Blaxploitation is a genre whose iconography has, through time, repeтιтion and reduction, come to be defined by kitsch.

The term immediately conjures images of bad ᴀss afro-clad Black men and women delivering street justice to their oppressors — usually racist whites — to the sound of wah-wah guitars over a funky backbeat. Yet as ubiquitous as those elements may have been in many Black-led (and Black-made) films of the 1970s, they often disguised, or made more palatable, deeper stories and more complex characterizations.

Today, many of those signposts, especially their stars and soundtracks, endure more fondly than the films themselves. Shout Factory’s recently-released two-volume set, Blaxploitation Classics, offers a kind of cultural reset on the genre, not merely collecting twelve entries from its heyday but presenting previously unparalleled picture and sound, along with commentaries and interviews, to properly contextualize their impact to viewers.

The Roots Of Blaxploitation Began With Black Moviegoer Frustration

Emerging in the late 1960s, blaxploitation began in large part because of the absence of consistent representation of people of color on screen. Although Sidney Poitier achieved movie stardom earlier that decade with films like Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night, those portrayals were heavily idealized — unᴀssailable in their wholesomeness. Otherwise, racial stereotypes were repeatedly reinforced, or at the very least, not much effort was given to challenging them. Blaxploitation introduced a broader landscape of stories involving marginalized people, and unsurprisingly, audiences attended in droves.

For better or worse, these two boxed sets do not include a few of the best-known тιтles, likely because of their individual value to their rights holders: Super Fly, Trouble Man and The Mack are nowhere to be found. (Gordon Parks’ Shaft, at least, was carefully packaged in a 4K release by none other than Criterion Collection.) Blaxploitation Classics Vol. 1 includes two films starring Pam Grier (Coffy, Sheba, Baby), two by Fred Williamson (Black Caesar, Hell Up in Harlem) and two other known but less-seen тιтles (Across 110th Street and Truck Turner).

The Vol. 1 set by itself covers a remarkable spectrum of Black stories, some more inspirational than others. The two films starring Grier marked some of the earliest films where strong, empowered females were spotlighted as the main character — in any filmmaking setting. Consequently, Quentin Tarantino calls Grier “cinema’s first female action star.” In Coffy, she’s effectively a vigilante by night, exacting revenge on the drug-pushers who harmed her sister and ravaged her community. But in Sheba, Baby, she almost becomes a James Bond-like character, a private detective pulled into a conflict between her father and the thugs trying to muscle him out of his business. Though the movie overall isn’t great, the latter culminates in a thrilling waterway chase involving jet skis and exploding motorboats.

Directed with an eye on the grindhouse circuit, they almost all involve copious amounts of Sєx and violence. But some hold higher ambitions, or at least aren’t content to simply capitulate to simple narrative formulas. Across 110th Street — whose iconic тιтle theme amazingly never plays in the film in its best-known form — unfolds partially like a riff on Norman Jewison’s 1966 film In the Heat of the Night, where a righteous black cop and his pragmatic white counterpart reluctantly team up to find the perpetrators of a robbery of a mafia stronghold before the mob itself does. But its main protagonists aren’t bad ᴀss thieves, but struggling ex-convicts trying to find a foothold in a community — a world — that has discarded them. As a result, the story isn’t triumphant, but tragic, and for all involved.

Despite their different тιтles, one of the Williamson films is actually a sequel to the other, Hell Up in Harlem following Black Caesar. Tommy Gobbs, the character Williamson plays, superficially seems like a stereotypical Blaxploitation hero — claiming his space in the Italian-controlled criminal underworld of New York with muscle, ingenuity, and indefatigable style. But he is not a good guy, and not just in a “times change” kind of way; he manipulates his childhood friend and controls the woman he loves, and ultimately betrays virtually everyone who helped him ascend to the top of the gangster food chain. In fact, the real surprise in his journey is that there’s a sequel at all, since he meets a deservedly ignominious end in the finale of Black Caesar. His amoral pursuit of wealth and power resumes with few lessons learned in Hell Up in Harlem, highlighting the variety in “empowerment” narratives — namely, not all healthy — across the genre.

Blaxploitation Classics Vol. 2 Offers satisfying, Deep-Cut Selections

Whether intentionally or not, Blaxploitation Classic Vol. 2 delves even more deeply into the complexities of blaxploitation films. The set again includes two Pam Grier films, including what’s likely the most famous one: Foxy Brown. Friday Foster is the other, and she plays a pH๏τographer’s ᴀssistant who witnesses an ᴀssᴀssination attempt and becomes a target herself as a result. Replacing Fred Williamson in the box is former football-star-turned-actor Jim Brown, whose righteous revenge films (the original Slaughter and Slaughter’s Big Rip Off) are collected here.

As much as Slaughter burnished Brown’s reputation as an action star — like Grier, one of the very first of color — it also touches on some provocatively understated ideas. Despite the introduction of Black actress Marlene Clark as a compatriot, and presumably, potential lover in Slaughter’s campaign to bring down the leaders of a crime ring that killed his father, he seduces Ann (Stella Stevens), the white girlfriend of ruthless henchman Dominic Hoffo (as delightfully unhinged Rip Torn). But rather than the vengeance-seeking ex-soldier simply racking up another Sєxual conquest, he and Ann actually develop a real relationship that he seems to invest in genuinely.

The Sєxual prowess of most characters (male and female) in these films is off the charts, or at least indisputable. But in both the first and second films, Brown offers a more emotionally engaged portrayal, and the films as a whole seem more liberated in their atтιтudes about interracial romance, even if many of the white characters seem to maintain offensive viewpoints about the prospect.

The other two films, meanwhile, proved the most interesting in either set: Cotton Comes to Harlem and Bucktown. The first, an adaptation of the novel of Chester Himes’ eponymous novel by actor and director Ossie Davis, tells the story of two Black cops trying to locate $87,000 that was stolen from — and possibly by — a disreputable community leader. Released in 1970, it stars Godfrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques as the two cops, who despite being at odds with a community that mistrusts them, are fiercely loyal to the working-class people within it. In particular, it explores how an individual can exploit a community’s sense of civic duty and its kindness for the less fortunate, refusing to exonerate or exclude Blacks from culpability in destroying the cultural and economic prospects of their own people.

Then there’s Bucktown, the deep-cut, unexpected gem of both sets. In terms of star wattage, it brings together Williamson and Grier, a big deal commercially. But the story follows Williamson as Duke Johnson, a former black activist who arrives in a Southern town (in real life Kansas City, MO) to bury his late brother, only to learn that it’s heavily controlled by a racist and corrupt white police force. After Duke enlists his old friend from Chicago, Roy (Thalmus Rasulala), to eradicate the white cops, he ends up facing a worse problem when Roy and his henchmen take control in the cops’ place, terrorizing whites and Blacks equally.

The latter is a pivot audiences may not see coming, but it speaks to the willingness of these films — some of them, anyway — to subvert expectations, and to raise questions about what role and responsibility Blacks play in their own communities. In spite of Grier’s role as Duke’s lover, the most affecting relationship in Bucktown is the one between Duke and Roy, as the two of them unwittingly get manipulated by Roy’s henchmen, leading to an irreversible rift between them. (It also results in a fight scene so epic that it rivals They Live in length and exhausting intensity.)

There are many more incredible ideas and themes in these films — in the latter case literally, thanks to composers like James Brown, Roy Ayers, Isaac Hayes and Bobby Womack. But these boxed sets perform a kind of cultural archaeology, showcasing a panorama — both bad and good, but all vital — of Black-themed storytelling. At the time, these films were often received as well commercially as they were roasted critically, not just from a cinematic point of view but a cultural one; many prominent Black leaders condemned them for reinforcing perceptions about people of color and their ᴀssociations with criminal misbehavior.

Ultimately, however, the celebration of this genre in Blaxploitation Classics Vol. 1 and 2 doesn’t, and needn’t repair those injuries. In the 1970s, the diversity of portrayals of people of color, in TV and film, were much more limited than they are now, and perhaps rightfully each “bad” one carried more weight than it would now. Conversely, some of those narratives offered empowerment for viewers who had never seen anyone who looked like them kicking ᴀss and taking names, even if it was outside the law. These box sets let you make those determination for yourself while providing a cross section of entries for judgment; as a cultural artifact, sociopolitical commentary or just compelling entertainment, Blaxploitation Classics ranks among the most enriching home video releases of 2025.