Review: Black Samurai

When the daughter of a politician is kidnapped by the drug smugglers he was attempting to crack down on, a top secret organisation called DRAGON sends in their best agent Sand (Jim Kelly, whose character is not remotely a samurai by the way) to get the girl back. Oh, and for added importance she’s also Sand’s ex-girlfriend. Said drug smuggling operation is headed by a white voodoo practitioner (Bill Roy) who also has dwarf henchmen because why not? A mannered Marilyn Joi plays Roy’s second-in-command, while Aldo Ray turns up briefly as the head of DRAGON.

 

If you see one Jim Kelly martial arts movie, make it “Black Belt Jones”. That movie is fast, funny, and loads of fun. If you need to see a second Jim Kelly martial arts movie, you may as well see “Enter the Dragon”, though there are better Bruce Lee films available in my opinion. If you really need more Jim Kelly martial arts movies in your life, I suppose you could watch this 1976 Al Adamson (The dreadful director of “Satan’s Sadists”, “Nurse Sherri”, and “Cinderella 2000”) cheapie and then hopefully move on with your life.

 

I’m not able to give it a wholehearted recommendation here, I certainly can’t say it’s a legitimately good film. It’s pretty badly done, if one of Adamson’s less badly made films. “Dynamite Brothers” probably comes off as the ‘best’ of his films that I’ve seen and it’s just OK too. However, there’s enough goofy fun here to make it sorta watchable in a cheap amusement kind of way. It’s a crazy arse film that blends elements of “Live and Let Die” (voodoo), “The Man With the Golden Gun” (dwarfs), “Thunderball” (jet pack), “Enter the Dragon” (basic plot elements and characters), and the infamous 6-man tag match from Wrestlemania III where Hillbilly Jim and King Kong Bundy were paired up with their own ‘midget wrestler’ duo tag partners. OK so I’m only adding that last one because Little Tokyo (real name Shigeru Akabane) turns up here as a henchman and I’m a big fan of Wrestlemania III.

 

Adamson was truly a hack filmmaker, it can’t be denied. I mean, instead of having looped/dubbed dialogue, he’ll just have what looks to be the characters narrating their inner thoughts while their lips are immobile. But you can tell they’re really supposed to be talking, it’s just that Adamson is a cheap, lazy hack. His narrative style could be (overly) charitably described as minimalistic and montage-heavy. He does the bare minimum on the bare minimum just to try to turn a profit from the undemanding.

 

Jim Kelly is no actor but by his standards his performance is acceptable I guess, though that godawful bright tomato red ensemble he wears is a seriously questionable fashion choice even for the 70s. Marilyn Joi is a bit crap as the leading lady unfortunately. The real fun – and even this is questionable from a 2025 perspective – comes from the henchmen who are all dwarf actors that have been badly dubbed. Watching them take on someone twice their size is hilarious in a totally non-PC Wrestlemania III kind of way, and so goofy that it’s watchable at least for a very limited audience. Kelly’s own fight choreography isn’t anything brilliant, but the fights are OK in a workman-like way.

 

It’s clear that the mixture of martial arts and spy movie that “Enter the Dragon” offered was a big inspiration on this one, giving Jim Kelly the lead role this time and Adamson hoping to cash in. There’s some goofy amusement to be had, but there’s never any doubt that this is cheapo stuff. Kelly’s purple Ferrari is one of the coolest cars in cinematic history, the film is only for the seriously undemanding. Based on a Marc Olden novel, the barely evident screenplay is by the likely pseudonymous B. Readick, with ‘additional story ideas’ from Marco Joachim (who has produced and edited a couple of minor efforts). You could do much better and worse than this film, but it has neither the budget or filmmaker to be a legit good film. Bear that in mind.

 

Rating: C+