Blaxploitation movies took their cue from the civil rights and Black Power movements—casting black actors for the first time in starring roles, as heroes instead of victims—and drew larger African American audiences than any others before or since. Yet they have long been relegated to the category of “exploitation” and thus excluded from the canon of cinema history. A bold re-examination of this position, BaadAsssss Cinema combines archival material with footage from black action films such as Coffy, Blacula, Superfly, Foxy Brown, Shaft, and Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song to argue that blaxploitation films were in fact complex reactions to social conditions and inequities of the era—works that reveled in the ridiculous and gave relief from rage with powerful imagery and humor.