Welcome Home Brother Charles (1975) was the first film by Jamaa Fanaka (1942-2012). Fanaka was a film undergraduate at UCLA when he made the film, and it was an attempt to make use of the equipment he had access to. “They’d have these assignments called a Project 1 then a Project 2, which were usually five or ten minutes without sound,” Fanaka recalled in an interview with Jeff Brummett*. Although turning one’s “Project 2” into a movie was unheard of, Fanaka decided to “take advantage of this blessing” and started production on his first feature-length film*.
1975 was a watershed year for the United States. It saw the evacuation of American soldiers from Saigon and the takeover of Cambodia by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. The American merchant vessel, Mayaguez, was also rescued after being seized by Cambodian forces. Lastly, Americans and Soviets launched their respective spacecraft—Apollo and the Soyuz—into space for a U.S.-Soviet link-up, which led to new developments in space travel. In the United States things were equally tumultuous. John N. Mitchell, H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman were found guilty of covering up the Watergate Scandal and were sentenced to up to eight years in jail. Then Gerald Ford—who had only recently been sworn-in as president—survived two assassination attempts within seventeen days†. (Both attempts were carried out by female shooters, one of whom was a member of Charles Manson’s cult.) In short, it was the right time for Fanaka to make a film about an ex-con’s murderous genitalia. As of June 2023, however, Welcome Home Brother Charles has 4.8 out of 10 on IMDB, is generally classed as a Blaxploitation movie and is about as obscure as the pioneers of Soviet animation, the epic Polish science fiction movie, On the Silver Globe (1988), and the experimental novels of Ann Quin.
My main problem is the Blaxploitation label—not because it failed to bring us action stars like Richard Roundtree, Pam Grier and Tamara Dobson, but because it was a crude way of classing films that told “black stories” that very often were simply “kitchen-sink” dramas. If we take examples like Oscar Williams’ The Final Comedown (1972) or Gordon Parks’ Shaft (1971)—both of them very good films - the fact that the primary cast members are African-American is incidental in relation to the plots which are about law enforcement and crime in the same way that The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) and My Friend Ivan Lapshin (1985) are. So let’s park to one side the Blaxploitation “genre”—despite its moronic defenders like Quentin Tarantino—and focus on what Welcome Home Brother Charles is really about.
The film begins with two terrifying notes from a tenor saxophone that make the John Williams score for Jaws sound like a lullaby. The titles roll over what looks like an African sculpture—a fertility god of some kind—of a man with a monstrously large penis. Then we cut to the dope-dealing antics of Charles Murray—played with great invention by Marlo Monte—and his subsequent arrest by two police officers. One of the officers is a racist, however, and tries to castrate Charles in the back of his unmarked police car. Charles is sent to prison for three years—which is shown to us through a series of black and white photographs—after which Charles is released, struggles to return to a community who view him as their friendly dope-dealer, and drinks heavily in a local nightclub because it’s the only way he can get close to his ex-girlfriend who performs erotic dances to repetitive funk music. (Before the life of Charles takes over, however, the movie takes us to the racist policeman’s house, where he attempts to strangle his wife because she has cheated on him with an African-American man. What this amounts to, as we shall see, is a kind of psychological prelude to the murders committed by Charles.)
There is definitely a comparison to be made with Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976), since we are introduced to a lonely character who is reforming himself, who is funny, and who ultimately wants to find the innocence of that younger life, before he fell either to armed combat or the drug-dealing world. What makes these characters riveting, however, is the way they betray the viewer’s trust. But whereas Travis Bickle is revealed to be a stalker and sociopath, Charles is revealed to be a pressure cooker of anxiety, trauma and unpredictable violence. Later on in the film, it is revealed by Charles’ psychiatrist that, whilst in prison, he had a dream about strangling his abuser with his monstrously large penis. Moreover, the subsequent murder of the corrupt lawyer who prosecuted Charles is shown in its full glory, in which Charles’ snake-like member slithers round the neck of the lawyer and strangles him. Some of the reviews I read online claim this literally happens in the film, as opposed to being the intersection between the harsh world Charles inhabits, and his imagination where sexual trauma has mutated into a kind of Marvel-superhero compensation. But the scene is so shocking—and the psychiatrists’ diagnosis so bizarre—that it doesn’t really matter whether it did or didn’t happen in the diegetic world of Fanaka’s movie.
However, Fanaka believed the penis-murder scene was meant to be a “surrealistic statement” on the myth concocted to warn white women away from having sex with slaves. And, with the quasi-realism of the penis prop itself—which calls to mind the mutant baby from David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977), for example—it’s easy to see why Fanaka believed Welcome Home Brother Charles to be his most artistic film*. From what I can see, the logic of the movie shows that there really isn’t that much of a difference between the inner worlds of Charles and the policeman who tried to castrate him. They are both sexually traumatized men—the policeman suffering an assault of the heart, so-to-speak, and Charles suffering a sexual assault—but the act of violence on the part of the racist policeman is what binds their stories and cements the demise of Charles on a rooftop, where he is left deciding whether to heed the advice of his new girlfriend: “JUMP!” It is a moment which opens the film with sympathy, but which then closes the story with a strange kind of remorse. Lastly, if Jamaa Fanaka’s Emma Mae (1976) is a meditation on women and violence, then Welcome Home Brother Charles is a meditation on men and violence: and the psycho-sexual undercurrent that can drive young men to turn bitter, resentful and revenge-seeking. In short, Welcome Home Brother Charles is no more a Blaxploitation movie than The Exorcist is a horror movie. There are layers and complexities to Fanaka’s work that are simply non-existent in Blackenstein (1973), for example, and the way in which he marshals his actors is impressive. It is a shame that today’s movies lack half the imagination, the invention and the ambition that is evidenced by this psycho-sexual drama made on the weekend by a gifted film student.
Which brings me to the aforementioned second feature film produced by Jamaa Fanaka. Emma Mae (1976) was also produced by Jamaa Fanaka while he was enrolled at UCLA where he made the movie for his Master’s Thesis*. Indeed, one of the principle actors in Emma Mae—Malik Carter—was “discovered” walking around the UCLA campus by Fanaka. “I feel that if a person looks the part that I’m trying to portray,” Fanaka told Jeff Brummett, “and [I then] have them study the script to the point where it’s second nature to them so they’re not thinking about the lines, you’d be surprised at the performances you could get out of non-actors”*. Bearing this in mind and how Fanaka shot a lot of material in his parents’ house and how he tried to make the real-life community a character in the film, Emma Mae is certainly a piece of guerrilla filmmaking*—but you would hardly guess that with the high calibre of the performances, cinematography, choreography and musical score; the artifice of the movie is grand—and it reminds one more of Ken Russell than Ken Loach, for example.
Unsurprisingly, Emma Mae was often labelled a “Blaxploitation” movie and for a long time went by the title, Black Sister’s Revenge. But Emma Mae is the more appropriate title because, much like Dirty Harry (1971) or Serpico (1973), Fanaka wants to summarise what this character wants, what she needs and the mistakes she makes along the way. Emma Mae is about a young woman from Mississippi (played beautifully by Jerri Hayes) who moves in with her cousins in Los Angeles after her mother passes away. Her cousins are cynical about her naïvety and her practical taste in clothing but they reluctantly take her to a local dance. Once there, Emma flirts with Jesse Amos (Ernest Williams III), beats up a man who insults her and then gets tacos with her newly-impressed cousins. In short, Emma Mae is on the lookout for a new family: and she has to make a choice about whether she will “adopt” her cousins as her new family, or if she will simply start her own with the prickly Jesse Amos.
The need to be loved is a large part of Emma’s personality. But with that comes naïve protectionism and there is no one who exploits this as well as Jesse Amos does. Jesse and his friend, Zeke, beat up two black police officers who roll through the neighbourhood. (This, along with the multi-racial employees at the bank and the prison, show that Fanaka is someone who is interested in accomplices and hypocrites instead of simple racial divides.) And when Jesse and Zeke are sent to prison, Emma takes it upon herself to raise money for their bail. It’s here that Fanaka shows “Emma the organizer”: which reminds the viewer that this is not a stupid woman. She may be depicted as a country bumpkin, but she is someone whose organizational capabilities and intellectual depths are brought out by her being loved, as well as the long-form trust which Emma Mae, in her naivety, is always wanting to forge. This mission on Emma’s part leads to some mistakes. The first of these, of course, is thinking that Jesse is anything other than a hypocritical, drug-using, womanizing moron. What’s remarkable is that Emma’s trust in Jesse—her love of Jesse—inspires the viewer to forgive his sins, his circumstances and even his verbal cruelty towards her during a horrid prison visit.
Then Emma hatches the plan to rob the bank. Her friends—who are also gang members—berate her and say they don’t want to face time. But Big Daddy (Malik Carter) points out their hypocrisy, their cowardice and their lack of initiative, and gives Emma his full support. The subsequent bank robbery is, as per usual, efficiently planned and executed. It’s also refreshing as in any other film the robbery would have been the heroine’s downfall. On the other hand, we see Emma becoming stronger, more assured of herself and more independent. So unlike other films, Emma and her colleagues get away with the bank robbery and Zeke and Jesse are bailed out of prison. They throw a homecoming party for the two ex-cons. But when Jesse hooks up with a different woman, Emma proceeds to beat Jesse to a pulp, leaving him in a bruised and dazed mess on the front lawn, after which she accepts that her cousins are her real family, returns to their welcoming arms and then goes home with them.
In sum, Emma Mae is a real development from Welcome Home Brother Charles. The editing of the film—or the way in which the origami of the the film unfolds itself—is more natural than artistic, whilst the way in which Fanaka’s camera inhabits this world brings to mind the patient suspense of Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964). Some may criticize the film’s tone—e.g., shifting from Loach-esque realism to Corman-esque female duels within the space of five minutes—but this, I think, is part of its originality and charm. Roger Ebert made a similar remark about The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi (Kitano, 2003)†† and I feel that the tone of Emma Mae—no matter how far it strays from audience expectations—is always rooted in the improvisation, bravery and trust of the eponymous character. There’s no doubt about whether Emma Mae is a strong woman; rather, the aim of the movie is to show that that change from girlhood to womanhood can sometimes be the result of betrayal. But Emma Mae is a lucky woman because she has cousins who love and support her because they, like her, are spirited.
*https://nerdtorious.com/2010/11/30/welcome-home-brother-jamaa-fanaka-interview/
† https://www.infoplease.com/year/1975
††https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-blind-swordsman-zatoichi-2004.
