Darktown Strutters

Darktown Strutters is a 1975 blaxploitation musical comedy film from New World Pictures.[1] Despite having mixed reviews at the time it has gained cult status over the years with praise from film director Quentin Tarantino.[2] Tarantino called it "a ridiculous satire."[3]

Darktown Strutters
Film poster by John Solie
Directed byWilliam Witney
Produced byGene Corman
Written byGeorge Armitage
StarringTrina Parks
Music byTerry Bartlett of kwick/the newcomers
Distributed byNew World Pictures
Release date
  • 1975 (1975)
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Cast

Production

The film was written by George Armitage, who had worked with producer Gene Corman before.[4] Armitage:

I wrote Darktown Strutters in three days, and the script form is all one sentence, the entire script is one sentence. I just did it to have fun. I was going to direct it, but I had another script that I sold called Trophy, which was about two police departments who end up in a shooting war, and it was really a labor of love, so I asked Gene to excuse me to work on that, but it never got made, unfortunately. So Joe Viola came in to direct Darktown Strutters, but then he left the project and William Witney came in. And he was fantastic—I was an old Roy Rogers fan and he’d done so many of those... When it was done, Gene said: “You know, we could punch this up a little.” He had a screening after it was first made and was taking suggestions, and he’d invited Richard Pryor to come. And I remember about three-quarters of the way through I looked down in the aisle, and Richard was crawling out. He obviously didn’t care for the film, but was crawling up the aisle so nobody would see him, and he escaped. So he didn’t contribute much to the movie, other than giving them a reason to say: “Hm, maybe there’s some work to be done here?” Still, I enjoyed that movie, I thought Witney did a good job, and it’s a lot of fun.[5]

The film was produced by Gene Corman for a company in Tennessee which was unable to secure its release. Corman then sent it to his brother Roger who released it through New World Pictures. It was re-released in 1977 under the title Get Down and Boogie.[6]

See also

References
  1. Darktown Strutters at TCMDB
  2. http://moviemorlocks.com/2010/06/17/talking-with-trina-an-interview-with-trina-parks/
  3. Tarantino, Quentin (6 April 2020). "I Escaped from Devil's Island". The New Beverly Cinema.
  4. "Interview with George Armitage - Part One". Money Into Light.
  5. Nick Pinkerton, "Interview with George Armitage", Film Comment 28 April 2015
  6. Christopher T Koetting, Mind Warp!: The Fantastic True Story of Roger Corman's New World Pictures, Hemlock Books. 2009 p 89
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