TNT Jackson

Now any Blaxploiation fan will recognise the ingredients: big Afros, topless babes, surreally bad fashions and some 'jive' talk. In this case add in a lead who can't act, a plot that makes little sense, editing by someone with no hands who has been blindfolded and the most god-awful fight scenes and you have 'TNT Jackson'. Not quite bad enough to be good, but not good enough to be bad, this is a wonderful mess from start to finish. I especially loved the endless continuity errors and the lead's white stunt double.

This is so '70s bad Far Eastern martial arts meets black power that it hurts, but boy it hurts so good! I am ashamed to admit that I almost enjoyed it.

I'd been warned off 'T.N.T. Jackson' but couldn't resist as I'm a sucker for 1970s trash like this. Directed by Cirio H. Santiago, one of the producers of the classic Jack Hill chick in chains movies 'The Big Doll House' and 'The Big Bird Cage' which co-starred Pam Grier, with Roger Corman as executive producer, and a script co-written by b-grade legend Dick Miller(!), how could this go wrong? Well it does. Kinda. Jeanne Bell, who I vaguely remembered from bit parts in 'The Klansman' and 'Mean Streets', is beautiful and is a reasonable actress, but lacks the charisma of Pam Grier, or closer to home, Tamara Dobson ('Cleopatra Jones'). Despite being mainly filmed in the Philippines it lacks the grittiness of the aforementioned Pam Grier vehicles and is closer to the fantasy of the Dobson Cleopatra Jones movies. Only it isn't anywhere near as good. On the other hand it isn't as downright silly as say, 'Black Samurai' starring Jim Kelly (a guilty pleasure of mine), so I can't say it's a complete stinker either. Bell is supported by Stan Shaw ('Truck Turner'), and Ken Metcalfe, who co-wrote the script with Dick Miller, and both actors were better than the movie itself. One thing that really lets the movie down is the fight scenes which just don't convince. In one of them Bell is topless, and that is certainly a novelty, but on the whole they just don't work. 'T.N.T. Jackson' is neither the best nor the worst blaxploitation movie I've ever seen. It's one of those movies that you won't regret watching once, but you are very unlikely to rush to watch twice.

In a giant sea of blaxploitation films, "TNT Jackson" doesn't stand out from the crowd other than its setting and gender of the protagonist..and its copious nudity. Otherwise, it's a standard cheap action film of the 70s and not a lot more.

Ex-playboy model Jeannie Bell stars as TNT Jackson, a lovely lady from Harlem who has ventured to the worst part of Hong Kong in order to discover what's happened to her brother. Apparently, he got on the bad side of a organized drug ring...and she soon gets their attention. To help her is a local Chinese man as well as an undercover federal agent.

The martial arts are spotty...though the double who does all the acrobatics for TNT was very good and it's very hard to tell that a double was used...so kudos for the director for this. Unfortunately, in the close combat scenes, they are spotty...from pretty good to pretty bad. As for the story...it's all pretty tandard stuff apart from the setting (Hong Kong). For fans of the genre, this one in't bad but it certainly won't convert anyone to the genres of blaxploitation or martial arts.

Movies from the 1970's were different and much not to the norm and true they had plenty of action and the skin scenes and nudity combined with violence made most of them a real eye candy treat to watch. This low budget 1974 film "TNT Jackson" fits all of those themes. It featured "Playboy" playmate Jeanne Bell as TNT Jackson in this blaxploitation take which has her to travel from Harlem to Hong Kong to look for her missing brother who has gotten himself in trouble with the mob and this world involves the mob and plenty of violence. Miss Jackson poses and goes undercover as a prostitute in order to find out some information along the way this film is a fun eye candy treat of sex, nudity and action which includes topless karate. Good watch to pass a little time a nice fun independent film that gets right into it and doesn't take itself to serious.

The stimulating concepts: T.N.T fights 10 men in the streets of Hong Kong; 4 men in her room while she is topless; an attractive blonde woman (Pat Anderson, who is a major hottie and kicks a lot of butt herself). The poor execution: the (occasionally sped-up) fight scenes range from clumsy to REALLY clumsy. Sometimes they look more like playfights; you can HEAR the sound of a hit but you don't SEE any contact. For a former Playboy Playmate, Jeanne Bell is an average-looking woman and her acting is stiff. But at least she's tall, she looks fit and she has the right attitude for this role down pat. As her love interest / main target, Stan Shaw adds the only touch of class to the film, and has all the best lines as well. The production values are dreadful, and the DVD picture quality is on the level of a bad VHS. For a better execution of the same story, I suggest you seek out the same director's "Naked Fist" / "Firecracker", made in 1981. The female lead in that one, Jillian Kesner, actually has some real-life martial arts background, so the fight scenes are much better. (**)