The Black Klansman (1966) Directed by Ted V. Mikels

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Sometimes you just know you HAVE to watch a movie, after reading its title.

The title of the movie caught my attention but also the fact that it's an '60's movie and it had Ted V. Mikels as its director. Normally you would expect this type of movie to have come out in the '70's, when the exploitation and blaxploitation genre was blossoming. As a matter of fact, there wasn't even such a thing yet as the blaxploitation genre yet, making this movie quite an unique one.

Pretty daring for an '60's movie to take on an approach such as this one did. It unquestionably sides with the African-Americans and depicts most white people as evil, blood mongering, ones. It makes some firm statements against segregation and not only just that, it tells the story from the perspective of Afrian-American characters, meaning that the movie its main character is also an African-American. Pretty sure it wasn't the most 'fashionable' or profitable thing to do at the time, so you can only applaud the movie for having the guts to take the approach it did.

Well, I said that the movie its main character is an African-American but is he really? I mean, he looks more white than black to me and the fact that this movie is shot in black & white doesn't help much either. It's somewhat distracting and takes away some of the movie its power.

Ted V. Mikels isn't exactly known as a great director of great movies and I have seen plenty of movies by him that are absolutely horrible! Some of the worst I have ever seen actually. But at least he seems to be aware of his qualities as a director and knows his own limitations. Therefore his movies are often still fun ones to watch, despite of their actual quality. Every once in awhile I come across a Ted V. Mikels movie that I genuinely enjoy watching. And I have to say, this probably is the best movie I have seen, done by Mikels, till date (yes, he's actually still alive and making movies). Maybe it was because his heart was truly into this project and he wanted to make a difference or impact with this movie and its story.

Of course there are plenty of bad things to say about this movie. The acting for instance is quite terrible and it's somewhat annoying how at times certain scenes go on for too long and just start to drag and drag, without really telling or showing you anything relevant to its story. But it are all things like this that you of course also have to, more or less, take for granted. It's a low budget movie, made without many great talents involved but it's still a movie that serves its purpose well enough and actually is pretty solid at parts, mainly also thanks to its, at the time, controversial and daring themes.

It's not exactly a full blown exploitation/blaxploitation flick but it's pretty interesting to watch as an early predecessor to the genre.

7/10