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.
Review of Black Shampoo
