Avant-garde jazz musician Sun Ra stars in the movie version of his concept album Space Is the Place. Not following a linear plot line, this experimental film is a bizarre combination of social commentary, blaxploitation, science fiction, and concert performance. The opening scene is set in an intergalactic forest, with Sun Ra introducing his plan to use music as salvation for the black community. Back on Earth, he wears a disguise as Sunny Ray, a piano player in a 1940s Chicago strip club who causes an explosion with his sounds. Switching to a scene in a desert, he plays a card game called "The End of the World," with the Overseer (Ray Johnson), who is dressed in white and drives a white Cadillac. Sun Ra pulls out a spaceship card and the Arkestra play the song "Calling Planet Earth" as their spaceship lands in Oakland, CA. Perpetually dressed in sparkling gold robes and headdresses, he sets out to save the black people from oppression. He visits a community center and sets up the Outer Space Employment Agency, occasionally switching back to the desert to continue his game with the Overseer. Eventually, Sun Ra gets kidnapped by two white guys and forced to listen to "Dixie" on headphones, but some kids from the community center save him just in time for the live concert conclusion. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
Review by All Movie Guide
All Movie Guide
is neutral about it.
Science fiction, blaxploitation, and musical elements combine in the entertaining and enlightening Space Is the Place. Like the 1972 album of the same name, this film features jazz legend Sun Ra playing around on the space organ along with June Tyson's vocal chants to create the band's unique African percussion-filled jazz improvisations. While the concert performances alone are well-documented, the strange nonlinear story is both compelling and hilarious. It's like a head movie for Black Panther politics, concluding with a live concert finale and somehow incorporating action movie elements. Sun Ra positions himself as something of a freak in '70s urban black culture, in this case as an alien who crash-lands in Oakland, CA. He sits coolly back and watches all the madness around him, playing a
Seventh Seal-like game with the pimped-out Overseer (Raymond Johnson) while frantic Jimmy Rey (Christopher Brooks) tries to make sense of it all. The randomness of the narrative gives it an open-ended documentary feel, capturing the normal lives of city dwellers in sharp contrast to the freaked-out optimism of Sun Ra and his Myth Science Arkestra. He communicates his philosophies directly by simply driving around the ghetto in crazy futuristic Egyptian pharaoh-style costumes or literally taking applications at the Outer Spaceways Employment Agency. For jazz fans and/or those looking for a good head trip, Space Is the Place offers an originality that is refreshingly humorous; it's also an added bonus that it contains some of the most vivid and experimental live performances of Sun Ra's career. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide