Black Shampoo

Trailer—Black Shampoo

source: Black Shampoo

Black Shampoo is totally wacky: a hair salon owner and stylist(who bangs a lot of his adoring female customers) ends up in a violent battle with gangsters over the new receptionist he's fallen in love with...NUTS. Obviously they took the stylist/gigolo idea from Warren Beatty's movie Shampoo but after that it's good ol' Blaxploitation at it's best with some special touches. Bad acting and dialogue rule here, but in an amusing way. Overall this is just a mindless movie to laugh at with friends-not to be taken seriously AT ALL.

This movie could be shown on 'Cinemax Friday After Dark' and fit right in; a blackplotation movie with a soft-* touch. The scene where Mr. Johnathan meets a client only to be seduced by client's very young daughters then mom shows up and demonstrates to her girls how to do it right is * plot 101. The heroine in the movie spends the last half running around with a shirt with no pants or underwear so you see what you see. The movie is about a mob boss trying to get his girl back from this hairdresser dude who's like the John Holmes of hairdresser dude's or something. The thing is, he's horrible a actor. His extremely gay co-workers(not that there's anything wrong with that) are very entertaining and make the move. The mob guys are pretty bad too, but in a low-budget blackplotation you're not going to get Al Pacino or Robert DeNiro.

Blaxploitation is a seriously underrated genre. Bottom line, it you enjoy blaxploitation you'll love 'Black Shampoo' he's one bad mother... shut your mouth. Actually the hero Mr. Jonathan isn't a vigilante. He's just the only straight hair stylist at a salon catering to desperate white housewives. Inevitably Mr. Jonathan ends up giving his clients more than just shampoo, that is if their daughters don't get to him first. Mr. Jonathan gets into a tussle with a give turkey heroine smugger whom wants Mr. Jonathan's love interest back as his black sex slave. When Mr. Jonathan tries to defend her, their salon is vandalized by thugs. The whole thing ends in a bloody showdown involving chainsaws, axes, and pool sticks. Surprisingly violent. So the plot's light but 'Black Shampoo' delivers on the classic blaxploitation is promises. The recent film 'Black Dynamite' failed as a parody of blaxploitation because it failed to realized that blaxploitation is funny enough on its own.

Tanya Boyd didn't need to exploit herself like this. She could have caught anyone's eye, without removing her clothes. She looks like she's too nice for this type of movie. The movie is needlessy violent and lurid. Tanya is the only good thing about the movie, and she's too good for it.

One of the funniest movies meant not to be funny. If you like to sit around with friends and watch old goofy movies in the late hours, then this is a movie you should rent. I am so fond of this movie that I named myself in part after the man I call Black Shampoo. The star of the movie has a Lou Ferrigno quality. You'll enjoy laughing at scenes that make no sense other that to show some nudity or punch some wise guy in the nose. A wild ride that may or may not have inspired some of the greatest movie makers of our time.

Just finished watching Black Shampoo - a 70's Blaxploitation flick from Greydon Clark(director of such B-movie shenigans as The Bad Bunch,Joysticks & Skinheads).A paperthin plot loosely based on Warren Beatty's Shampoo - OK well more written to capitalize on the publicity of Shampoo. John Daniels is the hero of the piece - a studly hairdresser who seems to be more of a stud for hire than stylist- sadly John Daniels has very little personality or charisma and seems disinterested whenever women seduce him. Somehow he manages to hire a shapely receptionist(played by Tanya Boyd) who is a former kept woman of a rich bad guy- of course Daniels falls for her and gets entangled in her problems-luckily there was a chainsaw on the rented cabin set ,,,, Black Shampoo is a terrible film- and very much fun- tons of gratuitous nuditity,ridiculous dialogue and a monotone audio commentary by the director(during a * love scene he mentions how professional the leads were and that they liked each other)- the DVD also includes deleted scenes without audio- the scenes from the C&W Bar-B-Que with the piefight and the chicken toss are dadaist masterpieces. If you are looking for a fun escapist unintentional comedy Black Shampoo is a must rent.

Black Shampoo (1976) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Mr. Jonathan (John Daniels) has all the white ladies lined up at his barber shop. Not only is he great with their hair styles but he's also got a massive you-know-what and these rich white ladies want it. His secretary Brenda (Tanya Boyd) ends up capturing his heart but shes in deep with an evil mob boss (Joseph Carlo) and soon he's out for revenge. BLACK SHAMPOO is an obvious take-off on the Warren Beatty film and I must say that this is rather entertaining from start to finish. Director Greydon Clark certainly keeps the film moving at a very nice pace and the screenplay has some terrific, offensive and at times dirty sleaze going on that helps make the film quite memorable. I have to say that the highlight is the first twenty-minutes of the film when we see a number of white ladies lining up to get a piece of this black man. All of these scenes are done with the tongue planted firmly in the cheek but the scenes are quite funny and also very sleazy as there's no limit of totally * women. Just check out the sequence where he makes a house-call only to get attacked by two young ladies and then their mom comes out to teach them how it's done! The second half of the film loses some of the more dirty moments but we're still treated to some entertaining action. Of course, being a blaxploitation film there are a lot of stereotypes. This includes a couple gay barbers who are rather embarrassing in how over-the-top and zany their "gay act" is. WIth that said, the three leads are good enough for this type of film and they at least help keep you into what you're watching. BLACK SHAMPOO certainly isn't a masterpiece but then again it really wasn't trying to win awards. The film was made on a low-budget and the director manages to make something memorable out of it. It's trashy but fun.

John Daniels, fresh his triumphant portrayal of a smooth mack daddy pimp in the immortal "The Candy Tangerine Man," does his charmless macho black stud muffin on wheels shtick once again as Mr. Jonathan, a tough, irresistible, and extremely promiscuous hairdresser who happily does the deed with his lovely, wealthy, and predominantly white distaff customers. Mr. Jonathan's carefree hedonistic Los Angeles existence gets disrupted when a bunch of pernicious Italian gangsters led by despicable greaseball Joe Ortiz trash his Sunset Strip beauty salon and try to steal his foxy main squeeze Tanya Boyd away from him. Not one to idly tolerate being pushed around, Mr. Jonathan breaks out a handy chainsaw to kick some major syndicate butt! Cheesy, low-rent, and fabulously addle-pated, this honey rates highly as one delectably dopey blaxploitation combination of dippy soap opera and sleazy revenge action: Greydon Clark's unskillful direction manages to be quite savory in a schlocky stupid sort of way, there's plenty of torrid quasi-pornographic sex scenes and mouth-watering full-frontal female nudity (Mrs. Boyd in particular looks blazing hot in her birthday suit), the priceless godawful dialogue will leave you in stitches ("So, Mr. Jonathan, is it true that you are the best in the West?"), the other two male beauty salon employees are hysterically offensive and politically incorrect limp-wristed gay stereotypes (one of these homosexuals winds up having a hot curling iron crammed right where the sun doesn't shine!), the cinematography by Dean Cundey and Michael J. Mileham alternates between the slick and the shoddy with heart-warming frequency, Gerald Lee's get-down funky-grinding score sounds like it belongs in a raunchy 70's X-rated flick, and the climactic outburst of last reel action delivers oodles of bloody excessive violence. Overall, this riotously rancid chunk of prime 70's drive-in junk offers enough seamy thrills to appease even the most jaded "I've seen it all" aficionado of vintage Graze Z exploitation fare.