Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold
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Brief Synopsis
Cast & Crew
Chuck Bail
Tamara Dobson
Stella Stevens
Norman Fell
Caro Kenyatta
Bobby Canavarro
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
When her life-long friends and fellow Federal agents Matthew and Melvin Johnson disappear while on an undercover mission in Hong Kong, Cleopatra Jones goes to find them. Working with detective Mi Ling, Cleopatra learns that their disappearance is connected to the fear-inspiring casino owner known as The Dragon Lady, who runs most of the drug trade in the area. Their investigation ultimately leads Cleopatra and Mi Ling into a spectacular confrontation with The Dragon Lady in her casino.
Director
Chuck Bail
Film Details
Technical Specs
Articles
Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold -
An attempt to craft a female Blaxploitation heroine on par with the indefatigably macho likes of Richard Roundtree's Shaft, Jim Brown's Slaughter (1972), and Fred Williamson's Hammer (1972), Cleopatra Jones had been the brainchild of actor Max Julien; an actor of slight build but bottomless charisma, Julien had parlayed supporting roles as The Black Guy in such Hollywood product as Psych-Out (1968) and Getting Straight (1970) into stardom as an upwardly mobile Oakland pimp in The Mack (1973), a Cinerama release that was at the time the most profitable Blaxploitation film ever made. Julien had conceived of Cleopatra Jones as a vehicle for his then-girlfriend, Vonetta McGee, who had already enjoyed prominent roles in the revisionist Italian western The Grand Silence (1968), Blacula (1972), and MGM's Melinda (1972). With his script sale to Warners, however, Julien lost casting approval but helped select Tamara Dobson, a 6'2" Vogue model who had played minor roles in the Cotton Comes to Harlem sequel Come Back, Charleston Blue (1972) and Fuzz (1972). Hired to punch up the dialogue was TV veteran Sheldon Keller, whose experience as a staff writer for The Dick Van Dyke Show and M*A*S*H helped nudge Cleopatra Jones closer to knowing self-parody. With the backing of a major studio, the film easily outpaced in terms of production value the American International Picture movies starring Pam Grier, with Dobson adding a touch of class to the proceedings by refusing to perform nude. The considerable box office receipts from Cleopatra Jones demanded a sequel, though by the time Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold (1975) hit the big screens the Blaxploitation vogue was fading. Warners again entrusted the property to a white director, former stuntman Chuck Bail, while producer William Tennant handled scripting duties (Max Julien having refused to participate). Warners did not vary the template of the original film too dramatically; whereas undercover CIA agent Cleopatra Jones had gone up against white lady drug czar Shelley Winters in the original film, Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold pits her against white lady drug czar Stella Stevens, albeit with a location shift from Hollywood to Hong Kong and Macau for an added flavor of travel board exotica. (The film's most perverse element is the casting of Norman Fell as the closest thing there is to a leading man.) As with Cleopatra Jones, the script is an odd comingling of black empowerment, martial arts, and homophobia, a gold lamé bouillabaisse that climaxes with a to-the-death catfight between Dobson and Stevens that goes hard on the casino décor, while the score by Dominic Frontiere does its level best to remind viewers of Isaac Hayes' Academy Award-winning "Theme from Shaft." Reviews from the major critics were kinder than might have been anticipated, with guarded praise from the persnickety likes of Vincent Canby at The New York Times and The Chicago Sun Times' Roger Ebert, who averred "I don't want to make this all sound too lurid... but, on the other hand, it's pretty lurid, really."
Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold underperformed at the box office, marking the tail of the comet that was Blaxploitation. In the ensuing years, Dobson struggled to find work of the caliber of her Cleopatra Jones films and, after scattershot appearances on television, capped her feature film career in the women-in-prison cult classic Chained Heat (1983), which reunited her with her Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold costar Stella Stevens. Dobson retired from show business in 1984, after reteaming with Stevens yet again in the ABC-TV movie Amazons, in which the costars played members of a clandestine band of latter day she-warriors who have infiltrated the inner circles of the Washington, D.C. political scene to further their misandrist agenda. Dobson lived in New York City through most of the rest of her life (along with tennis pro Arthur Ashe, she helped break the color barrier of the exclusive midtown Carnegie House condominiums, where she was a longtime resident) until the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis necessitated a return to the care of her family in her native Baltimore. Dobson passed away at the age of 59 on October 2, 2006. Though Dobson was denied anything like a comeback with the resurgence of interest in Blaxploitation, her trademark character was paid homage in the spy spoof Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002), in which Beyoncé Knowles appeared as deep cover FBI agent Foxxy Cleopatra.
By Richard Harland Smith
Sources:
Reflections on Blaxploitation: Actors and Directors Speak, edited by David Walker, Andrew J. Rausch, Chris Watson (Scarecrow Press, 2009)
Baad Bitches and Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films by Stephane Dunn (University of Illinois Press, 2008)
Women of Blaxploitation: How the Black Action Film Heroine Changed American Popular Culture by Yvonne Sims (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2006)
Encyclopedia of African American Actresses in Film and Television by Bob McCann (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2009)
Cinema Detours by Mike White (Lulu.com, 2013)
Taboo Memories, Diasporic Voices by Ella Shohat (Duke University Press, 2006)
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Cleopatra Jones and the Casino of Gold -
Quotes
Trivia
Miscellaneous Notes
Released in United States 1975
Released in United States on Video October 28, 1987
Sequel to "Cleopatra Jones" (1973) directed by Jack Starrett.
Released in United States 1975
Released in United States on Video October 28, 1987