DAY 19. Black Filmmakers!

To understand Street Wars, you have to understand the man behind the curtain: Jamaa Fanaka.

He was part of the famous L.A. Rebellion at UCLA alongside guys like Charles Burnett and Julie Dash, but while they went high-art, Fanaka went straight for the exploit-o-meter. He gave us the Penitentiary trilogy and the absolutely mental, killer-dick classic Soul Vengeance (aka Welcome Home, Brother Charles). By 1992, Fanaka was frustrated with Hollywood and decided to make Street Wars.

Our guide through this madness is Sugar Pop (Alan Joseph), a deep-voiced, striking dude with piercing blue eyes who looks like a model but talks like a voiceover god. Any hero in a Fanaka movie gets a sugary name. Witness Too Sweet in those three prison boxing movies. As for Sugar Pop, he just graduated as the Top Gun of the Exeter Military Academy and is heading to West Point. His brother Frank (Bryan O’Dell) paid for it all. How? By running the local crack industry out of a spot called The Regal Social Club. A place with specials posted on a board and a drive-thru.

Frank’s right-hand man is Humungus (Clifford Shegog), a giant of a man. They belong to a secret council called The Knights of the Round Table, but they meet at a long, rectangular table. Forget logic. Anyway, when Frank gets taken out, Sugar Pop inherits the empire. Naturally, he rides around the hood on a scooter he rigged with a fire-spewing jet engine and applies military logic to running the streets.

Street Wars is torn between lamenting the neighborhood’s tragic conditions and treating Sugar Pop like a superhero. When he goes to war with rival gangs, the local news reports on him like a folk hero. At one point, the movie pauses the plot for Frank’s funeral, which turns into a full-blown gospel choir and choreographed dance number against a minimalist background. Real-life Nation of Islam spokesman Khalid Muhammad himself shows up as himself to give a eulogy!

But nothing will prepare you for the third act. Sugar Pop’s ultimate plan to win the drug war? He trains his lieutenants to fly ultralight motorized gliders and hang out of them, shooting Uzis. The news calls them the Ghetto Air Force. As Sugar Pop’s paraplegic buddy enthusiastically yells, “Looks like fun to me! Up there, I don’t need no legs!” Fanaka, who served in the Air Force, wanted to pay tribute to WWII dogfight movies. Sadly, he didn’t have the budget of a movie like Red Tails, so the dogfights are just limited, choppy footage of gliders buzzing around.

It’s great.

There’s also a moment that cuts between Frank and Humungus having sex with their ladies in different rooms while a song called “I Wanna Sex You Down” plays, all while cutting back to a random kid playing a furious drum solo. Humungus actually lifts his girlfriend completely onto his head and carries her up the stairs while going down on her. This is a highly advanced, Olympic-level bedroom maneuver that I would not recommend to the weak.

If this whole movie feels like a work-in-progress, well, it was. Fanaka actually sued the distributors for accidentally releasing an unfinished version with terrible sound mixing and dubbing. But that just adds to the dreamlike, surreal charm. What other gang movie would have the good guys have a trans member, and no one even brings it up? 

The movie ends with a text crawl saluting African-American filmmakers, listing everyone from Spike Lee to obscure exploitation directors like Dr. Roland Jefferson. Fanaka eventually got blacklisted by Hollywood for filing a massive lawsuit against the Directors Guild to force them to hire more women and minorities. He lost the suit, but he forced the industry to change.

His movies are never boring, either.

You can watch this on YouTube.