Death Dimension (1978)

It’s time to put your brain on lockdown once more, because that singular purveyor of low-budget cinematic stupidity, Al Adamson, is at it again. Death Dimension, the title of which has no discernible significance, is a sci-fi/espionage/martial-arts thriller starring the unfortunate Jim Kelly, a skilled athlete whose ascension to stardom following Black Belt Jones (1974) was impeded by his inability to act. Death Dimension—which is also known in some quarters as Black Eliminator, Freeze Bomb, The Kill Factor, among other titles—tells the loopy story of a scientist who hides designs for a weather weapon in a microchip, then surgically implants the microchip into the forehead of his pretty assistant. Once the scientist is killed, the assistant becomes a target. Assigned to protect her or recover the research or whatever—because, really, who cares?—is LAPD detective Ash (Kelly). Portraying Ash’s boss is George Lazenby, who starred as James Bond in one movie, and the 007 connection continues with the movie’s villain, “The Pig,” who is played by ex-Bond villain Harold “Odd Job” Sakata. Sort of. Keen ears will notice that Sakata’s dialogue was dubbed by character actor James Hong. And so it goes. Death Dimension jumps from one pointless scene to the next, stopping at regular intervals for Kelly to effortlessly defeat hordes of opponents; this is one of those dimwitted action movies in which the hero becomes a target for every bad guy in the world the instant he accepts his dangerous assignment. For added spice, Death Dimension contains lots of misogynistic material, including a bizarre scene during which “The Pig” uses a snapping turtle as an interrogation tool by holding its snout close to a woman’s breast. “One bite, and he’ll make you flat-chested!” If you watch Death Dimension after having perused these remarks, you have only yourself to blame.

Death Dimension: LAME

Melinda (1972)

          Something of a blaxploitation sampler platter, the overlong, over-plotted, and overwrought Melinda combines conspiracies, crime, martial arts, romance, revenge, and a whole lot of jive-talkin’, the latter element mostly issuing from the mouth of protagonist Frankie J. Parker, an arrogant Los Angeles DJ. The picture is fairly entertaining on a scene-to-scene basis, and it contains some respectable acting by costars Rosalind Cash and Paul Stevens, among others. Moreover, the sheer excess of the movie is beguiling, simply because Melinda wends through so many different genres during its 109 eventful (and frequently violent) minutes. The film doesn’t hang together, of course, and very little of what happens feels credible from either an emotional or a logical perspective. Nonetheless, copping the right attitude often helps put even the slightest blaxploitation flick over, and every so often Melinda hits a pleasing stance. Even when it doesn’t, the disconnect between leading man Calvin Lockhart’s uptight screen person and the movie’s down-and-dirty milieu is weirdly fascinating.

          When the story begins, Frankie (Lockhart) seems like a man in full. In addition to his successful career as a DJ, he struts around town wooding ladies and spends his free time perfecting his martial-arts skills under the tutelage of an instructor named Charles (played by future chop-socky-cinema star Jim Kelly in his big-screen debut). Frankie meets his match in Melinda (Vonetta McGee), a beautiful woman who’s just as self-assured as Frankie. They become lovers, much to the consternation of Frankie’s ex, the mob-connected Terry (Cash). Then things get complicated (to say nothing of contrived and convoluted). It seems Melinda knows the whereabouts of an audio recording that incriminates big-time gangster Mitch (Stevens), so she and Frankie become embroiled in a bloody adventure.

          Melinda hits some strange notes along the way. During the lengthy scene of Frankie and Melinda having sex for the first time, director Hugh A. Robertson repeatedly cuts to a thug standing in the hall outside Frankie’s apartment, masturbating while he listens to the couple’s carnal bliss. In a nasty flashback scene, Mitch sits and laughs while his underlings gang-bang his girlfriend. And in the very first scene, Frankie lays down goofy trash talk while coaxing Charles into a sparring session: “I’m ever-ready for some lightweight shit, but you better come with somethin’ heavy—I’m packed with dynamite!” Whatever you say, man.

Melinda: FUNKY

Three the Hard Way (1974)

One of three features costarring blaxploitation luminaries Jim Brown, Jim Kelly, and Fred Williamson—the others are Take a Hard Ride (1975) and One Down, Two to Go (1982)—this muddled conspiracy thriller represents a missed opportunity on many levels. Not only does director Gordon Parks Jr. fail to exploit the action-hero possibilities created by the participation of his three stars, but the picture includes what should be the ultimate campy blaxploitation premise, only to botch the notion’s potential via confusing storytelling, dull pacing, and flat characterization. Bad guy Monroe Feather (Jay Robinson) creates a serum that, when introduced into the water supply of major cities, will kill every black person who consumes the serum. Yet instead of introducing this outlandish concept right at the beginning, thereby positioning the titular trio as African-American crusaders, the filmmakers take a good half-hour to get to the point. Worse, the characters played by Brown, Kelly, and Williamson don’t join forces until fairly late in the story, so Three the Hard Way feels less like a men-on-a-mission picture and more like a hodgepodge of scenes from three separate movies. The filmmakers also waste lots of time on nonsense, such as the very long sequence of Brown’s character producing a recording session for an R&B vocal group. And whenever Three the Hard Way tries to deliver the blaxploitation goods, the material feels half-hearted. For instance, the scene of martial artist Kelly fighting off something like a dozen armed assailants with his bare hands (and feet) is ridiculous, especially because Parks can’t muster camera angles that properly accentuate the action. (The haphazard shooting style makes the encounter feel like a run-through instead of a fully realized scene.) And then there’s the one truly bizarre sequence in the picture—at one point, the heroes recruit three motorcycle-riding babes to doff their tops and then interrogate a prisoner using some sort of sex torture. Like most everything else in Three the Hard Way, the scene is lurid but nonsensical.

Three the Hard Way: LAME

Hot Potato (1976)

Featuring a noxious mixture of cartoonish action scenes and unfunny comedy bits, this martial-arts adventure has strong connections to Black Belt Jones (1974), but it’s not precisely a sequel. Whereas the previous film is a straight-up blaxploitation drama that happens to feature karate, Hot Potato aspires to a frothy level of action-adventure farce. Real-life martial artist Jim Kelly, who played the title character in Black Belt Jones, stars in Hot Potato as a man simply named “Jones,” and no references are made to events in the previous film. (One suspects that producers Paul Heller and Fred Weintraub, who were involved with both films, might have been contractually prohibited from calling their follow-up film Black Belt Jones 2.) Set in a fictional Asian country, Hot Potato concerns a criminal kingpin named Carter Rangoon (Sam Hiona). Carter’s thugs kidnap June Dunbar (Judith Brown), the daughter of a U.S. senator, so the senator enlists secret agent Jones (Kelly) to attempt a rescue. Together with goofy accomplices Johnny Chicago (Geoffrey Benney) and Rhino (George Memmoli), Jones grabs June from Carter’s clutches—or so he thinks. Turns out Carter replaced June with a lookalike named Leslie (also played by Brown), so most of the movie comprises a long jungle trek during which Jones and his buddies cavort with female companions while villains stalk them. Hot Potato is filled with annoying sound effects, the sorts of pops and whistles normally associated with Keystone Kops-style comedies, and the action scenes are deflated by weak attempts at humor—a remote-controlled toy car that hides a bomb, an uncooperative elephant named Butch, and so on. Additionally, the filmmakers periodically forget that Hot Potato is lighthearted fare and try to generate actual thrills. (Example: a painfully dumb sequence of characters mired in quicksand.) Kelly is as uninteresting here as he is in his other pictures, even though his athleticism is impressive, and the whole movie feels like a brainless knock-off of 1973’s Enter the Dragon. FYI, the confusion over whether Hot Potato is a real sequel to Black Belt Jones is compounded by the existence of a totally unrelated Jim Kelly movie called The Tattoo Connection (1978), which is sometimes deceptively marketed as Black Belt Jones 2.

Hot Potato: LAME

Black Samurai (1977)

Poor Jim Kelly couldn’t seem to catch a break after initially gaining attention with his costarring role in the Bruce Lee smash Enter the Dragon (1973). A handsome and tall martial artist who also happened to be African-American, Kelly seemed poised to become a major action star, but several things held him back: 1) The blaxploitation genre was already on the wane at the moment he started making blaxploitation movies; 2) Martial-arts flicks were still a long way from breaking out of the grindhouse ghetto; 3) Kelly appeared in consistently weak films; and 4) Kelly lacked charisma equal to his impressive physique. Still, the actor managed to notch a few starring roles before the gravy train ran off the rails. Among the least of his efforts is the junky Black Samurai, which was directed by exploitation-flick hack Al Adamson. Boring, empty-headed, and repetitive, the movie tells a mundane story in the least interesting way imaginable. Even the fight scenes are underwhelming, since they’re so choreographed and safety-conscious that they lack menace. How schlocky is Black Samurai? Well, for one thing, the movie does not include samurais. For another thing, it comes complete with that staple of crappy Saturday-afternoon adventure flicks—a secret organization with a cartoonish acronym for a name. (Kelly’s character works for D.R.A.G.O.N., the Defense Reserve Agency Guardian of Nations.) The insipid plot features Kelly’s character traversing the globe to rescue is girlfriend from a criminal organization that’s led by a voodoo priest (who is white and calls himself a warlock). For no good reason, the movie includes a low-octane catfight, an endless mariachi-band musical number, an interpretive-dance voodoo ritual, a silly jet-pack ride (shades of 007), and other random scenes. Through it all, Kelly looks impressive even though his line delivers are lifeless and his martial-arts scenes are shabby. Since Black Samurai is neither entertaining nor ridiculous enough to inspire much unintentional laugher, it’s nearly a complete waste of time.

Black Samurai: LAME

The Tattoo Connection (1978)

Weirdly, some of the most authoritative reference sources available describe this picture as Black Belt Jones 2, perpetuating a misrepresentation created by the picture’s after-market exhibitors—most copies of the movie’s DVD bear the bogus sequel signifier. Yet The Tattoo Connection is unrelated to Black Belt Jones (1974) beyond the fact that both are martial-arts flicks starring Jim Kelly. Whereas Black Belt Jones is an American production with English-language dialogue, The Tattoo Connection is a Hong Kong production in which all actors are dubbed, badly, into English no matter what languages they spoke on set. Further, Kelly plays a dude named Lucas, whereas in Black Belt Jones he portrays (you guessed it!) a martial artist named Black Belt Jones. (Adding to the confusion: the awful 1976 Kelly movie Hot Potato, which isn't precisely a sequel to Black Belt Jones but stars Kelly as a martial artist named Jones.) Anyway, The Tattoo Connection is a turgid thriller about Hong Kong criminals who steal a valuable diamond, then scheme and squabble among themselves. Meanwhile, an American martial artist (Kelly) is sent to track down the diamond and, if need be, chop and kick and punch his way through bad guys while he recovers the stolen gem. Notwithstanding the terrible soundtrack (on which bad dubbing is accompanied by chintzy music), The Tattoo Connection has passable production values, with the lighting in particular more professionally executed than one might expect in a low-budget chop-socky joint. Alas, all of the genre’s usual problems are evident: interminably long fight scenes, muddy storytelling, terrible acting. There’s also a significant sleaze element, because the plot involves a twisted love triangle between mobster Mr. Lu (Sing Chen), his trusted lieutenant Tin-hao (Tao-ling Tan), and the stripper (Nami Misaki) they both want. This subplot “justifies” copious nude scenes by Misaki, culminating in a rape sequence that’s intercut with shots of a powerful racecar. (Because, y’know, the stripper revs the rapist’s engine.) Classy!

The Tattoo Connection:  LAME

Golden Needles (1974)

          The first 10 minutes of this actioner from Enter the Dragon director Robert Clouse are wonderfully trashy. Over a shot of a primitive golden statue, a narrator explains hokey lore about how the statue’s design reveals secret acupuncture points—used properly, these points release incredible sexual pleasure, but used improperly, they lead to instant death. Hence the statue’s name: “The Golden Needles of Ecstasy.” Cut to a decrepit, wheelchair-bound Chinese man getting escorted into a modern-day acupuncture parlor for a session with the needles. Once the session is completed, the man rises to his feet, magically invigorated and ready for private time with his young female escorts—until two bad guys enter the parlor carrying flamethrowers. The assailants torch the old man, his ladies, and the acupuncturist before absconding with the statue. That’s how to get the cinematic party started, folks!

          Although the remaining 80 minutes of Golden Needles pale by comparison in terms of energy and verve, the movie has an appealing quality of loopy escapism. The picture combines Far East exotica with mysticism, sex, violence, and a slew of lively performances that border on camp. Golden Needles is ridiculous, but that’s why it’s fun to watch, even though the overwrought plotting eventually slows things down. The gist of the story is that various parties in Hong Kong want to acquire the “Golden Needles” statue. Dan (Joe Don Baker) is a towering American who knows his way around the local underworld, so he’s hired by visiting American Felicity (Elizabeth Ashley) to steal the statue, in exchange for cash and sex. (Dan drives a hard bargain, wink-wink.) Eventually, Dan finds himself in the midst of a caper that involves a kooky American crime boss (Burgess Meredith) and various representatives of the Hong Kong mob.

          Given his previous success with martial-arts pictures, Clouse hits the chop-socky button every so often, with kicks and punches thrown by Baker, Jim Kelly (Black Belt Jones), and sexy Asian actress Frances Fong. Yet Golden Needles is only marginally a martial-arts flick, because the action scenes tend to focus on bare-knuckle brawls and death-defying escapes—at one point, Dan gets trapped in a factory into which a bad guy has released dozens of snakes. (An exciting score by Lalo Schifin helps pull together the random story elements.) Golden Needles won’t meet anyone’s criteria for quality cinema, but for sheer silly excitement, it’s hard to beat a movie that features a pervy Meredith licking his lips while his giant black manservant receives potentially lethal acupuncture, or that features man-mountain Baker leading pursuers on an epic chase through an overcrowded Hong Kong harbor and the surrounding area.

Golden Needles: GROOVY

Take a Hard Ride (1975)

          Despite featuring several interesting B-movie personalities and despite having a solid story premise, the European-made Western Take a Hard Ride never realizes its potential. Part of the problem has to do with audience expectations. Since the movie features blaxploitation stars Jim Brown, Jim Kelly, and Fred Williamson—as well as spaghetti-Western stalwart Lee Van Cleef—the obvious approach would have been to combine the actors into a fighting unit for a Magnificent Seven-style flick. Alas, Take a Hard Ride is essentially a Brown-Williamson buddy picture in which Kelly and Van Cleef, among others, play supporting roles. Worse, director Antonio Margheriti employs a hacky visual style that makes every scene feel haphazard and rushed. The picture is watchable, but it gets awfully dull after a while, especially because Brown and Williamson end up playing repetitive variations on the exact same scene for most of the film’s middle hour.

          The story hook is simple enough. Black gunslinger Pike (Brown) accompanies his white boss, rancher Bob Morgan (Dana Andrews), to the end of a cattle drive, where Morgan gets paid $86,000 in cash. After Morgan has a fatal heart attack, the sterling Pike vows to return the money to Morgan’s widow. Unfortunately, once Pike sets off on his journey, various criminals get wind of his cargo and conspire to ambush him. One such outlaw, slick gambler Tyree (Williamson), saves Pike from an attacker and subsequently accompanies Pike on the trail—even though Tyree says outright that he plans to rob Pike once they reach the Mexican border. Another pursuer is Kiefer (Van Cleef), a bounty hunter who eventually gathers a small army of money-hungry varmints to chase after Pike. There’s also a subplot involving an ex-hooker, Catherine (Catherine Spaak), whom Pike and Tyree rescue from rapists—she joins Pike’s group, as does her mute Indian sidekick, Kashtok (Kelly).

          Considering that Take a Hard Ride is basically a chase movie, it’s amazing how little excitement the narrative generates. The script is filled with dull scenes of Pike and Tyree challenging each other, and the supporting characters are under-utilized; for instance, Kiefer spends most of the picture standing on ridges and squinting while other people get into fights. And speaking of the movie’s numerous battles, none is novel or surprising—think standard fire-and-duck shootouts, with the minor exception of quick bits during which Kelly takes down attackers with karate and throwing knives. If one struggles for a compliment, it could be noted that Take a Hard Ride has better production values that most movies starring Van Cleef or Williamson—but that’s not saying much.

Take a Hard Ride: FUNKY

Enter the Dragon (1973)

          A pulpy blend of martial arts and James Bond-style intrigue, Enter the Dragon suffers from predictable plotting, cardboard characterizations, and action sequences that border on self-parody. Plus, the less said about the acting, the better. Nonetheless, Enter the Dragon is fascinating almost entirely because of its leading man, Bruce Lee. Like James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, Lee became a pop-culture icon by dying young—he passed away at the age of 32 days before Enter the Dragon, his first English-language starring role, premiered. Like his fellow tragic legends, Lee justifies his enduring appeal with a peerless onscreen persona. During fight scenes, Lee makes things that shouldn’t even be possible look effortless through his unique combination of grace, power, and speed. Therefore, even though the movie’s combat is accompanied by the campy sound effects that dominated ’70s martial-arts pictures coming out of Asia, Lee emerges as a cinematic badass of the highest order.
          As for the picture itself, Enter the Dragon is pure escapist silliness. An international criminal named Han (Shih Ken) holds a martial-arts tournament on his private island. Government agents ask Lee’s character (who is also named Lee) to participate so he can sneak around the island and determine whether Han is up to something nefarious. Also invited to the tournament are Americans Roper (John Saxon), a white man in debt to the mob, and Williams (Jim Kelly), a black man running from charges of assaulting police officers. Lee, Roper, and Williams participate in the tournament by day and discover Han’s criminal activities by night, leading to a giant confrontation as good guys, accompanied by legions of freed prisoners, battle Han and his minions during an island-wide martial-arts showdown. The movie’s zippy climax involves a duel between Han and Lee in a hall of mirrors, with Han wearing a set of metal talons in place of his missing left hand. Ken, who starred in dozens of martial-arts movies before appearing Enter the Dragon, makes a formidable opponent for Lee.
          Although Enter the Dragon wasn’t the very martial-arts story to find success in America—TV series Kung Fu debuted in 1972, and the 1971 indie Billy Jack made a mint when it was re-released in 1973, just a few months before Enter the Dragon hit theaters—the fact that Enter the Dragon was a U.S./Hong Kong coproduction ensured the film was steeped in genre tropes most American audiences hadn’t seen before. Furthermore, director Robert Clouse shot Enter the Dragon’s fight scenes in such an enjoyably cartoonish manner that the picture became a major inspiration the ’70s kung fu craze. So, while it’s easy to identify the picture’s campy faults (many of which were mercilessly satirized in the 1977 comedy flick Kentucky Fried Movie), Enter the Dragon is unquestionably one of the defining movies of the ’70s.

Enter the Dragon: GROOVY

Black Belt Jones (1974)

Gene-splicing the blaxploitation and kung-fu genres was a smart move in terms of marketing, but Black Belt Jones is far less than the sum of its parts. There’s a significant kitsch factor thanks to scenes of black martial artists doing their thing with sky-high Afros atop their heads, but the flick is schlocky even by the low standards of the genres it bridges—the script is brainlessly derivative and the filmmaking is garishly mechanical. Real-life karate champ Jim Kelly, who achieved minor fame as a costar of Enter the Dragon (1973), stars as Black Belt Jones, a government operative/mercenary/whatever, since this is one of those B-movies in which dudes with prowess at kicking ass are constantly in demand from deep-pocketed employers. When Mafia bad guys decide to seize ownership of a property owned by Jones’ mentor, karate teacher Pop Byrd (Scatman Crothers), the Mafia sends African-American enforcer Pinky (Malik Carter) to intimidate Pop. Unfortunately, one of Pinky’s goons inadvertently kills Pop, sending Our Hero on an uninteresting vengeance mission that somehow involves breaking into a mob fortress and seizing photos the gangsters use for blackmail against political figures. Obviously, acting and story are not the big draws here, and Kelly is fine kicking and punching his way through fights, often in slow motion. Gloria Hendry is actually even more impressive as Sydney, a female martial artist who mows down villains alongside Jones. Additionally, the action stuff has a few glimmers of wit, like the funny moment when a victim gets thrown onto a trampoline, bounces upward, and lodges in the ceiling like a character in a Warner Bros. cartoon. So, if tongue-in-cheek martial arts mayhem gets your blood pumping, you might find fleeting amusement amid the tedium—but if not, chances are you’ll find Black Belt Jones thoroughly uninteresting. (FYI, the 1978 Jim Kelly movie The Tattoo Connection is not a sequel to this film, and in fact there is no sequel to Black Belt Jones, despite some video releases that misleadingly label The Tattoo Connection as Black Belt Jones 2.)

Black Belt Jones: LAME