On Location: Voodoo Museum and Research Library Traditional Cache

This cache has been archived.

Reviewer Revan: Cache Owner (CO) has not responded, so I am regretfully archiving this cache to keep it from continually showing up in search lists, and to prevent it from blocking new cache placements. If you wish to repair/replace this cache sometime in the future (not to exceed 10 days from the date of this entry), just contact me (by e-mail), and assuming it still meets the current Guidelines, I will consider unarchiving this cache.

Please be advised this is not a guarantee that this geocache will be unarchived. Many factors will go into my decision. The most important of which is how you responded to geocachers who tried to communicate with you regarding the problem(s) with this geocache hide and how you communicated with me, the Reviewer Revan.

Reviewer Revan
A Groundspeak Volunteer Reviewer

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Hidden : 4/16/2010
Difficulty:
1 out of 5
Terrain:
1 out of 5

Size: Size: small (small)

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Geocache Description:

Replaced and active at a new location for all you aspiring and accomplished voodoo researchers, otherwise known as geocachers.

This cache is placed in honor of Sugar Hill, a 1974 low budget blaxploitation horror movie. Filmed in Houston but set in an unnamed place in Louisiana, the only easily identified landmark was the Heights Library a block or so north of the cache. The Heights Library was used with almost no attempt at plausibility as the Voodoo Museum and Research Library.

Instead of focusing the most controversial stereotypes of a genre that frequently portrays urban blacks as pimps and drug dealers, Sugar Hill presents blacks as hard workers fighting white oppression. Filmed on a low budget with a cast of TV character actors and unknowns, the acting was is reminiscent of TV dramas of the period, stiff and overly serious. The blaxploitation plotline, stereotyped characters, stilted scriptwriting and wooden TV style acting sets this movie completely to its time with no hope of transcendence.

The opening scene anchors the plotline and reveals the low budget production values. A black guy owns a successful nightclub where black entertainers put on a Voodoo show for the white patrons. A white mafia boss wants to buy the club but the owner won’t sell, so the boss sends in his henchmen to beat the owner to death. The racial theme is made clear through the vile jeers shouted at the owner by the thugs as they kick him to death while he is on the ground. The low budget meant there was no dummy to use as a stand in, so the actors could be seen kicking the pavement next to the guy.

The owner’s girlfriend Diana Hill, a woman so sweet she is known as “Sugar” now owns the club. The murder transforms her to a woman with a single minded focus on revenge. Helpless on her own, she seeks out her ancient grandmother in a rundown mansion in the swamp, who just happens to be a Voodoo Priestess. Together they walk deeper into the swamp to an old slave cemetery where Sugar’s passion for revenge is sufficient to call the Voodoo Lord of the Dead. He gleefully agrees to use his power to exact her revenge in exchange for Sugar’s promise of her soul when all the whites are dead. Then on cue, his army of slave zombies rise from their graves, machetes in hand.

From here the audience is treated to each thug dying in a uniquely horrible way measured to the level of his racism. The gruesome deaths are mostly off camera to save expenses. In the end the gang boss, for whom murdering the black owner is merely business, gets the easiest treatment by getting pulled down into the swamp to drown. The worst punishment goes to the bosses jealous, vengeful and hatefully racist moll when she is taken alive by the Lord of the Dead into the underworld, to serve him forever. The moll also serves as temporary payment for Sugar’s debt of her own soul. With the revenge complete, Sugar can now get on with her life.

Any lover of campy movies will have to put Sugar Hill high on the must see list. It is available from Netflix instant view.

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Haqre gur sebag bs gur ebpxvat punve.

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)


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