Black Shampoo

REVIEW
It’s rather difficult to explain the particular appeal of Black Shampoo, a low-budget 1976 blaxploitation movie that is often so ludicrous that it borders (unintentionally?) on the realm of absurdist comedy, yet is uniquely endearing and wildly entertaining regardless. Devoid of the socio-political subtext or radical sensibilities of many of the decade’s finest black action films, Shampoo (an admitted African-American rip-off of the popular Warren Beatty drama of that same name) is ultimately just a campy sexploitation romp with little more than lurid thrills on its mind – and since the film provides this quality in abundance (and with tongue planted firmly in cheek), it’s hard not to be seduced by the movie’s goofy charms.

John Daniels (wooden though oddly charismatic) stars as “Mr. Jonathan,” the unlikely, beefy black owner of one of Los Angeles’ most popular hair salons – since Mr. Jonathan’s styling services also includes satisfying the sexual needs of his wealthy white female client base, the salon’s popularity is perhaps unsurprising. But trouble ensues when Mr. Jonathan’s new receptionist Brenda (Tonya Boyd, easily one of 70s black cinema’s most strikingly beautiful actresses, along with Brenda Sykes) is harassed by the brutal henchmen employed by her abusive former boyfriend. After thugs trash Mr. Jonathan’s salon and rough up his two stylists (both of whom must stand among cinema’s most over-the-top gay stereotypes), Jonathan takes justice into his own hands…along with a chainsaw and a pool cue, leading to an eye-openingly gory climactic battle. Black Shampoo is an impossible film to take seriously – the sequence involving “the Western-style Barbeque” (“It’s gay and straight – and really wild!”) is a delirious highlight in this respect – but its absurdity is part of its charm, and the film is ideal late-night inebriated 70s-exploitation-movie-fetish viewing.

The two leads are undeniably attractive, the pacing is brisk, the nudity and sexuality are abundant, and the proceedings generally unfold with great humor (though the interrogation torture of one of the hairdressers – a sort of hot curling iron/orifice precursor to a murder sequence in the slasher fave Sleepaway Camp -- seems unnecessarily cruel given the film’s otherwise breezy tone). The film was the directing debut of Greydon Clark, and to note that it may remain his finest achievement isn’t much of a compliment, considering his subsequent filmography includes such treasures as Satan’s Cheerleaders (great title, awful film), Joysticks, and – God help us -- Lambada, the Forbidden Dance.