Melvin Van PeeblesFilmography

Blackout

Actors: Melvin Van Peebles, Jeffrey Wright

Synopsis: In the summer of 2003, the East Coast of America was literally consumed by darkness. Though in the midst of the largest blackout in U.S. history most news reports spoke of the relative calm in a potentially chaotic situation, the situation in Brooklyn's East Flatbush neighborhood would soon become Read More

How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It)

Actors: Dick Hehmeyer

Synopsis: Melvin Van Peebles created a new style of African-American filmmaking in 1971, when on a shoestring budget he made Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, a violent action picture about a sex-show stud on the run from the police that below the surface served as a call for revolution in the black Read More

American Stag

Synopsis: Adam Carolla, Tommy Chong, Melvin Van Peebles, Barbara Hammer, Chris Gore, Linda Williams, and others discuss the history of the American "stag film" in his documentary from Bazaar Bizarre director Benjamin Meade. Up until the 1960s, the vast majority of American pornographic films were Read More

BAADASSSSS!

Crew: Book Author

Actors: T.K. Carter, David Alan Grier, Nia Long, Paul Rodriguez, Ossie Davis, Rainn Wilson, Joy Bryant, Khleo Thomas, Mario Van Peebles

Synopsis: In 1971, filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles released his third film, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, which he wrote, directed, and scored. Despite boasting an all-black cast, an X rating, a low budget, and a decidedly non-Hollywood approach to moviemaking, the ground-breaking independent film went on Read More

The Hebrew Hammer

Actors: Adam Goldberg, Judy Greer, Andy Dick, Mario Van Peebles, Peter Coyote

Synopsis: He's hip, he's fly, and he never mixes meat with dairy -- he's the world's first Jewish private eye, and he's out to save the world in this satiric comedy. Mordechai Jefferson Carver (Adam Goldberg) is a super-cool Jewish detective who takes no mess and is always ready to do the right thing for Read More

BaadAsssss Cinema

Synopsis: British director Isaac Julien takes on the Blaxploitation era of the '70s in the hour-long documentary Baadasssss Cinema. With archive film clips and interviews, this brief look at a frequently overlooked historical period of filmmaking acts as an introduction rather than a complete record. Read More

Jim Brown: All-American

Actors: Jim Brown, Dr. Walter Beach, Hank Aaron, Bernie Casey, Johnnie L. Cochran Jr.

Synopsis: Spike Lee's documentary on the football star, movie actor, and social activist is a no-frills examination of a man who has rarely been out of the public spotlight for over 45 years. Jim Brown talks about the various phases of his life, from his boyhood in the all-black community of St. Simons Read More

Antilles-Sur-Seine

Actors: Med Hondo, Chantal Lauby, Edouard Montoute, Pierre-Olivier Mornas

Synopsis: Corruption threatens to move into a heretofore idyllic village in this comedy-drama. Hector St. Rose (Med Hondo) is the mayor of a seaside community in the Antilles Islands, a French-controlled territory in the West Indies. Hector has long been determined not to sacrifice the well-being of his Read More

Le Conte du Ventre Plein

Crew: Book Author, Composer (Music Score), Director, Executive Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Andréa Ferréol, Jacques Boudet, Claude Perron

Synopsis: Maverick director Melvin Van Peebles translates his own satirical novel to the screen with this multi-national portrait of race, class, and hypocrisy. The film's title refers to the name of a haute cuisine restaurant run by a self-satisfied conservative couple, Henri (Jacques Boudet) and Read More

Classified X

Crew: Executive Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Mario Van Peebles

Synopsis: In this medium-length (53 minutes) French-U.S. documentary made for European television, black filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles examines African-American film history. Narrating while clips, stills, and location shots are seen behind him in a rear projection, Van Peebles' commentary covers a wide Read More

Love Kills

Actors: Mario Van Peebles, Lesley Ann Warren, Daniel Baldwin, Donovan Leitch, Alexis Arquette

Synopsis: New Age masseur Poe Finklestein (Mario Van Peebles) has an appointment at the posh estate of widow Evelyn Heiss (Lesley Ann Warren), who lives with her gay stepson Dominique (Donovan Leitch) and her sister-in-law Alena Heiss (Louise Fletcher). The gardener (Melvin Van Peebles) is a bystander Read More

Riot in the Streets

Actors: Luke Perry, Cicely Tyson, Mario Van Peebles

Synopsis: This off-beat urban anthology offers four different views of the mayhem and destruction that came from the 1992 Los Angeles riots. The first vignette "Gold Mountain," directed by Galen Yuen, centers on a struggle between a traditional-minded Chinese storekeeper and his increasingly uncontrollable Read More

The Outer Limits: Bodies of Evidence

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Directed by cutting-edge black filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles, this episode stars the director's son, Mario Van Peebles, as William Clark, the captain of the space station Meridian. When three of his crew members suddenly turn up dead, Clark is accused of mass murder. Only Clark knows that the three Read More

Homicide: Life on the Street: The Documentary

Actors: Richard Belzer, Andre Braugher, Reed Diamond, Michelle Forbes, Clark Johnson

Synopsis: The highlight of the homicide unit's New Year's party is the unreeling of "Back Page News," a documentary produced by the unit's in-house video photographer Brodie (Max Perlich). Some of the events covered by Brodie's camera prove to be embarrassing, especially when the identity of the infamous Read More

Gang in Blue

Crew: Director

Actors: Mario Van Peebles, Josh Brolin, J.T. Walsh, Stephen Lang, Cynda Williams

Synopsis: In this highly-charged police drama, Officer Michael Rhoades is becoming increasingly disturbed by the amount of white-on-black violence that has been escalating in his quiet town. He is especially disturbed that much of that interracial brutality is coming from the police. Rhoades calls they FBI Read More

Calm at Sunset

Actors: Michael Moriarty, Peter Facinelli, Kevin Conway, Kate Nelligan, Christopher Orr

Synopsis: Filmed on location in Nova Scotia, the made-for-TV Calm at Sunset is a "generation-gap" story with an unusual twist. Instead of causing his family heartbreak by refusing to follow in his dad's footsteps, the protagonist disappoints his family by insisting on being just like his dad. Fisherman Read More

Fist of the North Star

Actors: Costas Mandylor, Gary Daniels, Malcolm McDowell, Chris Penn, Melvin Van Peebles

Synopsis: Set in a post-WWIII world, this action fantasy centers on the deadly struggle between a great warrior and the villainous overlord who stole the warrior's lover and brutally murdered his father. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

Panther

Crew: Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Kadeem Hardison, Bokeem Woodbine, Joe Don Baker, Courtney Vance, Tyrin Turner

Synopsis: This controversial political drama semi-fictionalizes the history of the radical Black Panther Party, an African-American organization that polarized America from 1966-70. Huey Newton (Marcus Chong) and Bobby Seale (Courtney B. Vance) are a pair of Oakland, California, men who form a new political Read More

Terminal Velocity

Actors: Charlie Sheen, Nastassja Kinski, James Gandolfini, Christopher McDonald, Gary Bullock

Synopsis: Party-hard skydiving teacher Ditch Brodie (Charlie Sheen) has a knack for getting himself into trouble, but his booze-babes-and-planes shenanigans hardly prepare him for an international plot that pits Brodie and a mysterious KGB agent against a post-Cold War Russian villain called Kerr (Chris Read More

Tales of Erotica

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Director, Editor, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Arliss Howard, Cynda Williams, Kathleen Wilhoite, John Toles-Bey, Mira Sorvino

Synopsis: This German film consists of six separate vignettes each created by a different international director, each challenged to create brief erotic scenarios. The first, named "Wet," was directed by Bob Rafelson and involves an encounter between a bathroom fixtures salesman and a customer who comes Read More

Posse

Actors: Mario Van Peebles, Stephen Baldwin, Charles Lane, Tom "Tiny" Lister, Jr., Big Daddy Kane

Synopsis: Writer, director, and star Mario Van Peebles tried to correct historical misconceptions about African-Americans on the frontier with this action-packed western that's also an homage to spaghetti Westerns. During the Spanish-American War, a squadron of black soldiers led by Jesse Lee (Van Peebles) Read More

Boomerang

Actors: Eddie Murphy, Halle Berry, Robin Givens, David Alan Grier, Grace Jones, Martin Lawrence

Synopsis: Eddie Murphy plays Marcus Graham, a hotshot ad exec who's also an insatiable womanizer. He is thus hardly prepared for his new boss, Jacqueline, played by Robin Givens. In terms of things romantic, Jacqueline is nothing more or less than a female version of Marcus -- and now, for the first time Read More

True Identity

Actors: Lenny Henry, Frank Langella, Charles Lane, J.T. Walsh, Anne-Marie Johnson

Synopsis: Charles Lane directed Andy Breckman's script, based on an old "Saturday Night Live" sketch of Breckman's that featured Eddie Murphy. Comic Lenny Henry takes Murphy's place in True Identity as a black man forced to don white face in order to save his life. Henry plays Miles Pope, an agreeable Read More

Identity Crisis

Crew: Director, Editor, Producer

Actors: Mario Van Peebles, Ilan Mitchell-Smith, Shelley Burch, Richard Fancy, Nicholas Kepros

Synopsis: This hip-hop comedy stars Mario Van Peebles as rapper Chilly D, who becomes possessed by the spirit of outrageous fashion designer Yves Malmaison (Richard Fancy). ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide Read More

Jaws: The Revenge

Actors: Michael Caine, Lorraine Gary, Lance Guest, Mario Van Peebles, Karen Young

Synopsis: This third sequel to the 1975 mega-hit Jaws returns Lorraine Gary to the role of Ellen Brody, widow of the Roy Scheider character from the first two films. When her son Sean, the current police chief of shark-plagued Amity Island, is killed by the beast, Ellen goes to the Bahamas to comfort her Read More

O.C. and Stiggs

Actors: Daniel Jenkins, Neil Barry, Paul Dooley, Jane Curtin, Jon Cryer, Ray Walston

Synopsis: In what can only be described as a dramatic change of pace, Robert Altman directed this raunchy teen comedy based on the antics of two characters featured in a series of stories published in the National Lampoon. Oliver Cromwell Ogilvie (Daniel Jenkins), aka O.C., and his buddy Mark Stiggs (Neil Barry Read More

Taking Care of Terrific

Synopsis: Produced for public television, Taking Care of Terrific spotlights Joanne Vanicola as a teenaged baby sitter named Enid. Enjoying quality time in the park with her charge Joshua (Benjamin Barrett), Enid is given a strong dose of reality when some bag ladies wander into view. Enid and Joshua then Read More

America

Actors: Zack Norman, Tammy Grimes, Michael J. Pollard, Richard Belzer, Monroe Arnold

Synopsis: An TV news satire from director Robert Downey, this film concerns a cable evening news show that gradually turns into chaotic performance art. Head newscaster Terrence Hackley (Zack Norman) has been caught by his wife Joy (Tammy Grimes) with a plaid skirt in his suitcase, so he covers up by Read More

The Sophisticated Gents

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Producer, Teleplay By

Actors: Paul Winfield, Bernie Casey, Roosevelt Grier

Synopsis: The three-part TV miniseries The Sophisticated Gents covers 25 years in the lives of a group of close friends. Nine African-American members of a sports club gather for a quarter-century reunion. As they reminisce over the high and low points of their lives, some of the members await the arrival Read More

Greased Lightning

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Richard Pryor, Beau Bridges, Pam Grier, Cleavon Little, Vincent Gardenia

Synopsis: Based on the life story of NASCAR auto racing champion Wendell Scott, this film, starring Richard Pryor as Scott, covers his struggles -- from the end of World War II to 1971-- to overcome racism and gain the freedom to demonstrate his winning auto-racing skills to everyone. He is not without Read More

Just an Old Sweet Song

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Screenwriter

Synopsis: Originally telecast September 14, 1976, as a CBS "General Electric Theater" special, Just an Old Sweet Song was the first of three pilots for Down Home, a proposed TV series created by filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles. Robert Hooks and Cicely Tyson star as Nate and Priscilla Simmons, the patriarch and Read More

Don't Play Us Cheap

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Esther Rolle, Avon Long, Rhetta Hughes

Synopsis: Melvin Van Peebles' first film after his groundbreaking blaxploitation effort Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song was this photographed version of his Broadway musical Don't Play Us Cheap, in which a pair of Satan's helpers, in order to earn their horns, are dispatched to Harlem to crash into (and Read More

Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Director, Editor, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Melvin Van Peebles, Simon Chuckster, Hubert Scales, John Dullaghan, West Gale

Synopsis: Produced, directed, written, scored by, and starring Melvin Van Peebles, this landmark "blaxploitation" film was as controversial as it was popular for its then X-rated story of one African-American man's triumph over the Man. After beating a couple of white cops he witnessed brutalizing a local Read More

The Watermelon Man

Crew: Composer (Music Score), Director

Actors: Godfrey Cambridge, Estelle Parsons, Howard Caine, D'Urville Martin, Mantan Moreland

Synopsis: African-American activist and actor Melvin Van Peebles directed this comedy-drama starring Godfrey Cambridge as Jeff Gerber, a white, middle class husband to Althea (Estelle Parson) and father of two who is also a mild bigot. One morning, Jeff wakes up to discover that he has become a black man Read More

The Story of a Three-Day Pass

Crew: Book Author, Composer (Music Score), Director, Screenwriter

Actors: Pierre Doris, Christian Marin, Nicole Berger, Harry Baird

Synopsis: Artfully squeezing every penny out of a grant from the French Cinema Center, Melvin Van Peebles made his directorial debut with Story of a Three-Day Pass. Harry Baird plays a black American GI, Turner, who falls in love with French mademoiselle (Nicole Berger). Upon his return from an idyllic Read More