Singer-turned-actress Lola Falana (The Liberation of L.B. Jones) stars as Lady Cocoa, a spoiled, sassy “hot piece of cheese” who gets out of prison for 24 hours in order to testify against a mob boss. Under the watchful eye of two cops in a Nevada hotel, she bats her eyelashes, throws temper tantrums and scoffs, “You poo-poos!”
After she tires of tossing off the insult “Buster Brown,” she ventures into the casino and soon finds herself in a heap o’ trouble, being pursued by no fewer than two teams of hitmen, one of which contains football player-turned-soda pitchman “Mean” Joe Greene (The Black Six); the other, a dude in drag. The best scene has a car being chased through the casino by a cop on foot. Do the math.
I’ve long believed that there was no such thing as a bad theme song for a blaxploitation movie, but then I heard this film’s, appropriated from “Pop Goes the Weasel” (an alternate title for this cup of Cocoa). Director Matt Cimber (Butterfly) has it played over and over and over. —Rod Lott