'SWEETBACK' LOOK BACK OFFERS PLENTY OF FLAVOR.

Byline: - Bob Strauss

'BAADASSSSS!'' is a remarkable work of filial homage, and quite a bit more than that. It's a political manifesto as well as an amusing, often harrowing look into the maddening process of financing, making and distributing an independent film - well before there was any real infrastructure for doing so.

Directed by Mario Van Peebles, the movie chronicles his father Melvin's efforts to make one of the first blaxploitation movies of the 1970s, ``Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song,'' on his own terms. Playing Melvin as well, the younger Van Peebles recounts, in a kaleidoscopic and sometimes surreal way, the scamming, desperation, determination and megalomania it took to bring a movie celebrating an African-American outlaw to the screen before anyone in the industry thought audiences could handle it.

Thus Melvin, who'd had enough mainstream success with ``Watermelon Man'' to have kept working at Columbia had he stuck to comedy, needed to get backing (and, to avoid union salaries, most of his crew) from porn producers. We see Melvin sweet-talk female acquaintances into doing nude scenes, film real firemen when they show up to douse a car set ablaze for the production (without a permit, of course) and physically threaten an editor to stay on the job when funds ran out during post-production.

When some crew members were busted in the desert, he turned to none other than Bill Cosby for a loan to bail them out. And these are just a handful of the numerous nuts-and-bolts details that make ``Baadasssss!'' one of the most crazily instructive movies about moviemaking ever.

There's much more to the story, of course. Van Peebles lays out a condensed ``Bamboozled'' of Hollywood's racist inclinations, and nails the hedonistic and polical tenor of the early '70s in vivid, deceptively offhand detail.

But ``Baadasssss!'' is first and foremost a cockeyed tribute to movie obsession. When it came time to shoot Sweet's youthful sexual initiation, Melvin dragooned Mario (played at age 12 by Khleo Thomas) into the part, to the appalled astonishment of collaborators who already knew he'd stoop to anything to realize his creative vision.

Mario does not flinch from depicting his father's traumatizing bullheadedness. Reportedly, when the son optioned his father's autobiography to adapt, Melvin's advice was, ``Don't make me too damn nice.''

Mario doesn't, but in a way he can't help lionizing the old man, either. Insufferable as he often gets, Melvin is always a beacon of independent ingenuity and uncompromising artistic integrity in ``Baadasssss!'' For his part, Mario - whose directing work ranges from the slick but effective ``New Jack City'' to the disappointing ``Panther'' and the laughable ``Posse'' - displays an unnecessary indulgence of trippy camera and editing effects that rarely do more than call attention to themselves.

But none of that prevents ``Baadasssss!'' from being the best-told tale Mario Van Peebles has ever filmed. Full of psychological and cultural riches, it's a real gift that he can thank his father for living and giving. And he does so by making his first really great movie.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

BAADASSSSS! - Three stars

(R: nudity, sex, language, drug use, violence)

Starring: Mario Van Peebles, Joy Bryant, Khleo Thomas, Rainn Wilson, Nia Long, Terry Crews, T.K. Carter, David Alan Grier, Ossie Davis, Saul Rubinek.

Director: Mario Van Peebles.

Running time: 1 hr. 48 min.

Playing: Selected theaters.

In a nutshell: Fascinating look at how Melvin Van Peebles made his groundbreaking blaxploitation movie ``Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song'' - directed by and starring his son, Mario.