1974’s Sugar Hill is a weird beast, a hybrid of zombie, gangster and Blaxploitation genres. It is truly number one in a field of one.
Marki Bey stars as the title character. She’s hellbent on revenge for the murder of husband Larry Don Johnson, emphasis on “hell”. With the assistance of an old voodoo woman (Zara Cully), she summons Baron Samedi (Don Pedro Colley), who is one of those “king of the underworld” voodoo figures.
He is basically the devil, and Bey offers him her soul in exchange for his help in getting satisfaction. Turns out he doesn’t deal in souls, and the way he wants satisfaction involves her body. She agrees to this arrangement, where she will become another of his deathless brides upon completion of the contract.
The men she seeks to have destroyed are the henchmen of local Mafia kingpin Robert Quarry. This is a man involved with many enterprises. One of those involves a minion going to the docks to collect payment from the poor souls looking to load and unload ships. I was baffled by why anybody would pay to work, as these hapless guys as coerced into doing. For that matter, it seems these guys would earn so little doing such grunt work that I question what the potential take would be for Quarry.
Quarry had Bey’s husband killed because he refused to sign over his successful establishment, Club Haiti, to him. On the night of the murder, four of his thugs appear at the club, where Johnson rejects their proposal out of hand. In the parking lot later, the same guys put on stocking masks when they kill him. I found the face coverings a bizarre touch, as they are wearing the exact same clothes as they wearing when others might have seen them in the club, and one guy (Charles Robinson) is wearing a very loud suit, of which I am betting there has only ever been one in existence.
Robinson is the only Black guy in Quarry’s operation, and I am surprised he puts up with as much shit as he does. Not only do various people in the organization say the N-word a lot, but he is even made to do such degrading tasks as shine the main man’s shoes.
Many of the racial slurs are courtesy of Quarry’s mistress, Betty Anne Rees. It is no surprise there will eventually be a huge catfight between her and Bey. It starts with slaps and ends with a bucket of ice dumped over the head of Rees. I was amused by the bartender who provided the ice, as he had been nonchalantly doing various tasks behind the bar up to that point while the fight played out. Then he just casually hands the bucket across the bar to Bey, as if he had been waiting to do that the entire time.
I’m not big on revenge flicks, but this one is a lot of fun. It helps that much of it is so ridiculous. One scene begins with a disembodied chicken foot hopping around, supposedly on its own. It is a ridiculous idea that should be laughable to anybody, yet it terrifies the guy who is about to die.
What really sells the film is Colley, who plays everything extremely broadly, as befits the material. He looks like if Sid Haig was Black. Usually wearing a top hat, his character is even something Haig might play in a Rob Zombie movie.
Speaking of zombies, they’re of the very old school variety, the actual Haitian type. A bizarre touch is they have perfectly round, reflective half-spheres over their eyes, as if they have pinballs for eyes. This should be hilarious, but it is surprisingly unnerving.
I love Sugar Hill, though I’m aware I am cutting it a great deal of slack. It’s fun, it’s weird and it is genuinely unnerving in a couple of moments. If you can’t find anything of value here, you may want to check yourself for a pulse and make sure you’re not a zombie.
Dir: Paul Maslansky
Starring Marki Bey, Robert Quarry, Don Pedro Colley
Watched on Scorpion blu-ray (distributed by Kino Lorber)