It’s Unstreamable! Where Jas Keimig and Chase Burns recommend movies and TV shows you can't watch on major streaming services in the United States. We post on Wednesdays unless we’re tired or busy 😊
Got a recommendation for Unstreamable? Give us the scoop at unstreamablemovies@gmail.com.
USA, 1996, 108 min, Dir. Spike Lee
Girl 6 is the first movie Spike Lee directed but did not write—the script was written by Pulitzer Prize-winner Suzan-Lori Parks. It's a horny and stylish study of a young Black actress (Theresa Randle) who becomes a phone sex operator to help support her acting career. Quickly, Girl 6, as she's called at work, gets pulled into the fantasy world she creates for her callers, finding more validation from the white men whacking it to her voice than the white men in charge of hiring her for acting roles.
Though featuring classic Lee-missteps—a bloated third act, heavy moralizing around Black women's sexualities—the real lynchpin in Girl 6 is Randle. As Girl 6, she's alluring yet innocent; in control, but a little tumultuous; dreamy and clever. She can convincingly slip into any character at work: the girl next door, the dominatrix, the housewife. In daydream sequences, Randle also embodies other iconic Black roles, from Dorothy Dandridge in Carmen Jones to Pam Grier in Foxy Brown. Girl 6 was Randle's major vehicle, and, in a just world, she'd be booked and busy after it. It's more than a little ironic that a movie about the misogyny Black women face in the film industry wasn't enough to launch Randle. It breaks my heart.
Also of note: major cameos by Naomi Campbell as phone sex operator Girl 75, Madonna as a strip club manager, and Lee's mortal enemy Quentin Tarantino as a pervy white director casting Black actresses for "the greatest romantic African American film ever made—directed by me of course!" (Lee and Tarantino would have a falling out a year later with the release of Jackie Brown). The movie's soundtrack is wall-to-wall Prince songs, which adds a huge dollop of sex to the scenes and bolsters the film's perspective. Prince is also the likely reason why Girl 6 is so damn hard to find online. JAS KEIMIG
Find it in the Directors section under Lee, Spike.
USA, 1973, 104 min, Dir. Henry Levin, David Lowell Rich
While watching the first 20 minutes of That Man Bolt, I thought to myself: Is this the best movie I've ever seen? No, it is not the best movie I've ever seen, but it really had me for a second there. I think I was just mesmerized by blaxploitation icon Fred Williamson and his role as courier Jefferson Bolt, a black superspy-like character in the vein of James Bond. His karate moves! His perfectly picked out 'fro! The respect he commands as a black man in a white man's business! His immaculate condo in Macau! In the film, he's tasked with transporting a briefcase of $1 million cash from Hong Kong to Mexico City. Bolt is then thrown into a situation where hordes of dangerous men try to pry that briefcase away from him. The plot is hard to follow and strung together by little more than exciting action sequences, but what are you watching it for, anyway? JAS KEIMIG
Find it the Bang! (Action) section under Blaxploitation. Or rent it by mail!
Looking for more? Browse our big list of 350+ hard-to-find movies over on The Stranger.
*The fine print: Unstreamable means we couldn’t find it on Netflix, Hulu, Shudder, Disney+, or any of the other hundreds of streaming services available in the United States. We also couldn’t find it available for rent or purchase through platforms like Prime Video or iTunes. We don’t consider films on sites that interrupt with commercial breaks, like Tubi, to be streamable. Tubi is like Neu Cable. And yes, we know you can find many things online illegally, but we don’t consider user-generated videos, like unauthorized YouTube uploads, to be streamable.
