- Directed by Ted Nicolaou
- Written by Benjamin Carr
- Starring
- Russell Richardson
- Jennia Watson
- “Tarnell Poindexter” (James Black)
- Bill Davis
- Freda Payne
- Produced by Kirk Edward Hansen
- Executive produced by Mel Johnson Jr. and Charles Band
I just didn’t get the hatemail I expected on last week’s Cryptz review, so I decided to go fishing again. Ragdoll is included as a bonus feature on the Cryptz DVD, so it’s low-hanging fruit for a lazy man like me.
Like Cryptz, Ragdoll turns out to be fairly satisfying for a definitely non-”urban” guy like me. Unlike Cryptz, however, Ragdoll‘s good parts aren’t because of its treatment of those African-American elements, but in spite of it. Remember my oh-so-cynical take on the entire “black culture” marketing machine in my Cryptz review? (If you don’t, go read it; I don’t want to reproduce the whole thing here.) It’s movies like this that got such cynicism going. Co-executive produced by Charles Band (white), written by Benjamin Carr (reportedly white — assuming he’s not an AI scriptwriting program), directed by Ted Nicolaou (white with bad bad hair), it’s not exactly what you’d call an artistic outgrowth of the African-American community.
When Fashions Attack — only on FOX!
(In the interests of full disclosure, I should tell you that the other executive producer is Mel Johnson Jr., who looks very black in his intro to the making-of after the movie. On the other hand, his only other production credits are for other Full Moon urban-targeted features: The Horrible Dr. Bones, Killjoy, and The Vault. His main body of credits is as a small-time supporting actor, so I think it’s fair to assume that he’s not the real mover and shaker behind Alchemy Entertainment or Big City Pictures or whatever Full Moon is calling their urban-flavored division this month.)
But I digress. (And no one is surprised.) My point is that we’ve got a nice little supernatural revenge drama in the EC Comics tradition here, with large lumps of extra-blackness deposited liberally throughout.
Our prologue is set in New Orleans in 1941, when a black woman is assaulted by… a possessed wedding dress. No, really. Whisked from the room so she doesn’t see her mother’s death is a young girl with a wooden-headed ragdoll.
“The men’s room? It’s that way!”
Fast-forward six decades, and the girl, now a grandmother (Freda Payne), is still living in the same house (boy, even the landscaping is the same), and has followed her mother in the arts of “conjuring.” Her teenaged grandson, Kwane (Russell Richardson), doesn’t hold with any of that mumbo-jumbo, but he’s not terribly abrasive about it. After all, he’s got other things on his mind — like being a rapper! He, his girlfriend Teesha (Jennia Watson), and two interchangeable sidekicks are “KC Bounce,” mostly because all the good names were taken, and we’re treated to a full number of theirs on stage. (I’ll reserve judgement on their quality, as I’m emphatically not the target audience.)
And things look like they might actually take off for the foursome, as an agent makes himself known in their dressing room after the show. Unfortunately (bum bum bum!), they have two other visitors as well: Silent Bruiser Jean (William Johnson), and flamboyant killer queen Little Mikey (James Black, credited as “Tarnell Poindexter”), little brothers to notorious local gangster Big Pere. They strong-arm the foursome to Big Pere’s club, where they meet the man himself (Bill Davis), a shark-grinning dealmaker who jovially beats the hell out of some other miscreant in front of them to show that he means business. What business? Why, show business, of course! Big Pere wants to branch out into music, and he’s chosen KC Bounce as his, whether they like it or not.
Kwane goes home to “think about it,” which really means to discuss his non-options with Gran. After all, if the police haven’t put away Big Pere after all of the well-known seedy things he’s been involved in, they won’t stop now. He starts cursing Big Pere soundly, but Gran warns him: He can disregard her conjuring all he wants, but he’s got that same gifted blood in his veins, and he has to be careful what he asks for.
“Look at my face when I talk to you, boy, not my tie!”
But his course of action is a little less magical: when he and KC Bounce go out on stage, they publicly tell Big Pere “NO!” and diss him in front of the crowd. (Cue musical number. Plus the one that preceded them on stage.) So Big Pere does what the Villains Union requires: He sends Jean and Little Mikie to go beat the snot out of Gran. And then he waits at the hospital to gloat when Kwane and friends show up.
In other words, he’s completely set the stage for Kwane to go home, dig out Gran’s old spell books, and start the ritual to summon… the Shadow Man.
Now, I have to interrupt myself here and ask: How many of you have seen Crossroads? No, not the embarrassing feature film debut of Britney Spears, but the embarrassing 1986 supernatural blues road trip with Ralph Macchio. It’s okay, you can admit it, you’re among friends: bad movie, but with kick-ass music by Ry Cooder (white) that makes up for a lot. In it, Satan or “Scratch” appears as a black man (Robert Judd) to do one of those “down at the crossroads” deals (hence the name). And since seeing it, I’ve had the firm opinion that, if Satan turns out to be a black man, he’ll look exactly like Robert Judd.
That established, I have to say that the Shadow Man, the Luciferian presence in Ragdoll as realized by Frederick D. Tucker, runs a close second. A wild-eyed man with a jaw like Robert D’Zar and dressed in an artfully tattered suit, he’s a good enough realization of the sly, smooth Dark One that I found myself wishing he got more screentime.
A face made to mwa-ha-hah.
Anyway. Kwane makes the usual neophyte errors when dealing with the Master of Darkness. When the Shadow Man asks what he’ll pay in exchange for having Big Pear and his brother rubbed out, Kwane lamely replies, “Anything,” with the caveat that nothing more can happen to Gran or the deal’s off. (Canadians know what the reply is when someone offers the Devil anything: “Anything-ing-ing-ing?”) The Shadow Man then produces the “killing magic” (looks like a leaf) and looks around for a host somewhat less giggle-inducing than a wedding dress. And Gran’s old ragdoll, sitting in a place of honor, fits the bill.
Revenge killings! Whee! And as we all know, vengeance always moves from the peon to the poobah, so the first victim is Jean, who as yet has had no lines; the most get gets is some lip-syncing while he sweeps the floor at Big Pere’s club. Then the ragdoll arrives and rips his face off.
But then… while Kwane and Teesha are visiting Gran in the hospital, one of the interchangeable guys of KC Bounce shows up at Kwane’s place… and the ragdoll answers the door and beats him to death with a nail. Yup, this is what happens when you give the Shadow Man carte blanche to choose his own payment. With two more Pere-clan victims to go, and two more members of KC Bounce, you can bet that in the end it’ll be a race to save Big Pere in order to save Teesha’s life.
Give it up for the Devil Doll DJ!
All of which is, as I mentioned a very EC-style tale of revenge and such. I think I can discern how much fun Benjamin Carr had writing it, and Ted Nicolaou has always had a talent for keeping a low-budget production from looking cheap and confined by its budget. And the cast sparkles, especially Big Pere and Little Mikey, who both look like they’re having so much fun that they can’t believe they’re getting paid, too.
Unfortunately, the musical numbers which pop up like mushrooms slow the pace down terribly. And more than that, they’re pointless. It’s like all of the rap and hiphop was added just to make damned sure that this is a “black” film. How necessary is that? Is there someone in production who believed that, unless someone performed a mediocre soul song every eight minutes, we might forget that this is an all-black cast in a story of Louisiana voodoo and declare it “not black enough”? Imagine for a moment if people worked half so hard to convince us that any given film was “white-relevant,” with half-assed Country-Western performances every so often. Ugh.
On the other hand, simply excising all the performances instantly drops the film down to the length necessary for having William Shatner host it on Sci-Fi.
Some Notable Totables:
- body count: 8
- breasts: 0
- explosions: 0
- ominous thunderstorms: 0
- musical numbers: 5
- actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 1
- James Black (excuse me, “Tarnell Pointexter”), “Little Mikey,” played “Klingon Helmsman” in the DS9 episode “Shattered Mirror”
- (co-executive producer Mel Johnson Jr. also appeared twice on DS9 as “Legate Broca,” but since he doesn’t appear on-screen here until the making-of featurette, I’m not counting him)
