Black Mama, White Mama

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Review added by
Stuart McLean

aka Women in Chains aka Hot, Hard & Mean
Certificate: 18
Running Time: 87 mins
Retail Price:
Release Date: 04/04/2016
Content Type: Movie

Synopsis:
Fresh off her career defining roles for Jack Hill in Coffy and Foxy Brown, Pam Grier continued her domination of the Blaxploitation genre, in cult filmmaker Eddie Romero’s Black Mama, White Mama released on DVD and Blu-ray from Arrow Video from 4th April 2016.

Pam Grier starred alongside Margaret Markov in a grindhouse spin on Stanley Kramer's The Defiant Ones, fusing the Women in Prison film with the emerging Blaxploitation movement for a riotous romp of bullets, babes and blood!

Lee (Grier), a tough prostitute and Karen (Markov), a revolutionary, are admitted to a tough women's prison where almost immediately (after some playful showering that prefigures Porky's) they clash. Packed off to a maximum security prison, their transport is ambushed by Karen's guerrilla friends and the two escape into the Filipino jungle. Chained together and with differing escape plans their clash intensifies as Lee wants to retrieve a stash of stolen cash to get her off the island and Karen wants to re-join her revolutionary group.

Escape isn't easy as they come up against a series of obstacles including a corrupt cop, a bounty hunter, a sadistic Drug Lord and guerrillas who threaten to turn everything upside down. Chock full of girl fights, gun battles, nudity and humour, Black Mama White Mama, which was also known as Women in Chains and Hot, Hard and Mean, lives up to all its titles as well as featuring a brilliant Sid Haig (Spider Baby, House of 1000 Corpses) as a cowboy bounty hunter and Lynn Borden (Frogs, Dirty Mary Crazy Larry) as a lesbian guard from a script co-written by Jonathan Demme (Caged Heat) and a score sampled by Quentin Tarantino for Kill Bill.

Special Features:
Special Features
• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentations
• Original mono audio (uncompressed PCM on the Blu-ray)
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Commentary by filmmaker Andrew Leavold, director of The Search for Weng Weng
• White Mama - An interview with star Margaret Markov
• Sid’s Filipino Adventure - An interview with star Sid Haig
• The Mad Director of Blood Island - A previously unseen archive interview with director Eddie Romero
• Trailer
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Sean Phillips