After an opening sequence showing the bloodthirsty hitman Holmes (Roger E. Mosley from Magnum P.I.) killing people in a variety of ways (pushing their car into a speeding Semi, electrified gate, burning them to a crisp, etc.), the plot begins.  Holmes gets sent by his kingpin boss (the always great William Smith) to pose as a preacher in a poor black community to snuff out the competition.  He also puts a greasy Senator (Michael Pataki) in the pocket of the Mob after convincing his flock to vote for him.  When the phony baloney preacher gets a bit too big for his britches though, the Mob comes after Holmes.

I got a kick out of the initial premise of a tough guy assassin pretending to be a saintly preacher.  I mean here is a man of the cloth who grabs his secretary’s ass and holds a staple gun up to someone’s eye when they call him a “jig”.  This premise could’ve been awesome.  Alas, the filmmakers felt a need to put a message at the end of the movie.  They also threw in one too many subplots (like the cops who kill a young boy and cover it up) that get in the way of the fun. 

A few bar fights and shootouts aside, Sweet Jesus, Preacherman was considerably low on action.  That means you more or less have to enjoy the acting.  Luckily, everyone brings their A-Game to the table.  Mosley does a good job playing both sides of his character and carries the film with style and charisma.  I also dug seeing Marla Gibbs from The Jeffersons in a serious role too.  For me, the movie really belonged to Smith and Pataki.  They play sleazy white guys like it’s nobody’s business.  The duo was also in the minor classic Grave of the Vampire the next year.

Director Cirio H. Santiago will probably never get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame but I still dig the man’s work.  In his lifetime, Santiago directed some of the best low budget shot-in-the-Philippines action movies ever made.  Santiago’s The Muthers isn’t quite as good as his Angelfist or She-Devils in Chains, but it serves as an OK reminder of what he was capable of.

Jeannie Bell (who also starred in Santiago’s immortal TNT Jackson) stars as a sexy pirate who learns that her sister has been captured and taken to a remote island prison.  She gets herself arrested and goes to the prison to look for her.  After the lecherous warden murders her little sister; Bell escapes into the jungle along with some foxy companions.  In the end, Jeannie and her friends get into a machine gun battle with not only the guards, but a rival gang of pirates as well.

The Muthers is a mixture of several reliable exploitation genres (women in prison, blaxploitation, Kung Fu, etc.) yet it never really gels.  Most of the action is weighted towards the end of the film and while the shootouts, karate chops, and explosions are plentiful, they really lack the panache of Santiago’s best work.  The film also suffers from some awfully muddy cinematography which hampers a lot of the night time scenes.

Bell’s fun performance is what makes the film watchable.  (I especially enjoyed her topless shower scene.)  She has a genuine charisma about her that I enjoy and she handles herself well during the fight scenes (although her gymnast double is poorly edited in on several occasions).

It’s Bell’s best friend who gets the funniest line of the film when she gets bitten on the breast by a poisonous snake:  “Just like every other snake I’ve ever met… can’t leave my tits alone!”

You may think that the Leprechaun series had reached a creative low point since Leprechaun Back 2 Tha Hood recycles the same ghetto setting from the previous movie.  I have to disagree.  You can tell this flick is going to be pretty inventive just by looking at the title.  Most brain dead horror sequels set in the hood would use the more traditional slang word “Da” in the title but this one opts for the lesser known (and much more eloquent) “Tha”.  Just like the title, the film is slightly better than you’d expect. 

The plot is just like all the other Leprechaun movies.  Some people steal the Leprechaun’s gold and he wants it back.  For the Leprechaun, it’s the Same Shit Different Day Syndrome. 

The air of over-familiarity isn’t the only debit the film has.  It also gets off to a slow start as Leprechaun doesn’t start killing people until about a half hour into the flick.  Even after he shows up, there are still some considerable lulls in the action.  Plus, the characters aren’t nearly as likable as they were in the previous entry.  At least they are more fleshed out than most characters in horror sequels.

Despite it’s flaws, Leprechaun Back 2 Tha Hood is still quite a bit of fun.  Although there are a number of kills that are left off screen, the ones we do get to see are memorable.  Hearts are ripped out, legs are ripped off, and a guy gets a baseball bat IN the knee.  Easily the most outrageous kill is when one dude gets stabbed with a bong.  Leprechaun Back 2 Tha Hood also features a hilarious Lord of the Rings inspired pre-credits sequence that had me in stitches.

Warwick Davis gives yet another fine performance as Leprechaun.  Although I was somewhat disappointed by the conspicuous lack of funny rhymes, that was acceptable because he played the character as a much more malevolent monster this time around.  Just because he was a meaner greener killing machine didn’t mean he didn’t bring the funny.  Wait until you see him smoke a bong, get high, and get the munchies.  That shit was great.  Chaplin, eat your heart out.

Leprechaun also gets as good as he gives in this one.  In one scene, he takes an electric razor to the eye and in the end he gets shot up by some shamrock filled bullets.  The highlight of the film though is when he hangs on to the bottom of the hero’s car and gets squashed by the hydraulics system.  That scene was tight.

Best line:  “We don’t call people niggas any more!  We call them ninjas!  My ninja!”

<I’ve worked my way through just about as many horror icon movies that I have in my collection, so tomorrow I’m going to switch things up a bit and start on some zombie franchise movies that I haven’t yet reviewed.  Hope you enjoy.  Tomorrow’s Horror Franchise Movie:  Return of the Living Dead 2>

Usually adding rappers to your horror sequel is a sure sign of creative bankruptcy.  If you don’t believe me, check out Busta Rhymes in Halloween:  Resurrection.  For the Leprechaun series, it actually makes a lot of sense.  I mean all the Leprechaun (Warwick Davis) knows is rhyming and killing.  The same could be said for most rappers.

The opening scene takes place in the 70’s.  Ice-T (with the obligatory afro) finds Leprechaun’s pot of gold and uses the amulet to turn the irate Irishman into stone.  (“You midget Midas motherfucker!”)  When Ice-T blows on Leprechaun’s golden lute, he becomes a big time rapper.  Cut to 2000 where a trio of up and coming rappers rob Ice-T’s office and accidentally set the Leprechaun free.  They get their hands on the lute and their career begins to take off, but Leprechaun is hot on their trail.  And he wants his gold!

Leprechaun in the Hood is the first film in the series that actually follows some sort of continuity.  Like Part 3, Leprechaun is encased in stone by the magical amulet in the beginning of the film.  There’s also a hilarious scene where he gets momentarily weakened by smoking a joint laced with four leaf clovers.  (Four leaf clovers as we all know, was the cause of his death in Part 1.)  Leprechaun also gets some funny rhymes this time out.  (“A lot of time has come and pass, but you’re still a big fat ass!”)

Speaking of rhyming, the scenes of the heroes rapping on stage are kinda lame (especially their “religious” rap in a church) and bog the film down.  I will give the filmmakers credit for taking their characters seriously though.  When one of them gets killed unexpectedly, the other two deal with it in an appropriate and believable manner.  I mean how many horror sequels do you know of where the characters actually take time out to mourn the loss of their friends? 

I’m not saying this flick is Sophie’s Choice or anything.  There is plenty of blatant ridiculousness here to please any self-respecting connoisseur of the Leprechaun franchise.  How about the subplot where Leprechaun possesses some skanky chicks and turns them into “Zombie Fly Girls”?  Is that weird enough for ya, folks?  The kills are of a fairly high quality and include death by electrified mike stand, heart ripping, and of course, popping caps in people’s asses.  The funniest death though is the throat slashing via afro pick.  And for some reason, a lot of the plot revolves around guys dressing in drag.

The highlight of course is when Leprechaun raps at the end.  (“Lep in the hood, come to do no good!”)  You may think that Leprechaun’s rap name “Lep” sounds stupid, but when you consider that other rapper names like Nas and Pras sound just as dumb, it’s kinda believable.  I also like the rap names for the main characters Post Master P (“I deliver a positive message!”), Stray Bullet, and Onassis (“He used to be a pimp; you know… he OWNED asses!”).

Warwick Davis gives another stellar performance as Leprechaun.  He seems to be having more fun here than he did in the last film, that’s for sure.  Ice-T is also pretty good and gives his best performance in a movie not named Ricochet.  If T’s presence wasn’t enough to give the movie “street cred”; Coolio also turns up in a cameo playing himself.

The pacing is erratic, the cinematography is cruddy, and most of the songs (with the exception of Leprechaun’s rap that is) are terrible.  That shouldn’t stop you from enjoying the flick though.  Leprechaun returned three years later with Leprechaun Back 2 Tha Hood.

Leprechaun (naturally) gets the best line of the movie when he smokes a fatty and says, “A friend with weed, is a friend indeed!”

<Tomorrow’s Horror Franchise Movie:  Leprechaun Back 2 Tha Hood>

Jimmy Cliff comes to Jamaica to become a reggae singer.  Broke and out of work, he turns to singing in a choir and doing odd jobs for an asshole preacher.  When some dude tries to steal his bicycle, he slices that sonofabitch up with a switchblade.  After getting publicly flogged, Cliff cuts a record that doesn’t exactly burn up the charts.  Frustrated, he turns to selling ganja to make money and winds up going on a killing spree; murdering three cops.  Ironically, it’s then that his album starts becoming a hit.  Cliff goes around shooting more people and generally acting like a jerk before the cops pin him down and blow him away.

The Harder They Come already had one strike against it in my book because of the constant reggae music.  I pretty much hate reggae but Cliff’s music is a Hell of lot more tolerable than say Bob Marley’s.  Although the title tune isn’t bad, I got tired of hearing the same two or three songs played over and over again.

Another obstacle I had to overcome while watching this flick was the impenetrable Jamaican accents.  I could only understand about every 8^th word most of the actors were saying.  At least the plot was relatively low maintenance so it was easy to follow.

As middling as most of the movie was, I will say that Cliff does have a modicum of screen presence and keeps you watching.  Unfortunately, his character gets downright loathsome by the end of the movie.  I was onboard with Cliff trying to get his record made but I lost all sympathy for him once he started gunning down cops and shooting defenseless naked women. 

The Harder They Come is highly regarded in some circles.  I just don’t get it.  If you really want to watch a good movie about Jamaican drug dealers, check out Predator 2 instead.

Jim Brown stars in one of the best of the Shaft imitators of the 70’s.  He plays Slaughter, an ex-Green Beret soldier out to avenge the death of his father.  Slaughter goes around shooting people in the forehead for about a half an hour until the Feds offer him a job to take out the main Mafioso responsible for capping his daddy.  Slaughter agrees and for the next hour or so busts a lot of heads and shoots a lot of white people.

Slaughter is a real treat to watch, mostly because of the great cast supporting cast.  Rip Torn chews up the scenery nicely as the sleazy gangster, Don Gordon is funny as Slaughter’s partner, and Cameron Mitchell is a blast in the smallish role as Slaughter’s bigoted boss.  Stella Stevens also looks damn fine as the love interest and has three major nude scenes (two sex scenes with Brown and a shower scene) too.  

Jim Brown is the reason to watch it though.  He kicks a lot of ass and blows away a bunch of white dudes, so any blaxploitation fan worth his salt needs to check this flick out ASAP.  You also get a great title sequence and cool theme song by Billy Preston too.

The only downside is that director Jack (Cleopatra Jones) Starrett uses some weird lens on the camera every time Slaughter does something cool.  Whenever this happens, everything gets stretched out and wall-eyed and it’s hard to tell just what the Hell is going on.  For example:  Slaughter will break down a door and beat somebody up.  Unfortunately, since we’re watching it through what looks to be a funhouse mirror, it makes what could’ve been a tight action scene seem incomprehensible.  Half star deduction for that.  But don’t let that stop you from checking Slaughter out.  It’s filled with wall-to-wall action and the Stretch-O-Vision nonsense is only a minor annoyance in an otherwise stellar blaxploitation action flick.

Co-screenwriter Mark Hanna, who also wrote such 50’s classics as Not of This Earth, The Amazing Colossal Man, and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman; was responsible for Slaughter’s tough guy dialogue like, “Get your narrow ass out of here!”

A wealthy black doctor and his family move in to an all white community and face racism from their neighbors who picket their house, throw trash on their lawn and eviscerate the family cat.  The good doctor refuses to relocate and continues to work in his basement laboratory to perfect his new serum that makes rabbits indestructible!  A badass black militant with no eyebrows named Abar (Tobar Mayo) offers to act as a bodyguard to the family and beats up a lot of white thugs who loiter around the house.  When the hateful honkies kill the doctor’s young son, he uses the serum on Abar, and in addition to making him indestructible, it also gives him ESP powers.  Abar first uses his power to make a difference in the ghetto.  He causes racist white cops to fight each other, turns winos’ booze into milk, and gives hookers Kung Fu powers to beat up their abusive pimps.  In the end, he returns to the doctor’s house to get revenge on the white neighbors by infesting their houses with snakes, rats, and worms; forcing them to learn an invaluable lesson:  Racism is BAD.

Abar:  The Black Superman is kinda like Petey Wheatstraw:  The Devil’s Son in Law and Soul Vengeance in that it’s one of the most bizarre blaxploitation movies I’ve ever seen.  It’s not nearly as mind-bogglingly bat shit insane as those flicks, but they are definitely kindred spirits.  (The scene where Abar walks around the ghetto using his powers for good is almost exactly like the one in Petey Wheatstraw.)

What sets Abar apart from most of the blaxploitation flicks is its positive message of non-violence.  There are also a lot more messages hidden not so subtly (like wealthy blacks should give back to the ghetto) in there too.  The problem is that there is way too much heavy handed preaching during the first part of the movie and not enough of Abar using his psychic powers for revenge.  I mean he doesn’t even drink the serum until 70 minutes into the film!  Luckily, the last half hour of the flick features enough cheesy goodness to make it worth a look.

AKA:  Abar:  The First Black Superman.  AKA:  In Your Face.

James (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls) Inglehart stars as a soldier smuggling gold in from Vietnam that gets stabbed in the back and left for dead by his dirty partners.  He washes ashore on a desert island inhabited only by two Japanese soldiers (Who think that WWII is still going on!) who nurse him back to health and train him in the ways of the samurai!  They teach James to swing a samurai sword “like Joe DiMaggio” to cut cocoanuts and a lot of other Mr. Miyagi type shit.  While James was away, his partners used the gold to finance a personal mob war to carve out their own turf.  One of the baddies (Penitentiary’s Leon Isaac Kennedy) even roughs up James’ wife a little bit.  James soon returns home to the USA wielding his samurai sword looking for revenge and hacks everybody up real good.

I was actually a bit surprised how much I liked this flick.  It’s a quirky mix of blaxploitation and samurai movies and even works really well as just a straight-up revenge picture.  Director Cirio H. Santiago can do just about anything in my book.  From TNT Jackson to She Devils in Chains, this guy has done some really great stuff and Fighting Mad is one of his best.  Santiago delivers on the action and gives us a lot of fast paced shootouts and a couple rousing swordfights.  Fighting Mad also features one of the finest Kung Fu in a barbershop fight scenes ever committed to film.  Santiago even sprinkles in a little bit of gore into the mix too.  There are a lot of decapitated heads (Inglehart even gift-wraps one of them) as well as a few fine shots of juicy spurting neck stumps.

The acting is better than you’d expect and helps to elevate the film from the usual B Movie fare.  Inglehart is excellent and physically intimidating and Leon Isaac Kennedy makes for a suitably slimy villain.  Kennedy’s wife, Jayne Kennedy (who was such a bitch that she made poor Leon take HER last name when they got married) is also quite good as Inglehart’s long suffering wife.  She also sings (not badly) too.  Pilipino action fans should also get a kick out of seeing veteran character actor Vic Diaz in a small role as well.

Fighting Mad is no classic or anything but it’s better than most Kung Fu oriented blaxploitation movies that were being made around the same time.  As a bonus, you also get a smorgasbord of great dialogue like, “The only brother is the man on the back of a dollar bill… and he ain’t black!”, “If he dies, do I get my bed back?”, and the immortal, “Those mother humpers!”

AKA:  Death Force.

J.J. (Rod Perry from Black Gestapo) tries to rip off a big time mobster with his junkie friend.  It turns out bad and J.J.’s smacked out buddy ends up dead.  Even though he botched the robbery, the mobster’s competitor, “The Numbers Racket King” takes a liking to J.J. and offers him a job.  J.J. turns out to be a fast learner and four years later he becomes a kingpin.  He then muscles in on the white mobsters in the community who control the smack trade in the ghetto.  When Whitey kidnaps J.J.’s woman, he grabs a couple of his best bad dudes and they go out to kick some white ass.

The title makes it seem like that this is going to be a blaxploitation version of The Godfather but the movie is nothing more than a no budget action flick filled with amateurish acting and very little action.  When we finally get to the action, it’s all pretty ineptly filmed and staged.  There is an OK catfight randomly thrown in there for good measure though.

The “dramatic” portions of the film are mostly boring and are shot without an ounce of style or energy.  The overall look of the production is really shoddy and the editing is especially atrocious as there are a lot of jarring jump cuts.  On the plus side, a couple of chicks do end up getting naked, so the movie has got that going for it.

Ultimately, everything about The Black Godfather is cheap.  I mean when the big deal “Numbers Racket King” makes his grand entrance, it’s from out of the backseat of a taxi!  Plus a lot of the scenes look like they were filmed in the director’s mom’s house or something, which is economical I suppose.  I hope she made cookies for everyone.

While most of the acting straight-up reeks, I did have fun seeing Tony (Rocky) Burton making his film debut in the smallish role of the Rackets King’s bodyguard.  Also, the score was pretty groovy.  It had a good mix of soul music and bizarre synthesizers. 

Overall, The Black Godfather is a bottom of the barrel blaxploitation flick.  Check it out only if you’ve already seen every Fred Williamson, Richard Roundtree, Rudy Ray Moore, Pam Grier or Jim Kelly movie in existence.

After the nefarious white mobster Morgan (Robert Quarry from Count Yorga, Vampire) murders the boyfriend of Sugar Hill (Marki Bey) in cold blood, she sets out for revenge.  Sugar conjures up the spirit of voodoo priest Baron Samedi (Don Pedro Colley) who helps her in her quest for vengeance.  Samedi raises an army of zombies who kill Morgan’s men with machetes, voodoo dolls, and killer snakes before tossing Morgan in a pit of quicksand.

Sugar Hill is a competent, well acted and fun little chiller that successfully combines a zombie movie with a blaxploitation action flick.  Director Paul Maslansky (who later went on to produce the Police Academy series) handles the zombie sequences especially well and the scene where they rise from their graves is eerily effective.  The look of the zombies is unique as they all have cool shiny silvery eyeballs that reflect light and are covered head to toe with cobwebs.

Quarry makes for a reliable villain and Marki Bey is excellent as the sexy Sugar Hill.  I particularly liked her catfight with Quarry’s hateful mistress.  Colley really steals the show though as Baron Samedi.  He sinks his teeth into the role and whenever he’s on screen spouting his voodoo jive talk, Sugar Hill rocks.

What prevents the film from being a classic is the fact that the producers went for a PG rating instead of an R.  Most of the murders happens off screen and the flick is low on gore and is completely devoid of sex.  Had Maslansky really ratcheted up the exploitation goodies, we might have had another Blacula on our hands.  As it is, Sugar Hill is still quite memorable thanks to the fine performances and the cool zombies.  There’s also a great theme song called, “Supernatural Voodoo Woman” that adds to the fun.

Bey gets the best line of the movie when she gets her zombies to feed a mobster to a sty full of hungry pigs and says, “I hope they like white trash!”

AKA:  The Zombies of Sugar Hill.  AKA:  Voodoo Girl.

Berry Gordy founded Motown Records in the late 50’s and created some of the best music the world has ever heard.  In the 70’s, he started producing movies and they were some of the worst crap fests the world has ever seen.  (Remember The Wiz?)  The Last Dragon was Gordy’s final film production and it’s a freaking mess.  Although the premise is sound and it does offer up some (unintentionally) hilarious moments, it’s pretty much a disaster.

The plot has a kung fu student named Bruce Leroy (I swear to you by the blood of Christ that’s his real name) played by a guy called Taimak (I swear to you by the blood of Christ that’s his real name) who goes to the big city and falls in love with a rock video VJ (Vanity from Action Jackson).  While watching Enter the Dragon in an inner city theater, Bruce Leroy runs afoul of Sho Nuff, the Shogun of Harlem (I swear to you by the blood of Christ that’s his real name) who challenges him to a fight.  Of course, Leroy ducks him for half the movie until finally going toe to toe with him for the climax, in which both fighters start glowing like kerosene heaters and when they punch each other, sparks fly out of their chest. 

There’s also clips from two other Bruce Lee movies, a full DeBarge video, lots of breakdancing, and some truly hideous 80’s fashions in there too.  All of which could have been enormously entertaining, but the trouble is there’s an annoyingly gratuitous gangster villain who tries to muscle in on Vanity’s VJ racket that totally undermines the movie and brings things to a screeching halt every time he shows his ugly mug.  

Despite the numerous missteps the film makes, there are still some things to admire about it.  First and foremost is the character of Sho Nuff, who looks like Rick James’ psychotic brother on steroids.  As portrayed by Julius J. (The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.) Carry, Sho Nuff is easily the most memorable thing about this mess (he says stuff like “Kiss my Converse!”) and is one of the nuttiest screen villains of the 80’s.  Had the film just featured Sho Nuff as the sole villain and gotten rid of the greasy gangster, The Last Dragon could’ve been a classic in the same vein as No Retreat, No Surrender, but as it is, it’s only slightly more entertaining than Gymkata.  And at 109 minutes, it’s really about 29 minutes longer than it should’ve been to boot.

Still, any movie that features not one but TWO talentless one-named scrubs is still worth watching if only for curiosity’s sake.  You can also have fun spotting the soon to be famous William H. Macy and Chazz Palminteri paying the rent in supporting roles too.  Overall, The Last Dragon maybe dumber than a bowl of egg drop soup, but it’s still the best Blaxploitation Kung Fu Breakdancing Musical of the 80’s. 

The white gangster, annoying as he may be, gets the best line of the movie when he says, “A .45 will put an end to all this kung fu crap!”

A big time mobster sees a dock worker named Hammer (Fred Williamson) beat the crap out of some honky with his bare fists and pretty soon he wants him fighting in the ring for the syndicate.  Eventually the Mob wants him to throw a fight which leads to Hammer laying the smackdown on several greasy gangsters. 

This slick but empty by-the-numbers (they’ve been using this same exact plot since the 30’s for crying out loud) blaxploitation action flick is notable mostly for giving Williamson the nickname “Hammer” and very little else.  It’s more watchable than some of his lesser works (Mr. Mean anyone?), but it’s definitely no Bucktown. 

If you can get past the weak boxing scenes (Penitentiary 2 this is not), paper thin plot and the mountains of clichés, you may enjoy it though.  Williamson’s commanding screen presence makes it worth a look and lots of familiar faces such as William (Invasion of the Bee Girls) Smith, Vonetta (Blacula) McGee, D’Urville (Dolemite) Martin, Leon Isaac (Hollywood Vice Squad) Kennedy and Fred “Rerun” Berry help a lot.  (Not to mention the sexy as Hell S & M strip show performed by Marilyn Joi.)  There’s also plenty of great music and a funky Shaft inspired theme song.  (“You a BAAAAD Hammer Jammer!”) 

Naturally, Williamson is given the best lines of the movie like, “Women are like buses.  Miss one, catch another.”

AKA:  B.J. Hammer.

David (Zombie Island Massacre) Broadnax stars (as well as co-wrote) as a tough talking secret agent in this sorry excuse for a blaxploitation action flick.  In the opening scene he jumps into the cockpit of an airplane and shoots down a bunch of bad guys so some honkies can escape.  Then all of a sudden he’s in an office building being shaken down by two goons.  When one of them cuts him, he ambushes them in an elevator and douses them with fire extinguisher foam; then the credits begin. 

If you can figure out just what the heck is going on in the film’s opening scene, more power to you.  I was totally lost.  I couldn’t tell if the scene of Broadnax in the cockpit shooting people was supposed to be a flashback, or if my DVD player inexplicably was playing the wrong chapter.  All I know is that this scene must have been edited by a one-eyed drunken lobotomy patient.  If you have any traces of mental deficiency and suffer from a severe case of ADD, this scene will seem like a cinematic wet dream. 

The rest of the movie isn’t edited much better. 

If it seems like I’m forgetting to tell you about the plot, it’s okay because the filmmakers didn’t bother either.  Something to do with Broadnax being hired by a bunch of white folk who want him to go to South Africa for one reason or another.  Or something like that.  All you gotta know is that Broadnax is a secret agent who has a couple of cut rate Bond style gadgets (like a switchblade belt buckle and a literal exploding cigar) and shoots a bunch of badly dressed crackers.

Broadnax (who resembles a comatose Don Cheadle) has all the screen presence of a turnip and seems to have trouble pronouncing the dialogue he wrote for himself.  (In one scene he says the word “agreement” as if it was two words.)  The only fun comes from seeing Stella (Monster in the Closet) Stevens (!) as the no-nonsense lesbian crime boss (is there any other kind?).  She also gets the movie’s best lines like, “Bring me back his head!  At least an ear,” and “He’s a genuine 24 carat pain in the ass!”

Director Michael D. Moore had a long and varied career.  He started out as a child actor in silent films before becoming one of Hollywood’s more prolific second unit directors (he worked on the first three Indiana Jones films).  He got his first job as a director on Elvis’ Paradise Hawaiian Style before being offered tripe like this.  Just reading his interesting list of credits on IMDB was a lot more fun than watching this mess, that’s for sure. 

If slapdash editing, incoherent plots, visible boom mikes and extremely lame action sequences is what you crave in your blaxploitation flicks, consider Mister Deathman your new Citizen Kane. 

Suggested Drinking Game:  Take a shot every time Broadnax gets either A) tied up B) thrown in a jail cell or C) gets a net thrown over him and kiss your sobriety goodbye. 

Fred Williamson stars in this tedious blaxploitation flick as Jefferson Bolt, certified bad ass.  When we first meet Bolt he’s practicing kung fu in a Hong Kong prison cell, only to be sprung by some English honkies who want him to act as a courier and smuggle a million dollars into Mexico.  When they try to double cross Bolt he beats the shit out of them in the bathroom.  He then heads to Las Vegas to meet up with his best gal Teresa (Get Christie Love!) Graves for a quick booty call.  Once he gets her into bed though, the bad guys show up and try to kill him, but since she’s on top at the time, she gets killed instead.  This pisses Bolt off to no end and he goes out for revenge.  Along the way he is subjected to acupuncture torture, beats up a lot of chumps using a fistful of firecrackers, and throws an obvious dummy out of a ten story building. 

Bolt is sort of like a half assed blaxploitation version of James Bond, but he is too clumsily written to make much of an impression and his catchphrase “Charming!” is kinda weak.  At 103 minutes, the film is way too long for it’s own good.   The set-up is longwinded, the pacing is awfully sluggish, and the plot endlessly goes around in circles, which can make things tough going at times.  The Hong Kong locations and a modicum of kung fu helps, but can’t overcome the sheer overlength of the film and a decided lack of action. 

I'll pretty much watch Williamson in anything, but even I have to admit, this movie sucked nuts.  Williamson’s considerable charisma helps out when things are particularly languid, although at times he seems like a supporting character in his own movie.  Graves is fine in her brief role and she even gets to perform two songs, including a cover of Tom Jones’ “She’s a Lady”.

Naturally, Williams gets all the best lines like:  “He poked me in the mouth with a .38.  He said he’d make me eat it.  I wasn’t hungry”, and “I’m gong to destroy that bastard!”

Take one scoop of Rocky, one dollop of Death Wish and puree with Grade A blaxploitation, and you got the recipe for Black Fist.  Imagine Penitentiary without the Penitentiary and you might have some idea of what to expect. 

Leroy Fisk (Richard Lawson) gets a job as an underground streetfighter for a bunch of white gangsters led by Logan (Robert Burr) in order to support his pregnant wife.  His first fight is up on a roof (which technically makes it a roof fight and not a streetfight, but oh well), and even though he loses, the gangsters still decide to sign him up.  Whitey quickly gets him a trainer to work on his streetfighting skills which leads to a lot of Rocky inspired training montages.  Leroy then mops the floor (make that the street) with a martial artist, beats down a burly dude in a lumberyard, and gets into various other tussles.    

Leroy enjoys the fast cash his day job affords him and is able to buy a new wardrobe for him and his mistress.  When Leroy starts rolling in the dough, a crooked cop named Heineken (Dabney Coleman!!!) leans on Leroy and blackmails him for a percentage of his earnings. 

Then Leroy’s manager comes into possession of a black book that contains the syndicate’s shady dealings and Logan has him killed.  Leroy gets pissed and gets out of the streetfighting life to open up his own nightclub.  But Logan messes up opening night by car bombing Leroy’s pregnant wife to death and that makes Leroy REAL MAD. 

You can probably guess what happens next:  Leroy grows his beard out Uncle Remus style and kills lots and lots of white guys.  To show that Leroy isn’t completely racist, he even roughs up some minority types that get in his way too.  

Black Fist is a lean, mean and gritty blaxploitation actioner that’s helped enormously by it’s stellar cast.  Fisk is pretty good, but Coleman steals the movie as the slimy Heinie.  Phillip Michael (Miami Vice) Thomas overacts outrageously in not one but TWO roles, but is quite entertaining and familiar faces like H.B. (Foxy Brown) Haggerty and Nicolas (Don’t Answer the Phone) Worth appear as streetfighters. 

The fight scenes are brief, but there’s a rawness about them that adds to their effectiveness.  As great as they are though, it’s the scene where Leroy blows up a honky at a drive-in that is pure blaxploitation poetry.  The scene where Coleman gets frozen alive in a meat locker is pretty classic too.  Oh yeah and the last minute mess-with-your-head freak out scene is the best of it’s kind since Disco Godfather.  The editing is awful but it doesn’t interfere with the action too much. 

Dabney gets some quality lines like, “I’m no peckerwood!” and “If I was a sour mother fuck, I’d turn you in!”, but the top dialogue is reserved for my man Richard Lawson who says, “I’m going to rearrange your plumbing so you piss out your mouth!”

AKA:  Homeboy.  AKA:  The Black Streetfighter. 

Abby has a long, mangled history that’s made it one of the more sought after titles in horror history.  The story behind Abby’s mysterious disappearance is actually more interesting than the movie itself.  Abby was released hot on the heels of Warner Brothers’ smash hit The Exorcist.  Since the movie is more or less a blaxploitation version of The Exorcist (in fact AIP considered briefly naming the film The Blaxorcist), Warners sued and the film was quickly withdrawn from circulation.  Later a court ruled that Warner Brothers didn’t have a monopoly on films the featured possessions and exorcisms, but for whatever reason the film was never released on video.  Thanks to DVD, the film is finally out, but I’m not necessarily sure it was worth the wait.   

The story follows an upstanding Christian woman named Abby (Carol Speed from The Mack) as she and her husband (Terry Carter) move into a new house.  Meanwhile in Nigeria, her father in law (Blacula himself, William Marshall) excavates an ancient artifact which is more or less an African version of Pandora’s Box.  He unwisely opens the box and a malevolent spirit is unleashed and possesses Abby.  Pretty soon, she begins cutting herself, having coughing fits, and finally starts cursing in a demon voice.  (“I’m not your ho!”)  She starts abusing her husband and hits him in the crotch and begins to question his virility to others.  After she gives an old white woman a heart attack, Carter puts her into a hospital to get help.  She quickly escapes and goes out on the town seducing men and killing them.  In the end, Marshall returns from Africa to perform the much delayed exorcism with the help of his sons Carter and Austin (Assault on Precinct 13) Stoker.    

Even though the movie was clearly modeled on The Exorcist, it’s not the most blatant copycat out there.  The only things Abby has in common with the Pea Soup Champion of ’73 is that she’s possessed by a demon and receives an exorcism, has a mass quantity of x-rays taken at the hospital, and a subliminal white faced demon shows up periodically.  Abby is not a helpless teenager, but a married woman whose marriage is torn apart by her possession.  The subplot with her picking up men and killing them definitely strays from William Friedkin’s classic, as does the African roots of the demon.  (Although oddly enough, the demon from Exorcist 2 came from Africa.)  The most telling aspect of the film is that Abby throws up WHITE vomit and not Linda Blair style GREEN puke, obviously a sign that the filmmakers were trying to do something original here. 

The prospect of a blaxploitation version of The Exorcist isn’t a bad idea per se, but unfortunately director William (The Manitou) Girdler doesn’t liven things up enough.  The Exorcist was a deliberately paced flick, but at least it delivered on the goods.  Abby never once rises above the obviously cheap material, which is a shame, because this flick had a lot of potential.  I guess the fact that the film’s been unavailable for so long built up some kind of high expectations, because in the end, it just didn’t do a whole lot for me. 

The performances are fine, with Speed and Marshall doing a great job in the exorcism scenes, but even they can’t save the film’s lethargic pacing.  But hey, at least it’s better than Exorcist 2. 

AKA:  Possess My Soul. 

Detective Robert Malone (Fred Williamson) returns for another go round in this third installment in the Black Cobra franchise.  Whereas the first film was a blaxploitation version of Cobra and the second was a carbon copy of Lethal Weapon, Part 3 plays like a cheap-o retread of Commando as there are several Pilipino extras who get gunned down while patrolling impeccably landscaped grottos. 

The plot has Malone teaming up with two Interpol agents (Forry Smith and Debra Ward) in Manila to take down a British tycoon who is hoarding a bunch of illegal weapons.  Malone has it pretty easy in this outing as he basically lets his partners do most of the dirty work, but he still can blow people away with a shotgun while chomping on a cigar like it’s nobody’s business. 

Williamson once again cruises on his considerable charisma, but unfortunately the screenplay doesn’t give him much to work with.  He doesn’t get any trash talking dialogue and his repartee with the ladies is limited to a conversation with an exotic dancer.  Luckily, he gets involved in violent shootouts every seven minutes or so, so you probably won’t care too much. 

The Black Cobra series was never anything to write home about anyway, but fans of Williamson will find this to be an agreeable way to kill 90 minutes.  Williamson returned later in the year with the fourth and final installment of the series, the somberly titled Detective Malone.