8/10
Gravedigger Jones & Coffin Ed Johnson strike again in Come Back, Charleston Blue
7 February 2012
Just watched this sequel to Cotton Comes to Harlem on YouTube. Once again, Gravedigger Jones (Godfrey Cambridge) and Coffin Ed Johnson (Raymond St. Jacques) are trying to make it safe to live in the streets of Harlem but there's someone running drugs there and the possibility of the title character returning to exact vengeance...While I thought CCTH was pretty entertaining, this one to me was a bit more funny and lively especially with help from Donny Hathway's score and supervision of it by Quincy Jones. I especially liked the performance of Minnie Gentry as Her Majesty who expects her late husband Charleston Blue to return any minute now though probably realizes he may never. Still, she likes to live in the past. Also returning is Dick Sabol as the dumb white cop Jerema though he's a bit more sympathetically treated here. Really, all I'll say now is I highly recommend Come Back, Charleston Blue. P.S. Since this is Black History Month, I'd like to cite other players of color that appeared here: Peter DeAnda as Joe, Percy Rodrigues as Bryce, Jonelle Allen as Carol, Maxwell Glanville as Caspar, Toney Brealond as a drag queen, Tim Pelt as Earl J, Marcia McBroom as a girl barber, Adam Wade as Benjy, Dorothi Fox as a streetwalker, and Theodore Wilson as the cemetery guard. Both Ms. Allen and Wilson previously appeared in Cotton Comes to Harlem as a secretary and Barry, respectively. Oh, and a year later, Ms. Gentry (who's Terrence Howard's great-grandmother) would also be in Black Caesar as Momma Gibbs.
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