Dana Wynter
Oddly enough, I have a kind of a personal connection to this obscure, ham-handed film. I was into the beautiful singer Barbara McNair at the time, and I read about this nude scene in the latest Playboy, so I dragged my college roommate halfway across the Bronx to see it, luring him with the promise of some great lasagna at an affordable nearby restaurant. The nude scene wasn’t bad, albeit not as good as we might have expected from the Playboy article, which included these frames that never appeared in the film.
The movie itself was shit, and as far as I could tell, had nothing to do with the Chester Himes novel except the title.
Roger Ebert said:
“If He Hollers, Let Him Go!” is trash. That it should be playing in a reputable first-run theater is astonishing; apparently it opened downtown because it has two cheaply exploited angles: nudity and racism. The ads make a lot of both. The plot is insulting garbage. The story panders in prejudice. This is an evil film, a dishonest film, an ugly film.”
The New York Times basically echoed those sentiments, calling it “contrived, unconvincing and dishonest,” and ranting against the “impossible dialogue.” The reviewer began by calling it a “lurid, cliche-flapping melodrama” and “painfully embarrassing.” He concluded by writing, “Raymond St Jacques has no business here, nor has anyone except those curious to see just how bad a picture can be.”
Yeah. I agree with them. Complete crap. Not even successful crap. The box office was minimal, despite the boost from Playboy. Why anyone thought this film would deserve a 2023 Blu-Ray release is mystifying, but it made me happy, and not just because of my personal nostalgia. The film actually has some historical importance, in that it represents the only career nudity from both McNair and Wynter, and we can now see that in (admittedly mediocre) 1080 resolution.