Truly Dreadful Film

Powerful

To all those who have watched it: I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Al Adamson had little luck mastering the horror genre and it would appear from this misbegotten, Jim Kelly vehicle that his gleeful ineptitude as a director was at its zenith with 'Black Samurai'. If they haven't benumbed themselves already, bad movie aficionados will find themselves in a terminal state of physical and spiritual paralysis mid-way through a screening of this confounding example of horribly inept and sickeningly opportunistic "cinenema". It's such a shame that the name of Ed Wood gets bandied around as filmdom's most foolhardy auteur, when a myopic, amputee, feral child could have edited 'Black Samurai' with more panache than Adamson; you could gaffer tape a Bolex into the hand of a 30 year old corpse and engender a more profound cinematic statement than 'Black Samurai'. If one had the choice of ramming a frozen stoat repeatedly into both eyes, or watch 'Black Samurai'; find yourself an icy mammal, as I can assure you the latter is infinitely more painful.

It is still one of the funniest things I have ever seen. The action is terrible, but punctuated with great sound effects. Midgets come out of nowhere, and partner up with African tribesman as the targets for Jim Kelly's wrath. The movie isn't at all PC, and if you can find it in an uncut edition, there's even a fair amount of bad stripping! All this before we even get to the climax. All in all, this movie is truly a must-see for anyone who wants to understand why America moved on from the 1970s. That said, I haven't laughed this long and hard during a movie for a long long time. Please: this movie is bad, it is oh so gloriously bad, but worth every minute you invest in it.

Jim Kelly was a great fighter, but no Richard Roundtree or Fred Williamson as an actor. He was good as the third banana (after Bruce Lee and John Saxon) in the martial arts classic 'Enter The Dragon', and even better in the surprisingly entertaining starring vehicle 'Black Belt Jones'. But that movies "sequel" 'Hot Potato' was pretty awful and the prospect of Kelly being teamed up with legendary schlockmeister Al Adamson ('Horror Of The Blood Monsters', 'Dracula vs. Frankenstein', 'Naughty Stewardesses',etc.etc.), made me think I was in for one of THE worst movies ever made. But you know what? This movie was ineptly dubbed, badly acted, had some crappy dialogue and was full of dull stock footage, but I still actually enjoyed it. Not much, but at least SOME, which is something I certainly didn't expect! Kelly plays an agent of D.R.A.G.O.N. which sounds really cool, but we're never told what that means exactly. The movie opens with him on holiday, but some guys in suits spoil it by making him a proposal to eliminate Janikan (Bill Roy), the leader of a drug/voodoo/slave trade cult. He refuses initially but is then told that his own girlfriend Tokai (Essie Lin Chia), who I think is an ambassador's daughter or something, has been kidnapped by these evil mofos. So of course, Kelly goes instantly into action, opening several cans of whup-ass on assorted thugs, voodoo baddies, midgets and even a vulture (named Vultron!). Adamson being Adamson, he still manages to make all this nowhere near as entertaining and exciting as you'd imagine, but there are still a few decent fight sequences, and a memorable jet-pack ride by Kelly. The supporting cast is very odd, and cult fans will get a big kick out of it because it includes D'Urville Martin (Reverend Rufus in Larry Cohen's 'Black Caesar' and 'Hell Up In Harlem' and director of the blaxploitation cult fave 'Dolemite'), Biff Yeager (from 'Repo Man' and other Alex Cox movies), little person Felix Silla (Cousin Itt from 'The Addams Family', 'Demon Seed', 'The Brood'), and even tough guy Aldo Ray ('We're No Angels', 'Angel Unchained'). 'Black Samurai' is trash, but there's lots of dumb fun to be had, especially if you keep the pizza and cold beers flowing throughout. And as bad as it is, it's STILL better than 'Hot Potato'!

I never thought I'd see something that makes "Astro-Zombies" look like "Citizen Kane", but "Black Samurai" succeeds in this dubious honor. The word "poor" can't begin to describe this cheap, slapped-together bit of tripe; the flick's unrelenting stupidity and general half-assedness make its reputation as a guilty pleasure completely undeserved. Sure, it had a couple of mildly amusing moments (the jet-pack silliness and a bit of the midget-fu), but it's mostly a painful endurance test, even for those of us accustomed to laughing at grade-Z exploitation flicks. I seldom feel embarrassed for the actors in these sorts of things, but watching Jim Kelly flail around in this awful mess evoked a genuine feel of pity for the guy in me (I might add that this empathy completely evaporated when I learned that he starred in another of Al "Hack" Adamson's martial arts "extravanganzas" after this...shame on you, Jim Kelly!).If you're in the mood for an amusing martial arts movie, track down something enjoyable like "Black Belt Jones" or "Master of the Flying Guillotine." Leave this wretched time-killer on the shelf gathering dust, where it belongs.