MovieChat Forums > Together Brothers (1974) Discussion > 'Together Brothers'

'Together Brothers'

posted 15 years ago by studio_raat
4 replies | jump to latest

My aunt took me and the rest of my cousins to see this in New York, 1974. Have not seen this movie in 24 years, until today. Not a good idea for a 8 year old to see this because the image and all details of the cop being killed and stripped, stayed with me all these years. And killer transvestites wasnt appropriate to say the least. After the movie ended lots of the audience stopped a few rows ahead of us to talk to a young man still sitting in his seat. My aunt figured it was one of the actors in the movie. As an 8 year old I wouldnt and couldnt remember who it was. Over the years I assumed it wasnt anyone important since most of the cast was forgettable. As soon as Glynn Turman appeared on the screen today as I was watching "Together Brothers" I immediately remembered it was him. Yes, a very successful acting career that I saw, and followed since "Cooley High" a year later (1975), and never realized it was him until 34 years later. Watching this movie today brought back vivid memories.

[–] david38091 15 years ago

@ studio_raat, I agree this was not a good movie to take a 8 yr old to 34 yrs ago. Today this type of stuff is freely shown on network tv and kids don't blink an eye. Unfortunately many black adults took young kids to these type of violent movies during that time. There wasn't much of a selection of movies with black actors or anything related to black Americans being made of any quailty. It wasn't uncommon to see a lot of young black kids watching violent sexually grahic R rated movies at that time, seeing that was all they were making then.

A friend of mines came over yesterday and notice it was playng on demand on cable tv. I said to myself on gee I'm going to have to suffer through a bad 70s movie. This was certainly a low budgeted movie and not great acting but I was surprised, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I don't remember seeing this film when it first came out. After watching it I vaguely remember seeing it though. It reminded me of the Fat Albert cartoon but more violent. LOL That's probably one of the reasons why your aunt took you to see it. The kids even looked like the characters in the cartoon except there was no Fat Albert.

A lot of these movies with all black cast were lumped into the same category as blaxexploitation. Whatever blaxexploitation means because everything that comes out of the Hollywood film industry is basically exploitive. It's certainly not a great movie but it took me back to that time in history when I was a young black kid growing up. I was 16 in 1974. I didn't live my life in the streets like these kids did in the movie but the way they dressed the music etc took me back to that time. I was surprised to see Barry White wrote the songs to the sound track.

[–] treshon 15 years ago

Could've been better acting, but the teens in this movie, considering it's probably their 1st film at the time, were pretty good.

Lincoln Kilpatrick was great as usual, and Glynn Thurman - although a very small, short role - was good too.

Barry White's funky score was pretty smelly and fit perfectly.

'Come on Ride the Train' by Quad City DJ's sampled one of Barry's tracks from this movie.

[–] MrDarren 15 years ago

I liked the movie. I was 4 when this came out, but I still enjoy watching movies about the 70s. I think the kids did a good job considering they were not very experienced actors. They were better than a lot of grownup actors in that genre.

[–] activista 11 years ago

@david38091

"There wasn't much of a selection of movies with black actors or anything related to black Americans being made of any quailty. It wasn't uncommon to see a lot of young black kids watching violent sexually grahic R rated movies at that time, seeing that was all they were making then."

That isn't true---there were a bunch of films, including CLAUDETTE,GREASED LIGHTENING,COTTON COMES TO HARLEM,BLACK GIRL, HIT,and FIVE ON THE BLACK HAND SIDE, made back then that didn't fit the "blaxsploitation" label, which is why some of them (3 of the last 4 in particular) are pretty obscure. Plus,I grew up during that time and my mother never took me or my little brother to see those kinds of movies--she was real restrictive about what we saw,even on TV. Hell, there are parents now, I'm sure who don't care what the hell their kids watch on TV, or in the movies---that's been true since TV and movies existed. It's not fair to dump that all that on blaxsploitation films, though----they served their purpose, which was to make black folks feel damn proud of themselves--which is how I feel every time I see one from back in the day.