Iceberg Slim, along with the similarly awesome Donald Goines, is one of my favorite authors when it comes to lowdown sleazy pimp, whore and gangster tales. Iceberg's works were obviously a big influence on the whole genre of blaxploitation flicks made throughout the 70's. Amazingly this is the only actual film based off of one of his books. It's an interesting tale of a couple of con men doing the whole flim-flam scoot and scam thing. The one big flaw in this flick is the guy they got to play the title role of the son of a black whore, Kiel Martin. His character is supposed to be half-black but inexplicably looks about as white as can be. The black part of this team is played by Mel Stewart who I remember as one of the Jeffersons on ALL IN THE FAMILY. You also get to see Isaac The Bartender from THE LOVE BOAT in his first appearance as a pimp.
While it's a bit heavy on the melodrama, light on the funky action and all feels kind of middle-of-the-road it was still cool to see some 70's-era ghetto scenes and urban sprawl and there's worse you can do in this sub-genre. It is a damn shame Iceberg wasn't adapted more in the golden era though.
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