Black Samouraï

In the 70s I enjoyed reading Marc Olden's "Black Samurai" novels, and I always wondered why the novels were never adapted for film. Well, it appears this awful film is supposed to be about Olden's Black Samurai, although Jim Kelly's character is NOTHING like the original Sand character fro the novel. The film is a disaster. It is so bad that it appears to be a parody akin to the "Fistful Of Yen" segment from KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE, although "Fistful Of Yen" is actually less funny than this.....thing. Absolutely appalling in every aspect.

Even by standards of low budget filmaking, Black Samurai is a poor quality production. Black Samurai was an action vehicle for martial artist/actor Jim Kelly, directed by schockmeister Al Adamson in his most expensive production. Adamson is best known for crappy, low budget horror and exploitation features like Dracula Vs. Frankenstein and Satan's Sadists. Having said that Black Samurai is a bad movie and poorly made is true. It has horrible direction, editing and acting. The film also looks like crap as well. Even so, I still enjoy watching it from time to time. Jim Kelly plays an agent for D.R.A.G.O.N. and has to rescue a daughter who belongs to a powerful Japanese family and also happens to be Jim Kelly's love interest. The kidnappers are human trafficking, dope pushing goons who happen to be into voodoo and witchcraft. Jim Kelly uses his karate skills to fight these turkeys as well as talk a ton of trash while doing so. There is much fighting against turds that don't have a chance as well as a bunch of outrageous material that don't make much sense, but is greatly amusing to yours truly. There is Jim Kelly on a jetpack, midgets, a pet vulture, a fight with Zulu warriors and much more craptastic crud in this schock grade blaxsploitation actioner. Black Samurai is still better in my opinion than Jim Kelly's worst feature, the absolutely unwatchable Hot Potato. Production wise, Black Samurai is also a steaming pile of poop, but hilarious, amusing poop and even professional turd maker Al Adamson can't diminish Jim Kelly's coolness as he drops many suckas!

The movie "The Black Samurai" has everything you could ever want in a film: kung-fu, midgets, a mariachi band, a vulture, a jet-pack, a sassy black woman, cool sound effects, a car-chase, and random explosions. PLUS: A gay devil-worshiping badguy, a secret agent organization, a fire-spouting pen, snakes, afros, a scene where the good guy kills tons of badguys with a grenade because he's tired...and with SEX APPEAL! The only thing lacking in this movie is gratuitous gore and nudity! Wow what a feature!

It has been a while since I watched Black Belt Jones, but that was the previous Jim Kelly film I had seen and recently the mood took me for some blaxploitation films. Where the previous film had Kelly fighting for his own streets, here we have him as a much in demand secret agent. He plays Robert Sand (Bobby to his mates) who is on holiday playing tennis with some hotties with the phone off the hook whenever his employers come to him for help in breaking a right of black-magic using international drug dealers. Sands of course says no, until he finds the group have kidnapped the daughter of the Japanese Ambassador to the US (Toki) who also happens to be Sand's girlfriend (albeit not one he is particularly faithful to). Sand sets out to rescue her and bring down the gang all at once.

I quite like Blaxploitation films when they work; the best of them manage to be really good and make the most of limited resources, but there can still be good ones that try and have fun while being inherently poor. Unfortunately Black Samurai seems to either not be aware of its own limitations or just seems content to totally ignore them and hope it will all just come together. By this I mean that it doesn't play to its strengths very well but instead plays to an ideal that it can't achieve either financially or in terms of the skills of those involved. There are big moments of this (like the jet-pack scene) but generally the whole film is poor and just seems worse for how far from its own target it falls. The plot is clunky and very little fun at all while the action sequences don't even offer cheesy thrills because they are mostly poorly done. It is a shame because I like Kelly but he looks poor because of how bad the extras are at even things like falling down.

Technically the film shows how little effort went into this. The direction and shot selection is poor but it is the audio that is most shocking. Quality varies between lines within the same scene but more annoying is the ADR/dubbing done after the film. When it at its best it is just out of synch but at its worst lines are dubbed onto people who aren't even speaking at the time – the fight with Bones and Sand is hilarious as a result. And so the film goes – it fills time when it can, point a camera roughly where people are standing when they're doing something and generally fails to be fun, dramatic, exciting or even funny in a cheesy retro way. The cast can't do much. Kelly is not a great presence but he is totally wasted here – uncool, not allowed to impressive physically and just looks uncomfortable for most of it. The supporting cast are weaker – Joi and Chia are cute but never given the chance to be a sexy distraction in the film as they should have been. Meanwhile the main villains stand and pull faces while rubbish henchmen fall over awkwardly.

A poor film then – even by the standards of the genre. It seems to think it can make big things work despite having no talent or resources to achieve it and the end result is poor no matter how you look at it. It says a lot when you consider that the entertainment high-point of the film is a fight with a vulture where Kelly lies on his back doing defensive arm movements while someone waves a stuffed toy in his face, intercut with a white stuntman standing in for Kelly who appears to have had a panicking vulture stapled to his chest – and even this only works because of how unintentionally daft it all looks.

This movie is a forgettable karate flick starring the wonderful Jim Kelly. Every karate movie cliche is here, including midgets, and an evil white guy karate master (who doesn't know karate) with a vulture named "Voltan."

STANDOUT SCENE - Watch closely when the evil white guy sends his vulture to attack Kelly. Quote, "Voltan! Kill!!" (never mind that vultures are lazy creatures by nature who wouldn't even eat a dead deer if they had to cross the street to get it). Okay, now watch when Voltan lands on Jim Kelly -- Kelly's stunt-double is a white guy. A blonde white guy - they didn't even give the double a dark haired wig or anything.

Other standouts include Kelly's staff fight with a group of thugs, and his pre-final showdown with a Damon Wayans lookalike, where Kelly spouts Muhammad Ali like banter ("C'mon chump! C'mon sissy!")

A great movie if you can a) find it and b) stay awake through it!!