The year 1974 was an interesting period in the history of horror and cult films. It saw the release of many now-iconic titles that ranged from the archetypal The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Black Christmas, to a series of unconventional films that included Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, Jonathan Demme’s Caged Heat, the French softcore sex romp Emmanuelle, John Waters’ Female Trouble and many more strange and offbeat cinematic experiences.
Sugar Hill is an uncomplicated and entertaining example of drive-in fare from the early seventies. The film seems to take a page from the classic EC Comics of the 1950s (Tales from the Crypt, etc.) in its comic book presentation of characters, dialogue and revenge-driven plot, a common storyline in horror comics.
This combining of film genres was obviously apparent in Sugar Hill (1974), a supernatural thriller with “blaxploitation” elements…it’s noteworthy that Sugar Hill was ahead of the curve in making zombies the real heroes of the piece.
Sugar Hill fit in quite nicely with the other odd-beat films released in 1974. It offered something different and unexpected than the usual voodoo-zombie thriller stereotype. However, once George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead hit screens in 1978, the entire identity and modus operandi of zombies were changed forever. Perhaps one day, horror filmmakers will revisit the idea of the zombie-gangster mash-up approach seen in Sugar Hill.
(TCM Db)
