YMMV / Black Mama, White Mama

• Best Known for the Fanservice: The film is remembered best as a 90-minute softcore Girls Behind Bars film full of gratuitous nudity and lesbian domination. While there is a gratuitous shower scene and some nudity, there's actually less than pop culture would let you believe. Although one character is a lesbian and propositions a couple of women, nothing explicit is ever shown.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Lee, a former prostitute, and Karen, a revolutionary, blindside a pair of nuns and steal their habits for disguises.
• Fair for Its Day: Although Matron Densmore is a horrifically stereotypical Psycho Lesbian, portrayed as predatory and voyeuristic, the film does at least highlight that her advances towards Lee are bad because they're against Lee's consent and would be considered an abuse of power; this being long before sexual harassment was even talked about in the media. For what it's worth, Densmore appears to be in a relationship with Warden Logan, who's closer to a Reasonable Authority Figure and at least implying Densmore's behaviour is specific to her.
• Funny Moments: When the gang apprehend Captain Cruz and his partner, they get Lupe to ask which one had the bigger penis. She says Cruz, who was eight inches, and the partner was only four. They make both men drop their pants to verify, and confirm that Cruz was indeed that long.
• Heartwarming Moments: Lee and Karen being freed from the chain. Both share a look, acknowledging the other's strengths with a look that states they've become Fire-Forged Friends. Karen even refers to Lee as her friend.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: A Black female on the run from gangsters who briefly disguises herself as a nun? It's hard not to think of Sister Act.
• Ho Yay: The shower scene in prison where many of the women splash around and spray each other with a hose playfully is quite suggestive. They're all naked, of course. It's helped by the fact an explicitly lesbian prison guard is spying on them at the same time and masturbating.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Just here for Pam Grier kicking ass!
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: While the film is seen as never worse than mediocre, Pam Grier was noted to invest a lot of heart and strength into the part, and elevate the material.
• Values Resonance:
  • Featuring two strong female leads, the movie has a heavy theme of female empowerment, and doubly so for Pam Grier's character Lee Daniels. Shown as an equal to her white rival, she has her own motivations and strengths; in fact screwing over a misogynistic pimp she was beholden to, and she wins in the end. Although Karen appears to be the only female in the resistance, she's essential to their cause, and the plot involves finding her not because the rebels have to rescue her...but they need her help. The two women also learn to work together, and their motivations do not involve romantic relationships with men (although Karen has a boyfriend who's also a rebel). They even get a scene where a man tries to sexually assault them, and they work together to take him out.
  • The film has a strong theme of Black Power too, and was released right in that era. This marked the first time that audiences had seen a woman of colour outside of playing Mammy or a Living Prop. Pam Grier also dispenses with straightened hair in favour of her natural afro, which has helped the movie age very well in light of the Natural Hair Movement's rise (she was even modelled off civil rights activist Angela Davis).