Melvin Van Peebles
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Django Unchained (2012)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
influenced by Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971)
Themes
Films such as "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" and "Shaft" kicked off the genre in 1971.
And it will surely be a harder pill to swallow for some of the audiences who cheered at Inglourious Basterds' skull-bashing Jewish avengers, who might here feel the same white panic 1971 moviegoers suffered when confronted with Melvin Van Peebles's Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, arguably the first black superhero movie.
Do the Right Thing (1989)
Directed by Spike Lee
influenced by Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971)
The accepted comparison, I suppose, would be to Melvin Van Peebles (the early 1970's Van Peebles of "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song") or to Woody Allen, for their comic stance and their work as writer-directors, or writer-director-actors.
Having established Wikus as prejudiced against the aliens, the inevitable change he undergoes becomes a sci-fi variant on the 1970 Melvin Van Peebles’ film Watermelon Man, in which a white racist (Godfrey Cambridge in white makeup) finds himself transformed into a black man (Godfrey Cambridge without makeup).
Undercover Brother (2002)
Directed by Malcolm D. Lee
influenced by Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971)
Visuals
The jokes are hit-or-miss and Lee has a difficult time marrying the Austin Powers and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song color palettes into one singular aesthetic, but it’s impossible to fault a film with ideas this big.
Hill, like Linklater, has an ear for a good soundtrack, sprinkling gems of the mid-1990s throughout “Mid90s,” but most impressive is his choice of mid-’70s fusion-jazz groove “Watermelon Man,” an A-side cut off Herbie Hancock’s mega-popular album “Head Hunters.”