Black Belt Jones
Directed by: Robert Clouse
Screenplay by: Alex Ross, Fred Weintraub and Oscar Williams
Starring: Jim Kelly, Gloria Hendry, Scatman Crothers, Eric Laneuville, Alan Weeks, Malik Carter
Running Time: 90 minutes
Rated: NR
Release Date: 1974
DVD Release: Blax Film

Earlier this week I received a copy of one of my favorite films of all times, Black Belt Jones. I’ve been dying to get this flick on DVD for more than 10 years now - since I wore out my old VHS copy. Now, I found it on Amazon and I’m not completely sure where the DVD came from. As far as I can tell there has been no official DVD release of the film, but the copy I received in the mail is a fairly nice transfer from a company called “Blax Film” and judging from the cover art may have originally been an Asian release or bootleg. The only real downside to the DVD is there are absolutely no extras aside from trailers for some other flicks.

Bootleg or not, it’s great to have Black Belt Jones on DVD. I believe Black Belt Jones to be one of the greatest of the so-called Blaxsploitation films of the 1970s and the forerunner of the modern action film. Watching Jim Kelly in Black Belt Jones gives a great look back at the source of the Arnold/Stallone/Segal/Van Damme/Whoever action flicks of the 80s, 90s and today. It is one of the original sources and originators of all of the bits that eventually became cliches in modern action movies, down to the pithy one-liners. It’s a shame that a film that was such an influence on modern action movies has become forgotten.

I’m also going to go on record to say that Black Belt Jones was far cooler than Shaft…and here’s why: Shaft may have gotten ladies and had a cool leather jacket, but Black Belt Jones had a better afro and his own team of hot, bikini wearing girls who worked out on a trampoline out behind his beach house. That’s right. He had a team of girls. Half-naked. On a trampoline. To this day, no one has yet to achieve that level of coolness.

You might be asking yourself, how did a nerdy kid who grew up in Hawaii become a fan of a 1970s Black Action Film? I was first introduced to the film on television in the late 70s by a man named Chet Christopher. Chet was the saxophone player for my dad’s band and a fairly militant African-American. My parents had a strange hodge podge of friends and never really suffered from the anti-White movements in Hawaii because, as my father was Greek and my mom Scottish-American Indian, no one really knew where we fit in racially. One of the times Chet came over to the house to rehearse with my pop, he switched on Black Belt Jones and opened up a whole new world to me. When I asked if Jones was a superhero, Chet simply said, “Shee-it, little Half-Honky, Jones would kick Superman’s ass and then make Wonder Woman sweat…one way and then the other.”

It took me years to figure out what he meant.  In fact, I’m still not completely sure what he meant.

The story of Black Belt Jones is pretty simple - badass mo’fo with secret government training heads home to help his mentor’s daughter protect her karate studio from mobsters. But all that you need to know is there is a lot of cool martial arts fighting and a team of half-naked chicks who train on a trampoline outside of Jones’ beach-front home. Beyond that everything else is icing. It is unfortunate that Jim Kelly’s career didn’t go further than it did because he had quite a bit of screen presence and charisma as well as being a martial arts expert.

To top off the fighting and sheer coolness of the flick, Black Belt Jones also featured one of the best lines ever put on celluloid: “My cookie could kill you.”

As cliche and hokey as it might seem to today’s audience, at the time it was an innovative film that laid the ground work for what action films were to become. If you’re a film of action or martial arts flicks and haven’t seen Black Belt Jones, then get off your ass and order it. It’s still a lot of fun to watch. For still kicking ass more than 30 years later, I give Black Belt Jones 4.5 stars.

-NiftyMat, Professional nerd
http://www.theniftynerd.com/