DEATH OF A SNOWMAN

South Africa | 1978 Directed by Christopher Rowley Starring Nigel Davenport Ken Gampu Bima Stiggs Color | 87 Minutes | Not Rated Format: DVD (R0 - NTSC) Synapse Films

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		Review by Rod Barnett Film:5 DVD:5

It's not often that I admit to a big mistake, but mark your calendars because I’m about to do it. Until I saw this film I had no idea that the Blaxploitation genre ever made it beyond the shores of the United States. I knew that Blaxploitation movies had been exported to other countries around the world to profitable effect but I felt pretty sure that the land that spawned the 'black action' film was the only place that had produced exploitation movies aimed at a mostly black, mostly urban audience. Clearly I was wrong, which opens up a new world of exciting possibilities. I've always considered the late 1970s death of the black action film to be a sad loss for fans of low budget crime cinema, so having South Africa present itself as an alternate source for examples of the genre is fantastic. The question of whether or not the movies from the Dark Continent are any good is another question.

Death of a Snowman presents a convoluted and at times confusing story that begins with a Johannesburg gangster getting blown away in an underground parking garage while trying to have drunken sex with a whore. Immediately we're aware that we're dealing with scumbags and killers involved in some kind of criminal war where the violence is out of control. Newspaper reporter Steve Chaka (Ken Gampu) is assigned to the story and has jumped to the conclusion that it's a typical gangland hit when he gets the biggest scoop of his life dropped right into his lap. He receives a letter from vigilante organization responsible for the murder — they call themselves "War On Crime" and their statement of purpose is to rid the city's streets of any and all criminal elements through violence. After printing the letter Chaka is called in by the police and cautioned about releasing the wrong information but his friend, Lieutenant Ben Deel (Play Dirty's Nigel Davenport), defends his goals and his methods — at first. As the secretive War On Crime begins to use Chaka as their means of publicizing their intentions and promoting their actions, the two have a falling out. Lt. Deel knows Chaka has good intentions but fears that War On Crime is using his friend and that their motives are not nearly as noble as they claim to be. The bad guy corpses begin to stack up; it certainly seems that the vigilantes are doing something that the cops haven't been able to accomplish by actually getting to the crime bosses and taking them down. But Chaka's initial reaction to tacitly support War On Crime in his reporting eventually becomes impossible for him to maintain as he learns more about what might be behind the killings. Working both alone and as a team, Deel and Chaka dig deeper into the mystery and begin to unravel a plot worthy of the nastiest of crime syndicates.

As you would expect from a film made in the mid-1970s and trying to copy the conventions of its Blaxploitation brethren, there's a surfeit of groovy elements that keep the film interesting. The score by Trevor Rabin is suitably funky, with more than a few passages that I found myself enjoying. The gritty urban setting is fascinating to see. For someone not familiar with South Africa at all it was interesting to see the parallels to U.S. cities and culture of the same period and the often stark differences as well. The odd combination of the urban and the rural so close together makes for some odd mixtures of locations. Several of the car chases and gunfights happen in what I take to be a version of the Johannesburg suburbs with overgrown fields and bucolic backyards butting up against the dirty, grimy city in the distance. That these flower-fringed homes are near broken-down warehouses and ruined factories shows how much local color was there to simply capture on film.

The main focus of the story remains on Chaka and Deel for the majority of the film’s running time and while they're the center of attention the movie functions well enough. But there are two story elements that are used to spread out their investigation and only one of them is worth a damn. The good element is the somewhat standard peek into the life of War on Crime's main hitman. Looking like a hippy, Johnson (Bima Stiggs) is a stone-cold murderer for hire who is very good at his job but seems to have been doing it for too long. He's a stock crime movie character but Stiggs brings him more to life than I would have expected by showing us his relationship with his girlfriend and (to lesser effect) having him spout pseudo-philosophical babble about the dark heart of a killer. I wondered why so much time was spent on the Johnson character, as he doesn't really add much to the mystery plot, but when I learned that Stiggs wrote the movie's script it all became clear. Must be nice. The bad element that pads out the film is the painfully unfunny and drawn out series of scenes of two New York reporter friends of Chaka's who eventually justify their appearance when they contribute a key piece of information to wrap up the story. While both the story of the hitman and the NYC reporters are unnecessary, at least the hitman stuff is interesting.

Death of a Snowman isn't a terrible movie but it isn't particularly good, either. The post-production dubbing of many characters (including Chaka) is a minus because it's often distracting. The film hides its low budget pretty well for the most part; it has a couple of good performances and a few bad ones; the action scenes are pretty well handled with some clever editing hiding problems; the dialog between the two main characters is often fun and the novelty of its setting adds to its charms. Sadly, though, it just isn't good enough to really stand out the way it should for what it is. For a film made in South Africa it's painfully short on local color to make its somewhat unique setting mean something. I realize that the producers were trying to make a film that would look and sound like any other Blaxploitation movie but by avoiding truly distinctive South African ingredients they made a pretty bland tale.

Synapse comes to the rescue once again by bringing this hard to find title to DVD. Although the film print used is in pretty beat-up shape — with a good amount of dirt, scratches and lines throughout — I never found it distracting, even in a couple of scenes that are a little too dark. Indeed, considering the Grindhouse feel of Death of a Snowman these visual imperfections added to the amusing sense of wallowing in '70s nastiness. The film is presented in its original 1.66:1 aspect ratio (enhanced for widescreen televisions) with the mono soundtrack coming through well. Unfortunately the only extra is the theatrical trailer but considering the rarity of this film I'm not surprised that there isn't more. 1/16/11

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