As might be inferred from its name, this is a comedy, or was meant to be. Unfortunately it isn't that funny, even for those of us who have some familiarity with the nuances of urban black life in the America of this time, if only from similar films."Cotton Comes To Harlem" is also a thriller, and it would have made better viewing if this aspect had been played up, which would have entailed playing down the comic book violence. The bottom line is that $87,000 is stolen in a blatant robbery, and law enforcement including two black detectives turn Harlem upside down in pursuit of it. That sum was worth considerably more then than in today's money, but not so much this was the Great Train Robbery of New York State. The cotton reference is not an allusion to de old plantation but to the stolen money somehow ending up in a bale of cotton.One of the detectives is played by Godfrey Cambridge who just six years later was dead from a heart attack at just 43. This film does not make a good epitaph for him or for anyone else.

Ossie Davis's early blaxpoitation pic has clearly been made on a shoestring budget and, despite its excellent source material, fails to deliver a coherent or engaging plot. Probably of more interest as a time capsule of Harlem in the late sixties/early seventies, the plot sees a couple of tough-talking police detectives, Coffin Ed (Godfrey Cambridge)and Gravedigger (Raymond St. Jacques) hunting for a bale of cotton containing $87,000. The money has been swindled from Harlem's poor black people by slick Marthin Luther wannabe Reverend Deke O'Malley (Calvin Lockhart). The film is fairly typical of its genre, although it hasn't really nailed down the street smart characters yet (at times it is played like a comedy, which just doesn't sit right with the material): Women get naked and beaten up by the men, and the white characters are either incidental or stupid.

This is one of the funniest movies of the early 1970's. The story, the acting as well as the characters helped to make this a great film. In many ways this film was a preview of things to come due to the fact that the very next year with the premier of Shaft, the era of the "blaxploitation" film would begin. Also, you have to wonder if the team who created the Lethal Weapon series were somewhat inspired by this due to the fact that characters of Gravedigger and Coffin are somewhat reminiscent of Briggs and Murtaugh from that series. However, the thing that really made this fun was the brief appearance of Redd Foxx playing a character that was not dissimilar from the character that would earn him his biggest fame, Fred Sanford. This is definitely a lost classic.

I had high expectation for "Cotton Comes to Harlem" - an early exploitation flick oriented around a rogue bale of the southern cash crop. The storyline is patently absurd, filled with gratuitous nudity, bumbling white men, plot holes, and coarse stabs at the true meaning of blackness. Yet, for being such an early and low budget blacksploitation flick, the movie dosen't have much zip, and comes off as aimless and nonsensical. There isn't much chemistry between Cambridge (whose grinch-like smirk I have to say really irritates me) and St. Jaques, they really just seem like they're going through the motions asleep. Redd Fox is a high point, and does an admirable job in his part as "Uncle Bud", an old bum bent on making an honest buck, a precursor to his other, more famous roles. A few scenes are excellent, with discussions based around, "Am I black enough for ya!@#?". Generally, however, there just isn't enough to chuckle at, amd it's not over the top enough for my tastes. The fight choreography is pretty lackluster, too. This an amusing enough film, but it is neither classic nor the kind of prime blacksploitation cut you really hope it will be.