Product Description

"A genre all by herself" (Voice), Pam Grier tacklesand shacklesher sleekest role yet as the feistier half of a pair of women in chains and on the run in this "colorful, outrageous and truly exciting" action flick (The Hollywood Reporter)! Grier is Lee Daniels, a prostitute doing hard time in an island prison camp for women where the guards have a new way to punish inmates who fight: by cuffing 'em together! Chained to her bitter rival, white revolutionary Karen (Margaret Markov), Lee finds herself literally linked to the revolutionary causeand on the flywhenKaren's guerrilla friends stage a coup! But this foxy inmate's got a cause of her own in the form of a secret stash of cold, hard cash and a getaway boat! Brawling with her white counterpart over which way to go, and tracked like a dog by guards, guerrillas and a gangster after the loot, she's gotta make her escapebefore both mamas' enemies bring them down for good!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #23589 in DVD
• Released on: 2001-01-09
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 86 minutes

Amazon.com
Pam Grier in a women-in-prison movie? Why did no one think of this sooner? OK, they did. Several times. But this one is different. Black Mama, White Mama is a bizarre update of The Defiant Ones with a little Cool Hand Luke and Chained Heat thrown in for good measure. Grier stars as Lee Daniels, a pimp-and-drug-lord's moll who's looking for a way to escape both prison and her thug boyfriend. The dynamic Margaret Markov ably backs her as rich-girl-turned-revolutionary Karen Brent. The two meet in the friendliest Third World prison ever (Tickling games in the shower! What girlish fun!), and before you can say catfight they're chained together at the wrist. A quick prison break later, our feisty ladies are being chased all over the undefined tropical island by the police, revolutionaries, and dueling pimps. Director Jonathan Demme shares the story credit for this one, and his craftsmanship shows--Black Mama, White Mama hits every mandatory facet of the genre, including butt kicking, gunfire, an Evil Lesbian Prison Guard, gratuitously scanty clothing, and dressing up as nuns. Absolutely not to be missed. --Ali Davis

Customer Reviews

Good Movie
Good Movie. However, not one of the best women in prison movies that the 70's has been so well known for, but it's certainly worth watching. Grier and Markov make for a great tag team. They're both really hot women and even get nude together in one scene (that alone makes the film worth seeing). One thing that makes the movie stand out from the rest(prison flicks) is the fact that it's more than just a prison flick, 60 percent of the movie takes place outside of the prison walls. One of the major highlights is a super catfight between Grier and Markov (meow) All in all this is a must see for Grier fans. Also if you want to see these two in another film together check out the ARENA.

Black mama White mama, two hot mamas!
Now this be a movie! On an unnamed Carribean Island our heros Grier (prostitute)and Markov (terrorist) are bused into a female prison. Watch female guards get themselves off while watching playful inmates shower. If a prisoner 'plays good' with the head guard they get out of work. Pam don't like having to pull other people's load, gets into a messhal fight with Markov. They are put into the sweatbox together. There is only room to stand, and they must lean their physiques against each other to stand, because the walls are too hot to touch.

Later they are chained together for interigation because they both have information on two separate parties (druglords and a terrorist group planning to take over the island). While enroute they escape with the help of a terrorist ambush. While on the run, and chained together, Grier wants to go to one side of the island to get her boat and stolen cash, while Markov wants to go to the other side of the island to get the weapons her terrorist friends need.

High points 1) they dress as nuns while on the run 2) a lot of nudity 3) The rhinestone cowboy Puerto Rican bounty hunter who is as much out of place on that island as is a snowball.

Enjoyable Ride With Cool Girls Under the Hot Sun
Though an entry of 'Soul Cinema Collection,' "Black Mama, White Mama" does not belong to so-called blaxploitation films. "BMWM"'s idea clearly comes from "The Defiant Ones" and here we see an incongruous pair chained to each other, on the run from the prison for women.

Women's prison? Yes, as avid movie fans know, we have a minor genre dealing with women's prison. Its formula has been the same: cruel wardens, violence among the prisoners, the rigid rules that donimates them, etc., and before the hit of "Coffy," Pam Grier had to serve about two years in this genre. By the time of 1970s the genre has become famous (or notorious) for its violence and nudity, and both stars here also are thrown into women's prison on an unnamed island just after the opening credit. So you know what you see in the next shower room scene.

Thankfully, the prison sequences are not long, and Pam & Margaret soon manage to escape, chained together by the hand, and run and run and ... well, the rest is, as you expect, lots of set-pieces: shootings between guards, gang, and revolutionary guerrillas (!) They are mildly entertaining, especially when Pam is on the screen, but as a whole too familiar to get excited. Still, several scenes are momorable: both stars disguised as nuns, and a very unique way of giving a false scent to a chasing dog by giving a pooch Margaret's underwear. And check out their clothes, especially Pam's (red one); they always look too clean for runaway prisoners!

"Black Mama, White Mama" is worth a look for Pam Grier fans because it seems a miracle now that she survived those Grade-B films to finally be praised by her portraying Jackie Brown with her dynamite performance 24 years later. Another interesting thing about "BMWM" is that the story is co-wriiten by Jonathan Demme, who one year before "BMWH" produced and also co-wrote the same kind of film "The Hot Box," which incidentally features Margaret Markov. (For the record, in another film "Arena" Pam and Margaret both appear.) Demme himself is to direct another women-in-prison movie called "The Caged Heat," his first feature film, in 1974. A long way to "The Silence of the Lambs," isn't it?