Trick Baby

Two con men work together in Philadelphia. Blue Howard is the experienced one; the young man beside him is called Folks. Folks has a Black mother and a white father, and his skin is light enough to pass for white. The film’s title comes from a street term used to insult that parentage; Folks spent his childhood hearing it. Grown up, he finds that the same appearance is useful to him. The pair build their cons precisely on how white people and Black people are looked at. Then they have to run from a gang they have swindled and from the police who are after them. The work is adapted from a novel by Iceberg Slim. Kiel Martin and Mel Stewart appear in Larry Yust’s eighty nine minute American film, completed in 1972.