Between Lethal Weapon 2 and Predator 2 Danny Glover starred in To Sleep with Anger, a genre film of an entirely different stripe, masquerading as a domestic drama about an extended family of black folk.
Glover plays Harry, an old-school charmer with Southern manners, who after many years of absence arrives back in the lives of old friend Gideon and his wife Suzie. Gideon invites his old childhood friend to stay and Harry soon has his feet well under the table.
Writer/director Charles Burnett spends time detailing the extended family Harry finds himself among. It’s a slightly soapy portrait of a large group of people who get along just fine though not entirely without friction. Gideon (Paul Butler) is tightly wound. Suzie (Mary Alice) is practical and works as an obstetrician. Their two kids, Junior (Carl Lumbly) and Babe (Richard Brooks), have families of their own and are chalk and cheese. Babe the freeloader always expecting his parents to step in when babysitting needs to be done. Junior the straight-arrow. Why can’t Babe be a bit more like him etc? Other domestic details intrude, like the little kid who’s always practising a trumpet next door. We know what sort of place this is and who these people are.
Having inserted himself into the family home, where he likes to play old-time blues music, the fun-loving, gracious and slightly wheedling Harry starts inviting old friends around, a group of amusing old boys who see Harry as their ringleader. The old girlfriend, Hattie (Ethel Ayler), turns up. She was once a wild child but is now a god-fearing church woman. She sees clearly what Harry is.
The genre is either home invasion or demonic possession, take your pick, though Harry, as in Old Harry, is a name associated with the Devil going back into folklore. And Harry, figuratively or not, is some version of Old Nick, to use another name. Offering homespun wisdom, folksy psychology, a wealth of stories and a big smile, Harry parasitically inserts himself into his hosts, sniffing for weakness until he finds it in the marriage of Babe and Linda (Sheryl Lee Ralph). What Babe needs is another woman, Harry counsels at one point – “the more mules you hitch, the easier to plough,” he offers Babe with a wink.
Eventually Harry will precipitate a crisis, and a showdown between Junior and Babe, one that forces Babe to man up. So maybe the Devil can do God’s work too?
It’s a generous and leisurely portrait of black family life in the 1990s. There’s a “we’ve come a long way” aspect to many of the conversations, which are also mindful of the precariousness of the situation for people like them. Glover’s performance is relaxed, broad and highly enjoyable. He understands that this is an ensemble piece relying on a cohesive sense of the extended family for it to work and doesn’t try to steal anyone’s limelight. To pick out names seems invidious, but Mary Alice gets a chance to show what she can do as the sensible Suzie. And Carl Lumbly and Richard Brooks bounce off each other energetically as Junior and Babe, the two brothers whose relationship is at the centre of this story.
Amazing to think that Burnett struggled to get this technically straightforward film made. It’s shot mostly on a couple of sets and beyond the actors and crew there’s no big layout required. But struggle he did. The film is now now in the Criterion Collection and the US National Film Registry, alongside Burnett’s debut, 1977’s Killer of Sheep. In 2018 he was awarded an honorary Oscar, along with Agnès Varda and Donald Sutherland. Good work that man!
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
