Black Girl (1966)

"Black Girl [Original title: La noire de...]" (1966) is a French-Senegalese arthouse drama film written and directed by pioneering African filmmaker Ousmane Sembène. The movie is a simple but stark reality of a Senegalese woman who left home with a white couple with promises of work in France but instead lives as a housemaid in isolation. The film's star is Mbissine Thérèse Diop, who appeared in her first film. Arthouse films rely heavily on symbolism that can go past casual movie watchers' attention. There isn't any action or intense dialogue, but more so the narrative of a woman suffering within herself and by her employer's bigoted behaviors.

Director: Ousmane Sembène

Writer: Ousmane Sembène

Starring Mbissine Thérèse Diop, Anne-Marie Jelinek, Robert Fontaine, Momar Nar Sene, Ibrahima Boy

Storyline

A young Senegalese woman moves to France to work for a wealthy white couple but soon finds out that life in the tiny apartment is a prison, mentally and physically.

Devil Hunter (1980)

Starring:

• Ursula Buchfellner
• Al Cliver
• Antonio Mayans

blackhorrormovies.com
From Jesus Franco, sleazy horror icon and dubiously talented nutcase, the man who brought you Diamonds of Kilimandjaro (which used some of the same cast, including Aline Mess as a perpetually topless cannibal priestess), comes Devil Hunter, a film that manages to tap into race exploitation, sex exploitation, cannibal exploitation, and shock exploitation. If only it exploited intelligence, production value, or a cohesive plot, we might've had something. As with many of these types of films, Devil Hunter plays on the white-damsel-in-distress-in-the-midst-of-native-savages formula (King Kong anyone?), although the damsel here is as much in danger from the white kidnappers who take her to the jungle and have their way with her as she is from the black natives. Typical of Franco films, the pace is excruciatingly slow, with long, drawn-out scenes of nothing punctuated by long, drawn-out scenes of semi-depravity (frankly, I've seen more depraved). For all of its seemingly over-the-top perversity (one of its alternative titles is Mandingo Manhunter, for God's sake), Devil Hunter is pretty tame compared to other then-contemporary cannibal exploitation fare. In the only scene of cannibalism, the native just rubs his marinara sauce-smeared teeth on the victim, while nudity-wise, everything below the waist is inexplicably pixelized. I give a smidgen of credit to Franco for trying to throw in some supernatural elements beyond mere cannibalism -- there's some sort of bug-eyed, uber-cannibal monster-type guy (not unlike the zombies in I Eat Your Skin) running around -- but in this director's hands, pretty much all he does is run around with his schlong pixelized. More frightening is the fact that white extras end up filling in for some of the native roles. Tribal CPAs perhaps?

Hurricane Smith (1992)

Starring:

• Carl Weathers
• Jürgen Prochnow
• Cassandra Delaney

IMDB.com
The movie Hurricane Smith on its' own, well, isn't very good. You've seen the story before: A man seeks a lost one in a far off land and violence somehow ensues. It's a fish out of water story as a Texas roughneck battles Aussie rednecks. But the roughneck is Carl Weathers! (Apollo Creed to all you Rocky fans) Weathers exudes a determined and righteous presence that is very rare. And his intensity makes the movie great. The script could have played up the hostilities of this novel setting a bit more, but that may have been asking to much of such a movie. But Carl Weathers makes it worth watching. Why he has never risen above Apollo Creed is beyond me.