Dimension de la mort

Life. It is a strange merry-go-round. Events and situations can change a man. A near death experience, the birth of your first child, a new found skill. For me, it was this movie. Suffering manic depression from the loss of my job and recent death of my beloved wife, I stumbled into the video store whacked up on Prozac. "Help me!" I said to the confused Video Store Clerk. "Only one thing can help you now" the teenaged Messiah said, as he slipped me a copy of the 1978 Masterpiece "Death Dimension". I liken this movie to having your first beer when your fifteen, cold, refreshing but with an underlying tone of naughtiness, with a bit of pizzazz thrown in. What can I say.... Myron "Bruce" Lee? You are a God. You make Jet Li and Chuck Norris look like a couple of half-baked sissies who couldn't rip wet toilet paper in half. Thank god Christopher Walken shunned the role of Captain Gallagher or our pupils would not have been treated to the precision like pistol whippings of Georgie Laze. Wrapping up this cultural melting pot of actors is the Giant of Afro-American cinema, Jim Kelly. He rips on to the screen like a young Fred Astaire, and dances his way in to our hearts. Not since "Casablanca" has A black-Kung Fu teaching cop, Australian detective and Taiwan-born sidekick so deliciously melded together to form an acute crime-fighting team hell-bent on stopping a Korean obese man from instigating the destruction of the world. Death Dimension? More like `Out of this world' Dimension, this movie deserves to be placed along side other classics such as `Gone with the Wind', `Ben Hur' and `Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol'. Wow, Al Adamson, you've blown us all away again, if you don't stop this soon I'll never get to wash my soiled underpants. 5 thumbs up.

A routine action vehicle for Jim Kelly (ENTER THE DRAGON), directed without any flair whatsoever by Al Adamson, one of the kings of the "exploitation quickies" along with Andy Milligan and Larry Buchanan. This is deeply clichéd stuff which manages to get by through the interesting and funny characters, the upbeat groovy '70s music and the martial arts sequences, which make up for in quantity what they lack in finesse.

Enter Jim Kelly, fresh from his success and short-lived career as a martial artist, as a "mean and moody" cop who likes to wear red shell suits on occasion. Kelly spends most of the film fighting and little time acting, as he repeatedly finds himself attacked by lots of bad guys. These fight scenes are hardly what you would term "well-photographed" but they are very entertainingly done, complete with over-emphasised sound effects.

Now, you would think that a film containing plentiful action (plus a couple of topless women for exploitation purposes) would have to be pretty exciting, right? Wrong. Adamson's tacky and cheap direction is evident at all moments, sucking vitality from the movie; loads of scenes consist of people arguing whilst sitting around in darkened rooms, which is hardly what I would call fun.

Kelly is pretty athletic in the lead role, but gets no chance to act or develop a character. George Lazenby (ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE) co-stars as Kelly's chief; Harold Sakata plays the chief villain, the Pig, and his line readings are a hoot; it's a shame that it's impossible to take him seriously! Also around for good measure are a hulking black bodyguard with a nasty scar across his face who likes to break people's arms and necks, a couple of prostitutes who take their clothes off a lot, an incredibly evil-looking tortoise (the scariest tortoise I've ever seen in a film, actually) and lots of dumb criminal henchmen who appear from nowhere.

DEATH DIMENSIONis a bad film, to be sure, but quite an entertaining one, mainly for the interesting cast alone. I forgot to mention the Bruce Lee clone who actually ends up being called "Bruce Lee". Guess they had to throw in as many personalities as they could here. Lots of boredom is countered by lots of action, making a pretty fair movie in the end, which isn't that bad.

Despite the ratings I found this to be the second best "Jim Kelly" movie I have watched. (And by that I mean one where he is top of the bill, so not the likes of "Enter The Dragon" or "Three The Hard Way"). In other words better than "Black Belt Jones", "Hot Potato" or "Black Samurai".

Why? Mainly because the action is for the most part competently choreographed and shot when compared with the others. The cutting and camera angles make for better movie action viewing.

The second thing which makes this more fun is the novelty cast, which include, George "James Bond" Lazenby, Harold "Odd Job" Sakata, Aldo Ray, the ever reliable Bob Minor and Myron "Bruce" Lee" (Myron? Really?). Lazenby, contrary to his reputation, can act quite adequately, but he can't fight convincingly in this company, which is where the competent use of cutting and camera angles come in. Sakata can't act, but he is the most iconic Bond villain of the Connery era, "Odd Job", so it doesn't really matter. Turns out he can't fight convincingly either and on this occasion the action Director doesn't come to his rescue for some reason, which is disappointing. Aldo Ray's career peaked early, around 1955 when he was in "We're No Angels" with Bogart and Ustinov, and his acting channels all the grumpy frustration that he must have been feeling by this time;- finding himself down among the B movie bottom feeders. Meanwhile Jim himself is in as good form as I've ever seen him.

The plot premise is ridiculous but barely explored, used merely as a "McGuffen" to set the ball rolling, the plot structure is routine but serviceable and the dialogue banal, but in the World of Jim Kelly movies that is all par for the course.

More than one dimension, possibly two dimensions, but not three.

This film begins with a scientist by the name of "Dr. Mason" (T. E. Foreman) implanting a microdot containing top-secret information related to some environmental research into the forehead of his attractive assistant "Felicia" (Patch McKenzie). Immediately afterward he is then summoned by a ruthless man named "Santo 'the Pig' Massino" (Harold Sakata) who has essentially been holding both Dr. Mason and Felicia as hostages and forcing them into misusing their knowledge of the environment to construct a devasting weapon known as a freeze bomb. Fortunately, while Dr. Mason is reporting to Santo, Felicia has taken the opportunity to escape from the fortified compound without being detected. Not only that, but anticipating Santo's wrath, Dr. Mason also injects some poison into his body so that Santo has no ability to retrieve the valuable information he possesses as well. Needless to say, this infuriates Santo who immediately sends his Haitian hitman "Tatoupa" (Bob Minor) to find Felicia and bring her back at all costs. Meanwhile, upon learning of the death of one of their agents investigating Santo's operation, "Captain Gallagher" (George Lazenby) sends "Lt. Detective I. J. Ash" (Jim Kelly) to find Felicia before Santo and his men manage to catch up to her. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this film certainly had some potential as it contained a fairly decent plot and several good actors to carry it to fruition. What it didn't have, however, was capable direction as most of the action scenes looked poorly stages and extremely cheap. Not only that, but the scenes involving Jim Kelly's martial arts abilities could have used serious improvement as well. That being said, considering the actors involved, I was rather disappointed with this movie and I have rated it accordingly. Below average.

Death Dimension (1978)

** (out of 4)

A mad scientist known as The Pig creates a bomb that when it explodes it can freeze anything close to it. Detective J. Ash (Jim Kelly) is asked to try and track down the people behind it before it falls into the wrong hands.

Al Adamson was the master at creating ultra-cheap movies for the drive-in circuit. He could make just about any type of genre and more times than not he was able to mix the various genres into one crazy little film. He created some good movies like Dracula VS FRANKENSTEIN as well as countless really awful ones. DEATH DIMENSION is pretty much cheap non-sense that fans of the blaxploitation and martial arts genres should enjoy.

Obviously, if you're walking into an Adamson picture, you shouldn't be expecting high art or a quality picture. Basically what you want to do is just sit back, turn your brain off and just enjoy what's in front of you. Storywise the film is certainly a mess and it rarely makes too much sense but if you're a fan of Kelly and his martial arts style then there are plenty of fights here. The fights certainly aren't going to rival ENTER THE DRAGON but they're fun enough for this type of action picture.

There's obviously nothing ground-breaking here but for a cheap drive-in picture it at least has some energy and some charm.