only has Jerry's daughter been killed, but also another African-American male was murdered by the Klan. Jerry has a hairpiece fitted for himself so he looks white. Actually, he looks incredibly white, but he claims that he has drops of African-American blood rolling through his veins. Jerry flies back to Alabama and masquerades as California building contractor John Ashley. He has reliable information that real estate agent Rook (Harry Lovejoy of "The Naked Venus") is the head of the KKK in Turnerville. Initially, Rook denies that he has anything to do with the Klan and runs our protagonist out of his office. Ellsworth has concocted a story that Rook doubts. Ellsworth confides in Rook that he wants to form a KKK outfit in Los Angeles to keep the black in line, and he wants to learn everything that Rook can tell him about how to go about creating such an outfit. Rook follows Ellsworth back to Los Angeles after dismissing his suspicions about the businessman. Eventually, Ellsworth learns not only who assembled the bomb, but he also learns who threw it and he avenges his daughter's death. This product of the Civil Rights era qualifies as an interesting but amateurish effort.