Stu Gilliam | Through the Shattered Lens

First released in 1977 and based on the real-life story of prison activist George Jackson, Brothers opens with David Thomas (Bernie Casey) being charged with robbing a gas station.

Thomas explains that, while he was in the car with the people who robbed the station, he personally had nothing to do with the robbery and did not know that it was going to happen. Thomas’s attorney tells Thomas that the smart thing to do would just be to plead guilty. That way, Thomas will probably just spend a few months in jail as an accessory and then he’ll be a free man. Instead, the judge sentences Thomas to a sentence of one year to life in prison. Essentially, Thomas will be in prison until the State decides to let him out.

Thomas serves his sentence at Mendocino Prison, where he has to deal with threats from both the white prisoners and the guards. Thomas’s cellmate is Walter Nance (Ron O’Neal), a political activist who tells David that he’s “letting your time do you.” Nance educates David, teaching him about both chess and radical politics. Soon, David is publishing an underground newsletter that is discreetly passed around amongst the black prisoners.

Meanwhile, on the outside, David’s younger brother, Josh (Owen Pace), is trying to free David from prison. Josh approaches a radical professor named Paula Jones (Vonetta McGee) and asks for her help in publicizing David’s case. Paula is at first skeptical but, after she reads David’s writings, she starts to correspond with him. Soon, David and Paula have fallen in love. However, when Walter is murdered by the racist guards and David starts to organize within the prison, both David and Paula find themselves being targeted by the government.

As I said at the start of this review, Brothers is based on a true story. David Thomas is based on George Jackson, who was sentenced to a year to life for robbery and who, while serving time in Soledad Penitentiary, wrote two books that made him a cause celebre amongst political radicals in the early 70s. Paula Jones is based on Angela Davis, who was placed on the FBI’s Most Wanted list after a gun registered in her name was used by Jackson’s younger brother during a shoot-out at a courthouse. (The shoot-out, which is depicted in the film, led to the murder of Judge Harold Haley and the deaths of Jonathan Jackson and two prisoners.) George Jackson was later shot and killed while attempting to escape San Quentin. In the film, the fate of David Thomas is just as violent but slightly more poetic.

There’s still a considerable amount of controversy as to whether or not George Jackson was a hardened criminal or an innocent man who was targeted for his activism. Brothers is firmly on the side of George Jackson and Angela Davis, portraying them both as activists who are fighting back against an unjust system that is determined to hold them down and destroy them if necessary. Bernie Casey and Vonetta McGree both give good performances as David Thomas and Paula Jones. Casey, in particular, smolders with an intensity that makes him instantly believable as someone who could organize a rebellion. Unfortunately, the film itself moves a bit too slowly for its own good and it ends on a false note, suggesting that David’s sacrifice has managed to unify both the white and the black prisoners against the guards. Considering that, up until that point, the film had been honest about racism in prison, the ending feels like an attempt to provide some hope to an otherwise downbeat story. Unfortunately, the hope doesn’t feel earned. Still, Brothers is an interesting historical document, one that deals with issues that are still being fought over to this day.

1976’s Dr. Black, My Hyde tells the story of Dr. Henry Pride (Bernie Casey).

Dr. Pride is a respected doctor, the head of a free clinic in the Watts district of Los Angeles. He has a big house. He has a fancy car. With Dr. Billie Worth (Rosalind Cash), he is researching a serum that will help people with cirrhosis to regenerate the tissue of their liver. Of course, Dr. Pride wasn’t always rich. In his own words, he and his mother grew up in the guest house of a brothel. But now that he is rich and successful, some people claim that he’s lost touch with his community. As a prostitute named Linda (Marie O’Henry) tells him, “You talk white, you think white, you probably drive a white car.”

In a scene that is designed to bring to mind the horrors of the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, Dr. Pride considers the ethics of injecting his serum into his patients without warning them that there might be consequences. Billie warns him that what he’s thinking about doing would be not only unethical but illegal. Dr. Pride questions whether ethics matter when dealing with something that could potentially save lives in the future. After Dr. Pride injects an elderly black woman with the serum, she turns into a white-skinned monster who attempts to strangle a nurse before promptly dying. Despite this, Dr. Pride continues to develop the serum and eventually, he tries it on himself.

Under the effects of the serum, Dr. Pride becomes a white-skinned madman. (Bernie Casey wears a white makeup whenever he plays this film’s version of Mr. Hyde.) Under the influence of the serum, Pride rampages through Watts, killing prostitutes and pimps before transforming back into the Dr. Pride. The police are investigating the murders but they’re searching for a white man. Meanwhile, Dr. Pride continues to obsess on trying to work out the kinks of her serum. He wants Linda to be his latest test subject.

Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde is a blaxploitation take on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and, as with many blaxploitation films, the subtext is frequently more interesting than what actually happens on screen. Dr. Pride, after continually being accused of acting white, takes his serum and soon literally becomes white and sets out to kill the prostitutes and the pimps who remind him of his life before he became a doctor. And while it’s easy to see this as an example of the serum turning a good man into an evil monster (the classic Jekyll and Hyde formula), it’s also true that, even before his transformation, Dr. Pride views his patients as being potential test subjects. For all of his talk about helping people, Dr. Pride maintains his distance from the members of his own community. Is the serum turning Dr. Pride into a monster or is it just revealing who Dr. Pride truly wishes to be? Given the film was directed by William Crain, who also did Blacula and who, unlike a lot of Blaxploitation directors, actually was black, it’s easy to believe that the subtext was intentional.

Of course, subtext aside, Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde is a cheap-looking and haphazardly edited film. Much of the acting is amateurish but Bernie Casey gives a strong performance as both the repressed black doctor and his violent, white alter ego. Cheapness aside, Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde is a frequently intriguing film.