THE SLAMS
US, 1973, 91 minutes, Colour.
Jim Brown, Judy Pace, Bob Harris, Ted Cassidy, Dick Miller.
Directed by Jonathan Kaplan.
The Slams was directed by Jonathan Kaplan, who began with exploitation films and moved to some blacksploitation films including The Slams and Truck Turner. He became more and more respectable as the 1970s went on with White Line Fever, Mr Billion and Over the Edge. By the late 1980s he made some very respectable films including The Accused and Immediate Family and into the 90s with Unlawful Entry and Love Field. He then spent much of his career directing television.
The film is also a star vehicle for former footballer Jim Brown who had appeared in a number of films including The Dirty Dozen and the Slaugher series. Here he portrays a criminal in prison, on a smaller charge, but actually involved in a robbery. The difficulty is that the place where he stashed the money is due for demolition and he needs to get out.
This is blunt and straightforward film action storytelling.
1. Significance and tone of the title, prison references? Audience expectations of a crime thriller, prison thriller? The quality of the crime aspects of the film, prison?
2. The importance of Jim Brown as a star, hero of this kind of film? His being a hero?villain? The black hero, the confrontation with the whites, fellowship with blacks?
3. How successful a crime thriller? The importance of the opening sequences, the robbery, the killings? Broyn as gaining absolute control, the hiding of the money?
4. The transition to the prison genre? The hospital sequence? The look of the prison. the modern type prison, the old style brutality? The bosses, the gangs within the prison, homosexuality? Corruption, the guards, the warden? The mouthing of reform? Audience response to the presentation of prison atmosphere, the prisoners themselves?
5. The violence of the film - in the opening crime, the shooting, the hero being wounded, hiding, the accident? The prison violence? The contrast with the emotion of his mother visiting him in hospital? His girl friend?
6. The hero's attitude to prison, money, his contacts, the visits, plans? His coping with prison until he could recover the money?
7. The racist themes: Grover and the examples of his violence, the challenge to the hero? The violence sequences in the laundry? Macey and the black selves and the hero's presence? The outwitting of each other? Official approbation to this gang warfare? The prison with its race conflicts as a microcosm?
8. The relationship between violence and corruption? Violent imprisonment and the outlet of corruption?
9. The plot and its details as regards the recovery of the money, for example the television sequence and the destruction of the place where the money was hidden? The build?up of the escape?
10. The irony of the getaway, the transition to the European location? The irony of sailing into the sunset?
11. How was the film a representative look at America during the seventies? The picture of Nixon and the overtones of corruption. Watergate? Audience response to the violence and corruption in the plot and its reference to officialdom and politics of the seventies?
