I have never seen such an atrocious looking film with an equally atrocious soundtrack before. A film with the most horrible fight choreography ever depicted and a spiral staircase that obviously went nowhere! That is what we get in Velvet Smooth, a film that tries to be too clever in terms of twists while probably telling the actors to just have fun with it as far as the fight scenes go.

The story, some guys are beating up and stealing from businesses involved in illegal numbers. They belong to a crime guy called King. There is also a dude who has a casino, but I forgot his name. Well King needs to find out who is behind the string of crimes so he gets Velvet Smooth and her lady friends who can unrealistically beat down a superior number of men in masks with karate that is worse than that of the Guy From Harlem. They have to track down the guy behind the masked attackers and get in some loving while pretending the spiral staircase in her apartment leads to a bedroom when it is obvious it goes nowhere.

The actors are horrible, the plot is horrible and the martial arts (if that is what you want to call it) is horrible. I began wondering if this thing were maybe a spoof made at a later date and made to look older when the strange dying screeching music began playing during the fight scenes and that one dude yelled on the roof, but alas, no, not meant to be a spoof.

So, I have seen this and The Guy From Harlem and both are bad, but this one was worse to me. My ears still bleed due to the screeching music. The Guy From Harlem had a more straightforward plot, while this one was all over the place. I saw it coming though, I knew it was going to be an "Aha, I'm the real culprit" type ending. So, it fails to surprise even with all the misdirection and the horrible decor to try and distract you!

This is one of the weaker Blaxploitation films made in the 70's. Production value? Well, I have seen student films with better attention to detail. The acting is not any better. The music isn't too bad and unfortunately one of the only good things about this film.

If you are dedicated to the Genre, then you have to see it. Otherwise you aren't going to miss anything. They took the formula approach and it shows. You can't take any of these movies too seriously, but you can pass on this one.

See: Three the Hardway, Blackula, Superfly, Shaft or Detroit 9000.

What better film to mark my one thousandth IMDb review than Velvet Smooth? If you enjoy badly shot and badly acted films, look no further. If you admire horrendous poly-knit suits, hideously ugly furniture, and sets apparently designed to duplicate the worst of suburban sprawl in the midst of the inner city, this is your film. If you're looking for a worse theme song than that featured in Darktown Strutters, Velvet Smooth has you covered there, too. And let's not overlook the film's unconvincing and badly choreographed (by co-star Owen Watson) martial arts scenes--there are times when characters appear to be playing hacky-sack rather than beating up on each other. In fact, the film's sole (soul?) redeeming quality is lead actress Johnnie Hill as the titular tough gal, a private investigator hired by local thug King Lathrop to unmask some goons who have moved in on his territory. She's not much of an actress, but she's easy on the eyes, which is more than can be said for virtually everything and everybody else in Velvet Smooth.