The protagonist of this 1974 blaxploitation horror movie is Diana 'Sugar' Hill whose boyfriend, Langston, is a nightclub owner whose being pressured by the mob to sell his business. After Sugar and Langston share a touching 40 seconds of interaction, Langston is attacked and killed in the nightclub's car park by the gangsters after refusing to sell his business to crime boss, Mr. Morgan.
Instead of helping the police investigate and track down the murderers, Sugar quickly decides that the rational response to her boyfriend's murder is to convince a Voodoo priestess, called Mama Matresse, to summon the Voodoo God of Death – Baron Samedi. She then offers to be Samedi's eternal slave-wife, if in return she is given full command over his zombie army so that she can exact vengeance on the gangsters responsible for Langston's death.
The undead minions, who were ex-slaves from Guinea buried in a swamp, are not the typical Hollywood zombies. They have no rotting flesh, they don't shamble or moan, they don't walk with outstretched arms and they don't eat human flesh or brains. Instead they more resemble the minions in the 1932 movie White Zombie (considered to be the first feature zombie film) in that they have been created by Voodoo and are mere slaves to who ever summoned them. They wield machetes, are covered in a white mould and cobwebs, some of them grin creepily, and they all distinctly wear silver balls over their eyes.
As she tracks down Langston's killers Sugar is accompanied by Baron Samedi himself, whose main role in the film is to lure several of the gangsters to their demise by posing as a variety of different occupations (e.g. taxi driver, bartender and massage parlor attendant) and force them to stumble into Sugar's traps, where they find themselves overpowered by the living dead.
Gangsters vs. Zombies: A Repetitive Sequence of Events
The film's best and most frequent moments involve Sugar confronting each of the gangsters working for Morgan, the mob boss responsible for Langston's death. There are six gangsters in total, excluding Morgan, and each confrontation tends to result in the gangster being dealt with in a creative method of execution, with the more memorable demises involving voodoo dolls, a pen of starving pigs and a coffin full of snakes.
Most of these confrontation sequences follow a similar pattern and before too long they begin feeling rather repetitive, due partly to most of the gangsters being totally underdeveloped and having almost identical personalities. Most of the gangsters tend to be background characters, never really becoming a focus or playing any prominent role, and in some cases only appearing once or twice and never saying or doing anything in the movie prior to Sugar confronting and dealing with them.
The gangsters all appear as violent and prejudice with no redeeming features and mostly react to the zombies using the same tactics of standing in place and firing bullets into the undead instead of attempting to retreat or escape. The opportunity to create entertaining fight sequences between zombies and gangsters has been squandered in favor of zombies repeatedly popping out of the nowhere and lumbering towards the gangsters, who when seized or attacked by the living dead put up little resistance. Their dialogue with Sugar or any other characters, also sounds very similar, with only slight differences in what each gangster says and how they deliver their lines.
Sugar Hill: A Bitter-Sweet Protagonist
For a film that lasts around 90 minutes you'd expect the protagonist to be somewhat developed but Sugar's history and general personality are also never explored. When not sicking zombies onto gangsters we know that Sugar works as a photographer taking pictures of female models, which is both strange editing and awkwardly amusing when these scenes come immediately after watching someone being eaten alive by pigs. We also know that she had an ex-boyfriend, Valentine, who coincidentally works as a homicide detective investigating Langston's murder and the death of Sugar's victims.
Though it was easy to sympathise with her at the beginning of the film, Sugar becomes increasingly unlikable as she tracks down each of the gangsters. In fact the role of the victim and the murderer reverse entirely and the film's genre begins to resemble a supernatural slasher film where characters get picked off one-by-one by an indestructible enemy (in this case, zombies). Sugar becomes a merciless and unsympathetic serial killer, who toys with her pray and thoroughly enjoys making them suffer. Meanwhile the gangsters become the helpless victims trying to stay alive, and we actually begin feeling more sympathy for them than we do for Sugar.
While Sugar's anger and vengeful attitude may be justifiable, it's strange that a woman who recruited the services of Death by agreeing to become his eternal slave never shows any conflicting emotion, vulnerability or conscience nor does she ever reflect on the situation and consider that perhaps raising the dead to carry out revenge is perhaps going too far.
Investigating Voodoo: A Sub-Plot That Goes Nowhere
Valentine, the homicide detective investigating the murders, is by far the most likeable character and is the easiest to relate with. Even though the audience already know the cause of the gangsters' deaths, it is interesting to see him piece it together and conclude that Voodoo rituals are somehow involved in the murders.
Unfortunately just like many of the film's other characters and sub-plots, Valentine's story is also totally underdeveloped. Just as he begins to realize that his ex-girlfriend, Sugar, is responsible for the body count, his character is cut from the movie altogether. This makes his character and his investigation fairly pointless, as it goes nowhere and didn't affect any of the other characters in the movie. As he was the only real character who posed any threat to Sugar by exposing her actions, his disappearance also removes any tension the film had as well as any possibility of Sugar actually regaining some of her humanity or expressing troubled emotions, as her close friend and ex-partner finally confronts her on the murders.
Ultimately Valentine's only real purpose is to paint Sugar in a friendlier light when the two characters interact. However since she's lying to him constantly it doesn't necessarily allow the audience to view Sugar's character more positively.
Performances and Music
The film's dialogue and direction is often hit-and-miss, but the acting in the film is fairly adequate. Marki Bey does a great job of portraying Sugar as a sexy but dangerous protagonist. Co-stars Robert Quarry (as Morgan), Don Pedro Colley (as Baron Samedi), Zara Gully (as Mama Matresse), Richard Lawson (as Valentine) and Betty Anne Rees (as Celeste) all portray their characters convincingly, though occasionally their performances are marred by some badly written dialogue. The weakest performances come from the gangsters and it's not really surprising that only 2 out of the 6 gangsters (Charles Robinson as Fabulous and Ed Geldart as O'Brien, whose performances are both fairly solid) have had other acting jobs on-screen.
The film's music is quite good, particularly Supernatural Voodoo Woman by The Originals, which is played during the start and end credit sequences and is so catchy that the audience will probably be humming the tune throughout the film and for several days following.
An Enjoyable Movie, Nonetheless
Despite how underdeveloped many of the film's elements are, the film is still tons fun, with some truly epic scenes, with one of the most memorable (and funniest) involving a character being attacked by an amputated, hopping chicken foot. There are several creepy moments too, such as one involving Morgan and his annoying girlfriend Celeste arriving at an abandoned farm house to meet with Sugar about buying Langston's nightclub. Upon exploring the house, Morgan stumbles into a dining room where all of his deceased zombified gangster henchman wait around the dinner table, staring at him emotionless with dead eyes, but eerie smirks slowly creeping across their faces.
Overall
Sugar Hill's amusing premise definitely makes it a fun B- movie horror experience, and with its PG rating it's safe for people of all ages to watch, as most of the violence and gore are pretty light and sometimes takes place off-screen. However be warned that there are a lot of racial slurs throughout the film.
It is unfortunate that even for B-movie standards, Sugar Hill's suffers from unlikable and shallow characters, sub-plots that have very cheap resolutions and an incredibly atrocious and unsatisfying conclusion. If you can look past these issues when watching the movie, then you'll have a great time.
Paul Campobasso - I live in Melbourne, Australia and recently graduated from university completing a Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Politics and a ...
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