By the 1970s, Halfpenny Pictures had begun funding international productions shot outside their UK studios. One of their early films shot in the United States of America was The Killa Called Vanilla – a Rudy Ray Moore / Pam Grier vehicle that hoped to cash in on two major movie trends of the decade: blaxploitation and slasher pictures. The plot sees Moore as the owner of a popular discotheque in Akron, Ohio, whose night club becomes the site of multiple murders by a slasher serial killer. Grier plays the sexy lead detective investigating the case. As is typical for blaxploitation films, the killer is eventually revealed to be a corrupt white policeman motivated by racism and a hatred of disco music. Moore and Grier would not appear in a movie together again until 1997’s Fakin’ da Funk.
