Black Belt Jones (1974)

PLOT: A righteous martial artist comes to the aid of his master when his karate school is being targeted for hostile takeover by a local crime boss beholden to the Italian Mafia. They probably want to turn it into a Whole Foods.

Director: Robert Clouse
Writers: Fred Weintraub, Alexandra Rose, Oscar Williams
Cast: Jim Kelly, Gloria Hendry, Alan Weeks, Malik Carter, Eric Laneuville, Scatman Crothers, Mel Novak, Andre Philippe

PLOT THICKENER

If you ever find yourself at some rich jerk’s house and he takes you into his climate-controlled wine closet and offers up a vintage 1974 merlot from Del Orso Vineyards, you would be wise to pay attention to the following notes. See that brick red color? The viscosity of the liquid as it coats the glass while you swirl it about? Maybe you taste the faint presence of tobacco, iron, or even meat? The reason for this is because this wine was fermented in a vat with a dead body in it. You are drinking dead people. Spit that wine the fuck outta here and welcome to the 1974 Jim Kelly classic, Black Belt Jones.

When Pop Byrd (Crothers) and his karate school come under attack from a neighborhood crime boss named Pinky (Carter), the sparks, fur, and polyester will surely fly. Pinky is under the thumb of Italian mafioso and wine magnate, Don Steffano (Philippe), and he has orders to secure the location of the school for future real estate development. If the combined efforts of the karate school’s teacher, Toppy (Weeks) and his understudy, Quincy (Laneuville), aren’t enough muscle to hold off the goon squad, where else can they turn?

Enter Black Belt Jones (Kelly), a martial arts expert, unabashed trampoline enthusiast, and righteous dude with the unwavering respect of his community. As a one-time student of Byrd and a school loyalist, he’s more than willing to lead the fight against Pinky’s hostile advances. In parallel, the local police force is trying to recruit Jones to infiltrate the Don’s vineyard gang, with everyone apparently unaware of the links between the mafia and Pinky. When Byrd’s long-lost daughter, Sydney (Hendry) unexpectedly arrives in town to defend the honor of her pop and his school, the battle lines are drawn. Can Jones and Sydney get along well enough to fend off the aggressors? Will the alliance of Pinky’s gang and the mafia -- including a handsome menace known only as Blue Eyes (Novak) -- prove too strong a force? And is this the film which shows the very first 360-degree roundhouse kick in cinema history, courtesy of Scatman Crothers?

This follows Jim Kelly's scene-stealing role as Williams in Enter the Dragon, released just a year beforehand, and it's really a showcase for Kelly as a leading man. The action is choreographed to his strengths: kicking ass and looking good while doing it. If there’s a problem with this one-note approach, it’s that the outcomes of the fight scenes become predictable. The stunt guys sell out really well to make Kelly’s character look like a total superhero, but Jones lacks a logical, physical equal in the story (other than his ally, Sydney). The salve for this effect is a lot of visual creativity in the presentation. One scene has Jones working with Toppy during a night-time raid of the dojo by Pinky’s gang to use the indoor lighting strategically as he repeatedly busts heads and disappears in the darkness, only to re-emerge in the light and do it all over again. Another sees him fighting off Pinky’s men inside of an abandoned train car, and in one confrontation after another, the bruised henchmen fly through the train car windows to the outside, to almost comical effect.

In the infamous climax, Jones battles the remnants of the various gangs at a truck wash lot in a sudsy sea of knee-high soap. He makes easy work of his enemies using a variety of moves, though none more flashy than a chain of butterfly kicks that takes out four consecutive unlucky henchmen. In modern terms, a lot of this is going to look silly because there’s plenty of dreaded “stunt guys standing around and waiting to get hit” on the screen. I’m not sure it’s fair to nitpick the fight choreography, though, since American filmmakers were still figuring out how to stage martial arts for film audiences. Regardless, the scenes are creative and humorous on the whole and you’re not watching this for the fight scenes alone.

What I will nitpick, however, is some dated and regrettable language that, while not unique to this particular film, is certainly endemic to exploitation cinema as a whole. Prior to a physical confrontation with some of Pinky’s gang members, Sydney drops a gay slur in the middle of some trash-talking dialogue that will land with an awkward thud with most modern viewers. Why was this level of homophobia ever a thing in this genre? Do we blame Clouse for including it? The screenwriters for hatching the line? I would hate to think that Hendry ad-libbed it. And by the by, I can’t justifiably knock the film for a throwaway line like this without acknowledging the casual misogyny of BBJ telling Sydney to “do those dishes or something” before she shoots all of them with a loaded revolver and quips, “they’re done.” The humor there is in her assertive push-back against his misguided misogyny. That’s the joke!

Despite not being a technical marvel of filmmaking, this is quite possibly the most unadulterated *fun* that an American martial arts film has delivered, and it’s a historically important film to boot. I won’t lecture readers on the cultural significance of Kelly as the first black martial arts superstar -- I wasn’t alive when this was released, and frankly, as just another privileged white dude blogging on the web about cult movies, I don’t wield that authority -- but Black Belt Jones helped to kick off an incredible run of films through the end of the 1970s that melded martial arts and blaxploitation film elements. This Reddit thread does a good job of unpacking the context for how this type of film became so popular, and this tribute written by Michael over at Kiai Kick provides a good perspective for why Jim Kelly was so important to black moviegoers and other people of color who loved martial arts and action film. Jim Kelly really was a trailblazer, and will be remembered as a legend.

VERDICT

For many, Black Belt Jones is one of the great American martial arts films of all time, and I count myself among those ranks. The action scenes are ton of fun, it features an incredibly charismatic lead coming into his own as an action star, and the relationship between the two main characters is enjoyable and engaging. Such cool, very recommend!

AVAILABILITY

Streaming on Amazon Prime, Vudu, Google Play, iTunes. DVD is widely available on Netflix or the 4 Film Favorites: Urban Action collection from Warner Bros.

5.5 / 7

Black Samurai (1977)

PLOT: A secret agent is forced to pursue a dangerous cult after its members kidnap his woman. It’s nice to see a display of such loyalty when he clearly could have done better.

Director: Al Adamson
Writers: B. Readick (screenplay), Marc Olden (novel)
Cast: Jim Kelly, Roberto Contreras, Marilyn Joi, Essie Lin Chia, Biff Yeager, Bill Roy, Charles Grant, Jace Khan




PLOT THICKENER:
While a regular fixture in the horror genre, portrayals of cults have appeared only sporadically in more mainstream and critically-acclaimed films. The backwoods clan of 2011’s Martha Marcy May Marlene haunted arthouse audiences with equal parts trauma and folk music. More recently, Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film, The Master, examines a cultish group of brainwashers which has nothing whatsoever to do with Scientology. It’s timely, then, that we take a look at another cult-centered film ripe for accolades and deep contemplation. For our contribution to the Mysterious Order of the Skeleton Suit’s October roundtable-- “Satan’s Schools for Ghouls” -- we take a tumble into the zany black magic of 1977’s Black Samurai. This marks the first time we dip into the filmography of Jim Kelly, and the last time I watch Black Samurai.

The character was originally hatched as the central hero in a series of novels by crime writer Marc Olden. For better or worse, this is the one and only film adaptation. I knew none of this until I read Keith’s review over at Teleport City. If you want a comprehensive review of the film, its relationship to the novel on which it was based, and a well-formed critique of Al Adamson’s cinematic legacy, be sure to read it. Especially since we’re probably going to concentrate on punch sound effects and Jim Kelly’s impeccable afro in the review here.

Robert Sand (Kelly) is a martial artist and more important, an elite agent in the international crime-fighting agency, D.R.A.G.O.N. He’s enjoying a sunny vacation when his colleagues show up during a casual game of tennis with a lady friend. “We need you on this case, Sand,” they say. “WTF, I’m on vacation,” Sand responds. He only relents after finding out that his main girl, Toki (Lin Chia), has been kidnapped by the target, a cult leader named Augustus Janicott. Known to his followers as the Warlock, his file indicates that he has a history of heroin possession, mind control, extortion, pornography, and ruffled dress shirts.

As evidenced by transitional footage of an airplane landing, Sand travels to some remote location far enough away that it necessitates air travel. He begins a shadowy descent into the world of the Warlock, where mysterious cars attempt to run him off the road, angry little people break into his hotel room and hold him at gunpoint, and evil, buxom sidekicks are very sensitive to having their sexual propositions declined. Unfortunately, the Warlock and his minions are pure villain filler, and I have no clue what beliefs or objectives to which his supposedly Satanic cult ascribes. They have soirees with mariachi music one night, and blood rituals with African drums, masks, and shoddy pyrotechnics the next. Sand’s superiors allege that he uses his followers for drug trafficking and prostitution, but there’s no evidence of that in the film. In fact, the most harmful and offensive thing about the Warlock is the acting of Bill Roy.

While fairly incompetent when shooting action scenes, Adamson is exceptional at creating three-minute montages of an attractive couple dressed in floral prints kissing softly and strolling through the forest. We’re supposed to care about the relationship between Sand and Toki based on this scene alone, but wordless displays of affection are a lame surrogate for a half-baked romance between underwritten characters with limited on-screen interaction. Would terrorizing the damsel a bit more make the audience more sympathetic to her plight and desirous of her rescue? Possibly, but the worst thing she encounters is a weekend in a locked cell and a probable diet of stale bread and tepid water. In Hollywood, that’s called detox.

For fans of “so bad it’s good” cinema, I might cautiously recommend this film, but would otherwise wave a giant red flag devoured by flames toward anyone looking for an example of solid 1970s action or blaxploitation fare. Sand drives a cool souped-up purple sports car and even zooms around in a jet pack for a good five minutes, but otherwise there's not much here for action fans to chew on. There’s no real gore and outside of a couple impressive jumps from high places, the stunts are lacking.

Instead of liberating Kelly and his fight skills as Robert Clouse did in the terrific Black Belt Jones, Adamson dogs the choreography with poor shooting angles and awful editing. The sound effects are fun and properly exaggerated, but the fights are so short and stilted that none of it matters much. (Most amusing: Kelly shouts “Hello turkeys!” while punching enemies in the cock during a party). Adamson swaps technically proficient for zany, a stylistic choice perhaps best encapsulated by the climactic scuffle between Kelly and a live goddamn vulture. The best (i.e. longest) scene is between Kelly and Charles Grant, known here as Bone, but probably best known as Kim Delaney’s first husband. Bone is positioned as the best physical match for Sand, but our hero relentlessly toys with the henchman during their confrontation by showing off his boxing footwork and taunting him with homophobic slurs before breaking his back.

In a movie loaded with curious technical choices, this was, for me, the most egregious. This particular version of the film was scrubbed entirely of even entry-level curse words, but the production team saw fit to leave all instances of the aforementioned "f-word" slur fully intact for the DVD’s 2001 release. While I understand that the 1970s were a different time for relations between people of differing sexual orientations, I’m not quite sure what the rationale was behind the inclusion. Offensive, sure, but only slightly more puzzling than BCI’s use of the “Vampire Hunters” theme from the original score for Bram Stoker’s Dracula for the DVD’s title menu.

VERDICT:
A few months ago, I predicted that The Dynamite Brothers wouldn’t be my last Adamson film and that prophecy was fulfilled. That wasn’t a particularly good film, nor was this, and I have no reason to believe that the final Kelly-Adamson collaboration, Death Dimension, will somehow reverse the pattern (despite a really cool poster). A handful of zany moments prevent this from being a complete snoozer, but it’s not indicative of Kelly’s talents as a martial artist or screen presence. Unless you’ve exhausted all other options in the “jetpacks in cinema” or “human versus animal fight scene” subgenres, I would keep moving along.

AVAILABILITY:
Amazon, Netflix, EBay.

2 / 7

FURTHER READING:
For more context and critique of this film, head over to our brother-from-another-mother at Teleport City to read Keith’s review of Black Samurai.

Click the demonic but seasonable image above for additional M.O.S.S. contributions to October’s “Satan’s School for Ghouls!”