Spike Lee indelicately terms it a case of ”jungle fever.”
That`s the controversial director`s diagnosis of the sudden romantic liaison of a happily married African-American architect (played by Wesley Snipes) and the young Italian-American (Annabella Sciorra) in his acclaimed film.
Lee examines deeply ingrained racial prejudice from both sides in
”Jungle Fever,” just out on video. New York City is a cesspool of racial hatred in this movie, and his buppie hero is saddled with a crackhead brother, a best friend (Lee) with a big mouth, and a wife (Lonette McKee) who airs a few prejudices of her own in a remarkably frank bull session with her girlfriends.
Stevie Wonder`s funky soundtrack floats through the troubling drama, which boasts memorable ensemble work from Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee as the architect`s deeply religious parents and John Turturro as a thoughtful youth who dares to question the racist dogma that plagues his neighborhood (much to the chagrin of grasping father Anthony Quinn).
Apparently we haven`t come all that far since 1967, when director Stanley Kramer shocked a few sheltered filmgoers with his ”Guess Who`s Coming to Dinner,” one of the first major Hollywood productions to sympathetically examine interracial romance.
The suave and utterly charming Sidney Poitier represents a wholesome image that any family should welcome with open arms. But father of the bride Spencer Tracy, in his last film pairing with Katharine Hepburn, blusters mightily about his daughter`s choice of a groom anyway.
A few groundbreaking films, notably director Tony Richardson`s 1961 British drama ”A Taste of Honey,” predate Kramer`s work. A rather plain teenager (Rita Tushingham, in her movie debut) becomes pregnant by a black sailor while coming of age in this realistic glimpse of working-class England. Desperately trying to ”pass” for white, a headstrong light-skinned girl (Susan Kohner) takes a beating from her prejudiced boyfriend (Troy Donahue, in an ugly bit part) and tears her poor mother`s heart to pieces in the sudsy 1959 tearjerker ”Imitation of Life.” Lana Turner and Sandra Dee co-star.
A Northern black lawyer (Al Freeman Jr.), on the run from the law in rural Louisiana, shares a hideout with an equally disenfranchised pregnant waif (Patty Duke) in ”My Sweet Charlie” (1970). The unlikely pair work through their own prejudices as they set up temporary platonic housekeeping in the made-for-TV drama.
Big Jack Johnson could whip anyone crazy enough to step into the ring with him, but he couldn`t beat his toughest adversary of all: racial prejudice in early 20th Century America.
James Earl Jones earned an Oscar nomination for his powerful portrayal of thinly disguised fictional boxer Jack Jefferson in ”The Great White Hope”
(1970), as did Jane Alexander as his loyal lover who battled society`s unbending mores until the tragic end.
NFL Hall of Fame fullback Jim Brown caused quite an uproar among the unenlightened in 1969 with his torrid love scene with Raquel Welch in the epic south-of-the-border Western ”100 Rifles.”
In the action-packed 1972 blaxploitation film ”Slaughter,” self-proclaimed ”baddest cat that ever walked the Earth” Brown returns to romance luscious Stella Stevens on a South American quest to avenge the murder of his parents. Rip Torn makes a magnificent sleazeball mob chieftain.
”Old Dracula,” a 1976 British spoof that finds David Niven putting the bite on beautiful Teresa Graves, isn`t yet available on home video. But Graves, once a regular on TV`s ”Rowan and Martin`s Laugh-In,” stars as a caring cop in the 1974 made-for-TV pilot ”Get Christie Love!” Graves doggedly tails mob bookkeeper Louise Sorel when she`s not dodging the advances of her slightly lecherous boss (Harry Guardino).
Offensive in the extreme, ”Mandingo” (1975) proves that relations between the races have nevertheless come a long way. Set in 1840s Louisiana in slavery days, lurid scenes of sadistic racism assume surreal dimensions in this sleazy Dino De Laurentiis production of Kyle Onstott`s popular book.
Boxer Ken Norton made his film debut as the formidable fighter who unwillingly beds the demented wife (Susan George) of slave breeder Perry King while brittle old James Mason chews up the scenery as the clan`s venal patriarch.
