The African Deal (1973)

Starrring:

• George Hilton
• Calvin Lockhart
• Anita Strindberg

IMDB.com
Crooked business deals and meaningful glances aplenty in this Italian production that was filmed to great effect in Ghana. This really is a jewel of a film that is crying out to be discovered, it is at first a very odd and sexy melodrama that plays at times like a soft giallo, a warped love story, and in one totally irrelevant sequence it resembles a strange mondo movie. Calvin Lockhart plays it much the same as he did in The Beast Must Die, George Hilton is excellent as is Enrico Maria Salerno. The women are great, Anita Strindberg is total ice cold beauty, whilst Yanti Somer never looked better. This is a film to hunt down and enjoy. Fantastic.

Albino [a.k.a. The Night of the Askari] (1976)

Starring:

• Christopher Lee
• James Faulkner
• Horst Frank

IMDB.com
This is based on a book by Daniel Carney with the much cooler title of "The Whispering Death." I haven't read it. Used copies of it are at least 50 bucks on-line. Too rich for my blood. The film (which can be found for rent on VHS at Movie Madness in Portland,Oregon) stars Christopher Lee and Trevor Howard and a bunch of actors I've never heard of. The storyline is a weird mash-up of influences.It starts out like a typical portrait of the tensions between the races in Rhodesia during the 1960's. Some social commentary. Then it switches gears and features "terrorists" (read: black Africans) going berserk and having some kind of whitey stomping rampage. Cue the blood and guts. Sybil Danning is forced to take some hose pipe and gets waxed (killed, not Brazilian). A lurid revenge thriller now looms, wanting to go full bore. And then during the extended chase sequence that takes up the latter third of the film it begins to do just that. It was during this time that a strange thought popped into my head, Isn't this Moby Dick in Africa? Think about it: We have the obsessed Police Officer (husband of dead Sybil) standing in for Captain Ahab chasing the Moby Dick character, a "White" black man. The futility of revenge is revealed.

Shaft In Africa (1973)

Starring:

• Richard Roundtree
• Vonetta McGee
• Debebe Eshetu
• Frank Finlay
• Neda Arneric
• Frank McRae
• Cy Grant
• Jho Jhenkins
• Willie Jonah
• Marne Maitland

Storyline
When private investigator and man of action John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) is hired to disrupt a slavery ring, he must travel to Africa and infiltrate the criminal operation. While undercover, Shaft discovers that Africans are being abducted and sold as slaves in Europe, with a sinister figure named Amafi (Frank Finlay) pulling the strings. As Shaft gets closer to taking down Amafi, his situation becomes increasingly dangerous, with assassins and thugs seemingly lurking around every corner.