Directed By: Paul Maslansky
Starring: Marki Bey, Robert Quarry, Don Pedro Colley
Tag line: "She's sweet as sugar... with a voodoo army of the undead!"
Trivia: The "Voodoo Museum and Research History" building is in fact, the Heights Branch of the Houston Public Library
‘70s Blaxploitation with a supernatural bent, director Paul Maslansky’s Sugar Hill merges the story of a lover’s quest for revenge with voodoo and zombies, resulting in a surprisingly satisfying crime / horror flick.
Club owner Langston (Larry Don Johnson) refuses to sell his business to mob boss Morgan (Robert Quarry). So, Morgan decides to eliminate Langston once and for all, sending his goons, including Tank Watson (Rick Hagood), O’Brien (Ed Geldart), and Fabulous (Charles Robinson), to kill him in the parking lot of his own club.
Distraught by the death of her lover, Langston’s fiancée Diana “Sugar” Hill (Marki Bey) vows to take revenge on his killers, and asks Mama Maitresse (Zara Cully), an elderly voodoo priestess, for help. Though reluctant at first to assist a ‘non-believer’, Mama Maitresse eventually agrees, and summons the voodoo God Baron Samedi (Don Pedro Colley), who in turn allows Sugar Hill to command his army of the undead. With dozens of immortal zombies at her disposal, Sugar Hill starts picking off Morgan’s men, one-by-one, all the while dodging questions from police detective (and her former boyfriend) Valentine (Richard Lawson), who with each new murder becomes increasingly convinced that an unnatural force is at work, and that Sugar Hill is somehow at the center of it all.
Like Coffy and Foxy Brown, Sugar Hill sets up the revenge portion of its story in the early going, showing us Langston’s run-in with Morgan’s gang, followed almost immediately by his murder (the scene ends with Sugar Hill cradling Langston’s dead body and sobbing uncontrollably).
But the moment that Zara Cully’s Mama Maitresse conjures up Baron Samedi, Sugar Hill takes a turn towards the bizarre, and the stranger the movie gets, the more interesting it becomes; the film's best scene is when Baron Samedi orders his zombie followers to rise from their graves. Also pretty cool are the ingenious ways that Sugar Hill and the zombies finish off Morgan’s men, each one facing a particularly gruesome end (one is fed to some very hungry pigs, and another is forced, via a voodoo ritual, to commit suicide with a dagger).
Though the supporting performances are hit and miss, both Marki Bey (as Sugar Hill) and Don Pedro Colley (as the always-exuberant Baron Samedi) are excellent in their respective roles; and the look of the zombies themselves is darn creepy (especially their silver eyes). Toss in a not-too-convincing-but-still-kinda-hot catfight between Sugar Hill and Morgan’s busty girlfriend Celeste (Betty Anne Rees) and a final showdown in the swamps that will make your skin crawl, and you have a Blaxploitation / Horror mash-up that’s sure to entertain.
