Our Daily Trailer: STAYIN’ ALIVE (aka FIGHT FOR YOUR LIFE)
Give us this day our daily trailer! Black History Month continues with a black-oriented trailer for a movie that has some heavy duty racism.
Fight For Your Life is a fairly notorious film thanks to the almost oppressive amount of ugly racist language it flings around. Of course all of that nasty racism comes from the mouth of an ignorant and evil white guy - who totally gets his comeuppance.
A group of big city criminals are on the lam and end up at the rural home of the Turner family - proud and decent black folk. William Sanderson - one day to be Larry on Newhart - is the redneck leader of the group who heaps copious racial abuse on everybody in the frame. Eventually the Turners rise up and fight back; the film is actually not as explicit as its reputation - it was a banned video nasty in the UK - might lead you to think. And in the end while Sanderson is a vile, vile racist saying vile, vile things, it's all in the service of proving what a dick he is. I imagine that black audiences in Times Square grindhouses got righteously worked up as daddy Ted Turner (seriously) took on Sanderson.
Like many exploitation classics, Fight For Your Life lived under many names. Stayin' Alive was one version, and this trailer shows how the film was marketed to black audiences as a black power/blaxploitation film. Check out the amazing narration at the end: "Damn, mama! Get 'im, papa!"
