Black Belt Jones (1974)

BLACK BELT JONES (1974) One star
Jim Kelly (he of the “unorthodox” martial arts style in ENTER THE DRAGON) and Gloria Hendry (she played a role in LIVE AND LET DIE) are the stars of BLACK BELT JONES, a blaxploitation karate film half-ENTER THE DRAGON and half-SHAFT.

Their best scene involves a half-seduction, half-fight on a beach, replete with one liners, back flips, and explicit musical score, as well as one bystander’s acoustic guitar smashed and busted balloons. Finally, we have a continuation of this scene with first Kelly and Hendry in tight embrace and then holding hands on the beach until we get a morning after scene before we’re ready for the film’s heaviest action.

I did not believe a second of BLACK BELT JONES. I believed more in ENTER THE DRAGON and DRUNKEN MASTER, even if just for the length of the movie. The plot of BLACK BELT JONES defines standard issue yet its details are disgustingly inappropriate.

Sometimes the punches and kicks appear not to have actually hit their mark. Sometimes the villains are outrageously incompetent. We get a lot of those high flying slow motion sequences with deafening sound and vocal effects like grunts and groans and taped ping pong paddles struck against Naugahyde sofas. Any time any character raises their fists and feet during this film they make loud noises. This movie should have been called ATTACK OF THE SOUND EFFECTS. Granted, I realize that this complaint likely could apply to virtually every “old school” martial arts film, but I only make this complaint because BLACK BELT JONES fails on so many levels.

You should observe Scatman Crothers’ death scene. Yes, Scatman Crothers, a great character actor like Slim Pickens and Bradford Dillman. Ah, Scatman Crothers, a nice black man with a great big smile. You may remember him from ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST, THE SHINING (axed by Jack Torrance), and TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE. I’m trying to forget he was in ZAPPED!

In this film, Scatman plays a property owner whose property lies on the mother lode of a great big real estate development project. He’s the last property owner denying progress — here it’s a karate school rather than roller boogie rink (ROLLER BOOGIE) or barbershop (WHO’S THE MAN?).

Anyway, local heavies lean heavily on Scatman’s character, Wesley “Papa” Byrd, and he dies from the weakest punch in history. Not just cinematic history, but the history of history. To honor this man, the coroner listed cause of death as heart attack rather than “weakest punch in history.”

Back to the real plot of BLACK BELT JONES.

There’s one (several, I get confused) of those patented karate movie moments where a hero’s slow motion kick dispatches a goon through a distant plate glass window garnering the goon some frequent flier miles.

There’s a lot of windows broken during BLACK BELT JONES, by the way.

Just once I’d love a hero to remain in slow motion while a goon stays in normal speed and moves out of the path of destruction so the hero flies straight out the damn window, still in slow motion of course.

In the second paragraph, we mentioned the film’s heaviest action. Here it is: an obligatory car chase, some gun shots, and the great big final karate showdown involving lots and lots and lots of bubbles (it’s a long story) with no showerhead and rubber ducky in sight. This is obviously the cleanest fight scene in film history.

After the sordid content that came before in BLACK BELT JONES, I can understand the urge to come out clean.