Mississippi country girl Emma Mae has come to live with her aunt's family in Compton. She falls for a druggie loser who gets arrested.

This is classified as blaxploitation although most 70's black films get boxed in with that label. It's an indie taking place in 70's Compton. That in itself is intriguing. The actors are one step below. They have a tendency to go over the top. This is an interesting bit of black cinema.

Interesting film made when its director Jamaa Fanaka, was a film school student at my alma mater, UCLA, just as Blaxploitation was waning and ten years before the advent of more radically political/social cinematic explorations of African American life such as "Do The Right Thing" and "Boyz n The Hood". This film is poised in between the two genres, but leaning more forward than back, in my opinion, particularly in its denouement when the importance of the community, certainly a large part of Lee's movies, if not Singleton's, is stressed over that of the seductive Super Cool individual, a staple of Blaxploitation. While this theme is strongly and forcefully stated, with good pacing and well handled action scenes, the acting, as befits most student and/or low budget indy productions, is undeniably on the stiff side. Less forgivable is the story character lapse in the screenplay, also by Fanaka, involving Jesse, the drug pusher and abusive boyfriend of the title character. When Emma Mae denounces him in the powerful final scene a lot of that power is vitiated due to Jesse's having been seen throughout most of the film by everyone but Emma Mae as more of a stoned out doofus than a false messiah as she states as she's kicking his ass.. Therefore, we're treated to the always salutary Woman Whups Abusive Man's Butt but falling well short of Community Over Individual which, as I understand it, is what Fanaka was after. So, let's give it a B minus and look forward to watching this good director's most well known work, "Penitentiary".

Not the best cast and acting by any stretch and no familiar faces but I have to say it was intriguing enough to watch thru to the end. A really really nice soundtrack! Wish I could find that to buy!