Hot off the success of ENTER THE DRAGON, (Bruce Lee’s last "official" movie and the one that sky rocketed him to fame in the U.S.), director Robert Clouse curiously decided to follow it up with an action comedy entitled, BLACK BELT JONES, which starred Jim Kelly (whom was also in ENTER THE DRAGON and a real life Karate champ) as the title character. Given the premise, which is essentially about a black kung-fu superhero/secret agent—the film could have been a huge disaster if not handled correctly. Thankfully, almost everything about BLACK BELT JONES is done right. The action scenes in the film are good—but always stay tongue-in-cheek, and the stuff that is supposed to be funny—usually is. Some of the humor is hit or miss, but for me, it hits the mark more often than not.
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Jim Kelly, while he doesn’t quite have the screen presence of some of his contemporaries, he is still a key player in the history of Blaxploitation. Kelly doesn’t have the charisma like that of Fred Williamson or Richard Roundtree, but he’s definitely a cool dude. The opening credits find Kelly’s Black Belt Jones character kicking a bunch of bad guy ass in a parking lot, while the film’s infectious theme song (written by Dennis Coffey) blares in the background. It’s both hilarious and bad ass at the same time. Jones’s “who-weee” grunts during his battles would be repeated for the excellent 2009 Blaxploitation spoof, BLACK DYNAMITE—if not the whole kung-fu aspect of BLACK BELT JONES. From the get go, the film lets you know it's a comedy. The opening scene has two very stereotypical mafia goons whacking some guy in a winery. The guys gets choked to death then stuffed in a wine barrel, then the one goon says to the winery employee, “…mark this barrel down to $.39 a bottle—the bastard shit himself before he died.” Now that’s some funny sh—well, it’s funny. The film is loaded with that kind of humor—the kind that may confuse some viewers who may be expecting a serious action movie, with stupid dialogue, when it’s actually a comedy with some serious action.
The story involves an urban karate school, run by an old kung-fu master named Papa Byrd, played by Scatman Crothers, who ironically was also the voice of Hong Kong Phooey—"number one super guy". Seems the mafia wants the land that Papa Byrd's dojo is on, and they enlist a local crime boss, Pinky (Malik Carter) to muscle Papa Byrd and his students out of the building. Pinky and his thugs accidentally kill Papa Byrd before they can get him to sign a paper handing over the property, so Pinky decides to take the school by force, which is no easy task. Papa Byrd’s number 1 student, Toppy (Alan Weeks) takes over the school and he puts in a call to Black Belt Jones, a former student of Papa Byrd, and he takes time away from his secret agent-like duties to save the day. As it turns out, Papa Byrd also has an estranged daughter, Sydney (Gloria Hendry) who comes down for the funeral and is also ready to extract revenge on Pinky—oh and she’s also a kung fu master—and one bad mamma jamma. A romance soon develops between Black Belt and Sydney and they work together to take out Pinky and the Mafia.
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Corny? Of course it is. Silly? No doubt, but it is also very funny. It’s not a laugh a minute, but it’s a very fast passed and entertaining flick that is also good for some genuine laughs. Most of the humor does not come from Jim Kelly, who is mostly stiff, but from most of the supporting players, such as Malik Carter, who does a real good job as Pinky, and never gets too hammy, or makes the character too over-the-top villainous. That being said, Jim Kelly does have his laugh inducing moments, but mostly it’s the situations that he’s in that are funny, like when he’s fighting a dozen of Pinky’s goons on a train caboose and most of them are flown out of almost every window on the car—even the biggest guy who barely fits. There’s also the film’s final showdown at a car wash, when Black Belt battles almost every bad guy in the whole film in about three feet of soapsuds. It’s all very silly, but it’s all on purpose which makes it okay.
Gloria Hendry, whom had some great Blaxploitation cred prior to BLACK BELT JONES (she was also in ACROSS 110h STREET, BLACK CAESAR, HELL UP IN HARLEM, SLAUGHTER’S BIG RIP-OFF, as well as the Bond flick, LIVE AND LET DIE) does a really good job here and she probably could have/should have went on to better things…she was in PUMPKINHEAD II…’nuff said. I mentioned Scatman Crothers is here as well—man do I just fucking love that guy! I don’t know what it is, but there is just something about Crothers—he’s just so likable in everything, even when he’s playing a bad guy like in FRIDAY FOSTER. Every time I see THE SHINING I cringe during his death scene, because I hate to see him die—he dies in this film too, but it’s kind of funny (he dies from one punch to the jaw…wtf?). Isaac from The Love Boat (Ted Lange) pops in as a black militant in a funny scene.
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There’s no getting through this review without talking about the very cool score by Dennis Coffey and Luchi De Jesus (SLAUGHTER), Dennis providing the ultra-catchy theme song and De Jesus providing the supplemental music, similar to SLAUGHTER where Billy Preston provided the theme song and De Jesus did the rest. Both composers do a hell of job keeping the music funky and smooth at the right moments.
While Jim Kelly may not be the best actor, he pulls the character off pretty damn well. He would go on to play similar roles in BLACK SAMURAI and the Hong Kong sequel to BLACK BELT JONES; BLACK BELT JONES 2: THE TATTOO CONNECTION, as well as DEATH DEMENSION. He would give action comedy another try in TAKE THE HARD RIDE, as well as HOT POTATO—the latter being a huge step down from the quality of BLACK BELT JONES. He would also pop up in ONE DOWN, TWO TO GO which may go down in my book as one of the worst Blaxploitation movies of all time, which is really fucking sad considering that Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, and Richard Roundtree are all in the film as well—talk about your missed opportunities. Speaking of missed opportunities, I've always felt that Black Belt Jones should have been turned into a comic book character (a showdown with Shang-Chi from The Master of Kung-Fu would have been excellent!)--or at the very least a Saturday morning cartoon (where he could have teamed up with Scatman Crothers as Hong Kong Phooey--c'mon that would have been the shit!)
BLACK BELT JONES is really Jim Kelly’s shining moment—even over his appearance in ENTER THE DRAGON, which was all Mr. Lee. It’s entertaining, funny, chock full of action, has a groovy score, and features Kelly’s trademark “who-weee!” What’s not to like?
BLACK BELT JONES trailer