Directed by Ossie Davis • 1970 • United States
Starring Godfrey Cambridge, Raymond St. Jacques, Calvin Lockhart
Acclaimed actor and filmmaker Ossie Davis directs this rollicking blend of gritty neonoir and buddy-cop comedy, one of the first and most influential of the cycle of Blaxploitation films that would flourish throughout the 1970s. Based on a novel by crime writer Chester Himes, COTTON COMES TO HARLEM stars Godfrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques as New York City detectives Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson, whose investigation into the con-man preacher Deke O’Malley (Calvin Lockhart) leads them on a mad dash through the city in search of a missing bale of cotton that contains a fortune in stolen cash.
Up Next in Noir
-
Madigan
Directed by Don Siegel • 1968 • United States
Starring Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, Inger StevensA key prototype of the gritty, morally murky police procedurals that would proliferate in the 1970s, this lean, mean urban thriller from Don Siegel stars Richard Widmark as the eponymous New York C...
-
Across 110th Street
Directed by Barry Shear • 1972 • United States
Starring Anthony Quinn, Yaphet Kotto, Anthony FranciosaEvocatively shot on location in 1970s Harlem, this gut-punching crime drama combines film noir and blaxploitation tropes into an explosive portrait of simmering social and racial tensions. Yaph...
-
The Big Clock
Directed by John Farrow • 1948 • United States
Starring Ray Milland, Charles Laughton, Maureen O’SullivanOne of the finest suspense thrillers of the 1940s, THE BIG CLOCK stars Ray Milland as a hapless crime-magazine editor plunged into a web of danger when he begins being systematically framed ...
