I've had Winter's Bone languishing in my apartment now for about two weeks. It arrived in the mail while I was visiting my parents for Christmas, and then I was extraordinarily busy at work for the weeks following that. So this weekend has been the first time in a while where I've been able to set a few hours aside for a dvd. But it's been a long week. A long week. I've just torn through a big dinner and downed a few Rolling Rocks while flipping between college football and pro wrestling. It's not the kind of night for a grim, critically acclaimed drama.
But it is a night to watch Black Belt Jones.
The title character is played by Jim Kelly, aka the black guy from Enter the Dragon (the two films share producers and the director). Jones has some nebulous involvement with law enforcement or maybe the FBI, who knows, and in his spare time he teaches white women how to jump on a trampoline by the beach. His superiors want him to go after some mafiosos because they have some photos that are important for some reason. Jones isn't interested until he learns that the mob is looking to muscle an old friend (Scatman Crothers!) out of the karate studio he owns so they can buy the land and then flip it to the city government for a planned civic center. But the black hoodlums who are sent to rough up the old man accidentally kill him, incurring both the wrath of Black Belt Jones and the man's daughter, Sydney (Gloria Hendry). Sydney is coincidentally a martial arts expert herself and a badass chick besides (as she awesomely intones to some lecherous gangsters, "I ain't your momma"). Now it's time, as the film's poster states, to clobber the mob.
Before Black Belt Jones, the only true blaxploitation film I'd seen was Blacula. If, like me, you thought that Black Dynamite was intentionally over-the-top, Black Belt Jones makes it look like a documentary. There's a funky soundtrack, afros galore, outrageous leisure suits, stereotyping, misogyny, bad dialogue, and worse editing. It's hard enough to not shout quotes at the screen ("But Black Dynamite, I sell drugs to the community!"). And even though Black Belt Jones isn't a parody, it's hardly playing the material straight. As the only actor in the cast with a combination of athleticism, presence, and talent, Kelly remains unflappable. Everyone else mugs it up.
That "anything goes" style is part of the movie's charm. I've largely seen the genre through retrospective eyes. The Last Dragon was too self-conscious and tried too hard to be something for everybody - comedy, kung fu movie, musical. Black Belt Jones, which I'm assuming was cranked out fast and cheap, just shrugs its shoulders and plays to the rafters. Its lack of aspirations is its greatest strength. The action scenes aren't earth-shattering but they are competent, which is really all that matters. It's Kelly's movie and he ably carries it.
I'll have to mine Netflix for more blaxploitation. As a white guy, I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to defend it (Black Belt Jones is largely inoffensive) but in this case it's a lot of fun.
Don't believe me? Check the trailer:
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