Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on various players
It feels strange for me, as one of the whitest people I know, to offer a lot of commentary on a film like Bad Hair. On the surface, this is a B-movie that in another universe would have been called Killer Weave rather than being the natural second film on a double bill with Chris Rock’s documentary Good Hair. It very much is a movie about a killer hair weave, and so it does have that sort of B-movie credibility (or lack thereof). But at the same time, Bad Hair has some social commentary that, for the whitest of white people and someone who rolled a lot of 7s when it came to privilege, is both surprising and obvious. In fact, some of it is so obvious that I can’t believe I didn’t twig to it already.
We start in the 1970s, where we are introduced to young Anna Bludso (Zaira Kelley in this opening scene and then Elle Lorraine for the rest of the film), whose cousin Linda (Corinne Massiah, then Chante Adams) is relaxing Anna’s hair. But something goes wrong and Anna gtes burned by the lye relaxer and is left with a permanent scar on the back of her head.
