Coonskin 1975

Sampson and the Preacherman rush to help their friend Randy escape from prison, but a roadblock halts them and a tense shootout with the police erupts, setting a brutal, chaotic tone for the journey ahead. While they await help, Randy at last talks with an escapee named Pappy, who insists he knows a story about three men who resemble him and his companions. [Pappy]’s tale unfolds as a vivid blend of animation layered over photographs and live-action footage, inviting the viewer into a surreal, heightened version of the world they inhabit.

Brother Rabbit, Brother Bear, and Preacher Fox decide to leave the Southern states after a bank forecloses on their home and sells it to a man who intends to turn the place into a brothel. Their move takes them to Harlem, where they discover that the city holds more danger and deception than they expected. A con man named Simple Savior, who proclaims himself the cousin of “Black Jesus,” tries to rally his followers by presenting himself as a revolutionary force capable of “giving the strength to kill whites.” In a stark stage-show within his “church,” Savior enacts brutal scenes that mix imagery of real-world oppression with pop-culture icons like John Wayne, Elvis Presley, and Richard Nixon, and then asks for donations from his audience.

Rabbit sees through the scam and uses calculated, reverse psychology to turn the crowd against Savior’s violent rhetoric. When the crowd turns hostile, Savior’s men try to silence Rabbit, but he and Bear outsmart the threat and end Savior’s control in a deadly confrontation. With Savior gone, Rabbit steps into his criminal role, beginning a rise through Harlem’s underworld. Yet success brings new pressure: Savior’s former lieutenants warn that if Rabbit cannot eliminate his rivals, they will erase him first.

Rabbit’s next adversary is Mannigan, a virulently racist, homophobic police officer who doubles as a Mafia bagman. Sent to locate Rabbit, Mannigan and his crew track him to a nightclub called The Cottontail. There, a black stripper diverts Mannigan’s attention long enough for an LSD cube to be dropped into his drink. Under the drug’s influence, Mannigan is manipulated into a compromising encounter, targeted with blackface and mammy imagery, and then discarded. A frenzy follows: Mannigan fires blindly, a police response erupts, and the officer is killed by the chaotic gunfire.

The pursuit then shifts toward the Godfather and the Mafia, whose subway-dwelling gangsters become Rabbit’s next target. The hit is assigned to Sonny, the Godfather’s eldest son, who stalks Rabbit in minstrel-show garb and with a hidden machine gun in a banjo. Bear protects Rabbit during the violent standoff, taking several bullets in the process. When Sonny tries to flee, Rabbit shoots him multiple times, his car crashes, and Sonny dies in the ensuing explosion. Sonny’s mother erupts in grief only to lash out at her husband, who is promptly slain by one of his own followers.

A weary Bear wrestles with the choice between continuing alongside Rabbit or attempting a crime-free life. He seeks guidance from Fox, and upon arriving at Fox’s newly acquired brothel, Bear is “married” to Pearl—a relationship born from a tense moment the trio shared with Savior’s men. Following Fox’s counsel, Bear becomes a professional boxer for the Mafia. In a calculated trap, Rabbit places a tar-soaked dummy of himself in the arena stands, drawing the Mafiosi into a stuck-tar trap. The mastermind escapes as the tar-covered group is left vulnerable, and Rabbit, Bear, Fox, and the opponent flee moments before a bomb explodes in the boxing ring.

As Pappy’s story concludes, Samson and the Preacher arrive to aid Randy and Pappy in their escape through a hail of police gunfire, bringing a brutal, cathartic close to their immediate flight. Throughout the film, the core narrative is punctuated by animated interludes featuring the image of the white, blonde, voluptuous “Miss America,” a symbol of the United States. In each vignette, she lures a man who stands for the African American populace, only to turn the encounter into something violent or deadly, underscoring the film’s biting social critique in a stark, surreal style.