J.D.’s Revenge (1976)
MGM DVD (region 1)
d. Arthur Marks; pr. Arthur Marks; scr. Jaison Starkes; ph. Harry J. May; m. Robert Prince; ed. George Folsey Jr.; cast. Glynn Turman, Louis Gossett Jr., Joan Pringle, Carl W. Crudup (95 mins)
Director Arthur Marks was one of the unsung figures in blaxploitation. Having sought to broaden Pam Grier’s appeal in Friday Foster and explore the prospect of Afro-American socio-political power in Bucktown, he turned to the horror genre for the oddly intriguing J.D.’s Revenge, in the process getting fine work from Glynn Turman in particular. The boom in blaxploitation cinema saw not only the rise of violent ghetto movies but increasingly a number of attempts to Afro-Americanize existing Hollywood genres. The most common traditional genre thus treated was the horror movie, given twists in such self evident works as Blacula and Blackenstein. Soon, however, the emphasis turned away from genre tradition to more contemporary twists. Of course, one of the more timely horror movie themes of the decade was the notion of possession by an outside entity, a theme also closely tied to trendy ideas of re-incarnation, and it was perhaps unsurprising that Afro-American horror should attempt to capture some of the success of The Exorcist in particular with such shockers as Abby and the far more complex J.D.’s Revenge. This last work thus emerged an evocative exploration of the loss of identity and the conflicting legacy of an urban Afro-American heritage. In that, the film managed to tie neatly into what emerged as a genuine fear in mainstream cinema, the fear of cultural and personality transformation.
J.D.’s Revenge begins in New Orleans in 1942 when a woman is killed and the wrong man (the eponymous J.D.) is shot in retaliation. Cut to the present where Glynn Turman (one of the finest performers to emerge from the period) is a good student with a promising future as an ideal community leader. With friends, he visits a stage hypnotist act and jokingly agrees to participate. When hypnotized, however, a seemingly new personality emerges. Thereafter, this personality begins to take him over: indeed, when he looks in the mirror, he sees another face – that of the long dead J.D. returned to exact revenge on the man who wronged him, Louis Gossett Jr., now a leading religious figure in the community. Turman’s hold on his own mind continues to deteriorate as he is taken over by the vengeful, violent hoodlum. Turman’s girlfriend tries to understand what is going on but cannot account for the changes in him and is assaulted and even raped by her supposedly gentle lover. The police wish to prosecute Turman for this sexual violence but the woman refuses to press charges, believing that she can somehow reach the man who was once in there. Turman has seemingly been fully taken over: he dresses in 1940s gear and goes after Gossett, who fully believes that Turman is the spirit of J.D. come back from the grave and that this is a spiritual test of his own ability to save the tormented soul and thus the means of his own validation. read more