"They killed neck-bone!"
Being a big fan of all of director Jamaa Fanaka's films that I have seen so far, which at this point is all but one of his features, I had to check out a local retrospective on his work in the artsy-fartsy theater that's currently playing. While I would never classify Mr. Fanaka's movies as high-brow snobby art-flicks they do always have a message about the struggle of being an African-American and more broadly of just being a poor-person in America and they are squarely within the exploitation genre with some of the more far-out ideas in them all. This one is no exception and might be one of the only good true examples of the blaxploitation-genre made in the 1990s, not exactly a decade known for campy-depictions of urban environments thanks to the beginnings of the ultra-politically correct movement we have in full disgusting bloom these days. There's a clear message about how crack-cocaine and battling drug-dealers are keeping the ghettos a real shithole but also and equally aload of absurd comedic elements including the main one about our gang-leader character's brilliant idea of outfitting his group of uzi-wielding crack-dealers with ultralight aircraft, basically little shitty go-karts with wings, to battle his rival gang("Whoever controls the skies. Controls the streets!"). There's also the more typical elements like a super-racist white mobster, characters with ridiculous names like Sugar-Pop, Neck-Bone and Humungous(not to be confused with that guy from THE ROAD WARRIOR) and a bunch of gun-violence. If the movie fails anywhere it's in that the budget was obviously super low and it does look it but it's so high in camp-value, including some very wacky original rap-tunes and out of place funeral dance numbers that it has to be seen to be believed. It's a real shame that Mr. Jamaa stopped making features after this, because the 90s surely could have used more stuff that wasn't boring unwatchable crap.
The 90s sure had some shitty-looking cover-art on everything!!:
A little sample of the insane world of Street Wars!:
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