Mike Snider

USA TODAY







Here's a new streaming service that promises to be super bad.



Brown Sugar, which launches today on Android and iOS devices and computers, has more than 100 movies starring African-American actors including a huge collection of Seventies' films such as Cleopatra Jones, Super Fly, Shaft and The Harder They Come. Pricing is $3.99 monthly after a one-month free trial period.



The service is "just like Netflix, only blacker," says actress Pam Grier (Coffy, Foxy Brown) in a promotional video for the site. She and NFL legend and actor Fred “The Hammer” Williamson (That Man Bolt, Hell Up in Harlem) are aboard as spokespersons, as is hip-hop mogul Rick Ross.



"There’s a lot of people who want to see these movies," Williamson said in an interview. "This gives them an opportunity to sit at home and watch the films they have heard about. They have heard about Black Caesar, (a 1973 movie Williamson starred in), they heard about Foxy Brown and Shaft, but they never saw it because they never had the opportunity to go to the theater and see it."

In addition to movie collections of films from Williamson, Grier and Jim Brown (El Condor, I Escaped from Devil's Island, Three the Hard Way), additional thematic curations include "Good Cop, Bad Cop," with movies such as Action Jackson and They Call Me Mr. Tibbs, along with "Jive Ass Turkeys" (I’m Gonna Git You Sucka, Car Wash, Uptown Saturday Night), and "Black Horror" (Blacula, Sugar Hill, Blackenstein).

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"We are talking about revisiting a culture of music and style and politics and community," Grier said in an interview. "People who hadn’t experienced the art and the culture of the time can now do it. ... It’s global and it's art, and to me, a treasure."

African-American TV network Bounce TV, which is in more than 94 million U.S. homes, owns Brown Sugar and plans to add more movies in the coming months.

Follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @MikeSnider.

