Rhapsodies

I’ve been considering checking out Blaxploitation films, ever since Cartoon Network’s animated version of Black Dynamite came out. I knew that, while it certainly was a very fun show, I didn’t have the vocabulary to know why it was utterly hilarious. Rather than start with many of the classics my friends recommended me, I decided to take some baby steps and watch the works of Jim Kelly. 

My only experience with Jim Kelly’s was his co-starring with Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon. Regrettably, in that film, he was one it was one of the most egregious examples of the trope black man dies first I had ever seen at the time. So I was very interested in seeing films where he got to be the leading man rather than the film’s sacrificial lamb. 

In the first film on my list, Robert Clouse’s Black Belt Jones, Kelly plays the eponymous character, a local hero. When the Mafia has his old friend Pop Byrd (Scatman Crothers) is killed, in order to buy the building his dojo is in. Jones teams up with Boyd’s daughter, Sydney,(Gloria Hendry) to take them on.

This film was… okay.

Of the three films, I watched it was the only one that fit my definition of Blaxploitation in that it was the only of them that took place in the inner city with Jones being very much part of the community. 

For the most part, the action was pretty good and the film never took itself too seriously (whether this was on purpose or not is anyone’s guess) Scatman Crothers seems to be having a lot of fun hamming it up.

On the same DVD was Oscar William’s Hot Potato which pretty much is for all practical purposes Black Belt Jones II. Jones and a team of mercenaries are hired to rescue a senator’s daughter who is being held prisoner in an imaginary Indochinese country.

This was the weakest film of the lot getting very close to so bad its good territory. I spent a lot of time wondering if it was actually a comedy or not. 

Finally, I ended my marathon with Al Adamson’s Black Samurai. Kelly plays Robert Sand agent of D.R.A.G.O.N. He has his vacation interrupted by his boss to rescue the daughter of an eastern ambassador, who happens to be Sands girlfriend, who has been captured by a cult leader. It’s up to Sands to stop him before his plan comes to fruition.

That is all there is about all there is to the plot. It’s pretty much an excuse for Kelly to have fights with just about anyone his enemies have to throw at him. This includes dwarfs, African tribesmen, and a vulture. Still, this was the only one of the films with decent choreography allowing us to see just how good a martial artist Kelly is.