Cleopatra Jones

Nancy Reagan came up with three words for the young people of America to swear by: just say no. Smart going, Nancy, but the words are pretty hollow when you provide no viable alternative. Now, if I were the wife of the President of the United States, I would immediately re-release Cleopatra Jones, which provides a viable alternative to becoming a lowlife junkie scum.

It’s an awesome movie for the following reasons:

* It has an independent woman hero (played by the imposing 6’2” model Tamara Dobson) who doesn’t take cr*p from nobody. How about that, Nancy? Cleopatra Jones strikes a blow for black grrl power. As the neighborhood kids say when she drives off in her hot corvette, “Man, that is some kind of woman!”

* Long before Erin Brockovich, she decided that no matter how much affection she has for her man (tough and sensitive Bernie Casey), she still has her priorities straight: crime fighting comes first.

* She hates drugs, baby. The surest way to turn kids off drugs is to convince them that there’s something cooler – and Cleopatra Jones, in her fancy threads and no-nonsense style, is the epitome of supercool. She knows karate, has impeccable fashion sense, looks absolutely beautiful but doesn’t try to please anyone, can ride a motorcycle, and stands up for the brothers who run the neighborhood anti-drug house.

If you say “no” to drugs, Cleopatra Jones gives inner city kids a hero to say “yes” to.

72 Action Packed Hours

Where would our story be without nasty villains for Cleo to pummel mercilessly? We open in the poppy fields of Turkey, and Special Agent Jones has busted a smuggling ring run by an evil trafficker known as “Mommy” (yes, it’s Shelley Winters, and yes, she wears black leather.) Her response to the $30,000 worth of junk they uncover? “Burn it, baby!”

She traces “Mommy” back to the mean streets of NYC, where concurrently her favorite anti-drug house is being framed. Some dirty dog planted drugs on the premises, and she’s got 72 hours to prove that someone in the NYPD might be in on it. (Could they possiblyin cahoots with Mommy? Three guesses.)

Shelley Winters makes for an appropriately hateful nemesis, always sneering that she wants that Cleo b*tch dead. When she’s not chastising her pathetic gangsters, she’s making eyes at the women who serve her drinks and fulfill her carnal desires. She sends her thugs out to pursue Cleo in fast paced car chases or machine gun shoot-outs in apartment buildings.

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic