Black Snake (1973)

Interesting facts

Black Snake is a 1973 American film directed by Russ Meyer and starring Anouska Hempel, David Warbeck, Percy Herbert and Thomas Baptiste. It was Meyer's return to self-financed projects, following the end of his brief deal at 20th Century Fox. Meyer's only attempt at the Blaxploitation genre, it was filmed in Panavision and was shot on location in Barbados. It was such a box office bomb that a film named Foxy starring Edy Williams, which Meyer wanted to follow this film, was not made.

Production

After making two films for 20th Century Fox Meyer wanted to return to independent filmmaking. He did not want to go back to the sorts of films he had done in the past though as he felt there would no longer be a market for it due to the growth in pornographic movies and increasing permissiveness of studio films.

Meyer got the idea for the film after reading "some legend material from the Caribbean". He wanted "to dabble a little bit in a black film. The successful films that I've made have always been in the parody genre, so I figured I would try to come up with something that was kind of irreverent, like All in the Family, maybe."

"The story is very soapy in one way," said Meyer.

"This is not a sex film", he said. "It's mainly sex and violence. It's hellishly entertaining."

"This is a very liberal film, extremely so, and it's told in a manner that is forthright, and with my rambunctious style," said Meyer. "I think there are a lot of places in the film where the blacks will get up and start cheering, particularly when they start whipping the white overseer who's been whipping them for a long time."

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