My 600th Blog Post

Okay... so that’s 600 posts. Partially because I don’t have much time to do anything else and, partially because I already wrote a painfully honest 3 year anniversary post last week... I figured I’d use this opportunity to go through my blog a bit and pick out eleven of my favourite posts. The ones I’m most proud of so far, for one reason or another. Hope you like. Click on the links to go straight to the reviews...

Attack Of The Crab Monsters - June 2012
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/attack-of-crab-monsters.html
This is one of my favourite reviews because it was such a great and hugely incompetent movie to discover. I had a whale of a time watching it and laughing at the unintentionally funny parts (which were pretty much the whole darn movie) and I also had a blast responding in kind when I was reviewing it.

Delicacy (La Delicatesse) - April 2012
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/delicacy-la-delicatesse.html
This one because it’s a) not the kind of movie I usually write about... b) treats love like it’s for grown ups (which it is) instead of derogatising it and turning it into “just” a series of funny incidents and c) because it seemed to have a good response and, like some of my other posts, a little bit of a life after the initial posting.

Doc Savage: The Desert Demons - January 2012
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/doc-savage-desert-demons.html
I picked out this review, not because of my actual verdict on the novel (which was the least rave review I’ve given to any of Will Murray’s brilliant Doc Savage continuations) but because it’s one of a few early snapshots of myself as a kid captured in this blog which gives the people who I personally know, and who might read my blog, a little more background into me as a human being.

My 300th Blog Post - Faces Of Caroline Munro - August 2011
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/my-300th-blog-post.html
This will probably always be my favourite post (and also one of my most popular in terms of hits) because the great Caroline Munro herself mentioned how much she liked it at the time on her website. When I presented her with a larger, canvas print of it when she was doing a signing, some months later, she seemed thrilled to bits and it put a smile on my face for a very long time.

Haunting Of Winchester House 3D - February 2011
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/rifling-secrets-of-winchester.html
My most scathing review of one of the worst movies I’ve ever had the mispleasure to watch. This is really not “bad in a good way” either... but it is probably the most “fun poking” I’ve done on this blog.

Black Belt Jones - August 2010
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/please-fasten-your-black-belts.html
I liked this one... partially because it was Jim Kelly doing his thing but mostly because I really liked the little Jim Kelly with nunchucks picture I cam up with to illustrate it.

The Final Programme - August 2010
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/lives-and-times-of-jerry-cornelius.html
Because it’s a film I've absolutely loved since I was a teenager (even though most people haven’t even heard of it) and because one of my writing heroes, Michael Moorcock, was at the screening I reviewed. So it’s a nice little virtual memento for me to look back on.

My 100th Blog post - July 2010
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/my-100th-blog-click-to-embiggen.html
This comic strip on the birth of my blog and how much writing and promoting it meant to me was also a sly tribute to the, then recently, deceased Harvey Pekar. It meant a lot to me at the time and, well, who doesn’t want to see a picture of me naked? :-)

Claire Dolan - June 2010 
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/katrin-cartlidge-is-claire-dolan.html
Because it reminded me how poorly off we are after the tragic, early death of Katrin Cartlidge and made me cry.

Fellini Vs Fosse: When Cabiria Meets Charity - June 2010
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/fellini-vs-fosse-when-cabiria-meets.html
This comparison piece between my favourite Fellini movie Nights Of Cabiria and the American musical remake, Sweet Charity, is something I was quite proud of at the time. I’ll always prefer the Fellini but I actually like both takes on the story. It just seemed like a good idea to pit them against each other in an exploration of their intent at the time.

Giallo Fever - June 2010
http://nuts4r2.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/giallo-fever.html
My defence of the Italian giallo movies as an artform in their own right, and not something to be merely “derogatised” as something reminiscent of the trashy American teenage slasher movies which were informed and influenced by them, is something I wish more reviewers of exploitation movies would read. Art is art... don’t try to defend it with wishy-washy excuses... defend it because it’s a more than valid genre in its own right!

And that’s 600 posts done. I hope you enjoyed my little trip down my recent memory lane and maybe even clicked on one or two of the links to see what an earth I was going on about. Either way, thanks very much for reading. More reviews to follow soon and it’s back to business as usual.

Spud Wiser?

Hot Potato 1976 US

Directed by

Oscar Williams

Warner Brothers

DVD Region 1

Ok... when I first sat down to watch Hot Potato I sat down thinking... this is going to be one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. But you know what... it wasn’t. There are worse movies around than this mess of a movie... but this one is still pretty terrible, all the same.

Hot Potato is a sequel, of sorts, using the title character from Black Belt Jones. I wasn’t 100% sure of that at first because it seems to bear no relation to the previous film (to the point where Jim Kelly’s character is only referred to as Jones in this movie) and it makes absolutely no mention of the “previous adventure” in the main text of the film that I can see... but credit is given to the creators in a “based on a character created by” card which sites two of the original movie’s writers so it’s pretty much a sure thing.

Now I didn’t really like Black Belt Jones in all honesty (see my review here) and it didn’t really measure up to some of the other blaxploitation and kung-fu-sploitation movies I’ve seen... so it would be fair to say that Hot Potato isn’t a whole lot more dreadful than the first film... but it is certainly quite dreadful.

The plot involves Jones and some “colleagues” he picks up on the way, snatching back a kidnapped VIPs daughter from a group of fighty, chasey, bad people (you can tell I was really paying attention here by this point can’t you). There is a bit of an attempt at a twist with the heroes snatching a fake double of said daughter to throw them off the scent but, honestly, we really didn’t need this bit of fakery because there’s no real payoff or consequence to this... it all seems merely padding.

I’m guessing that this movie had a troubled production. Sound dubs are quite bad in some places. In other places, like the opening credit sequence, the soundtrack deliberately swamps the dialogue... presumably because the dialogue was so terrible and boring that they needed to distract you from it. It’s like some bizarre Altmanesque sound experiment gone wrong. There are shots in there with Jones and one of his buddies walking through hundreds of extras with lips moving and no sound coming out that I swear must be stolen shots. They probably weren’t dubbed back in because nobody could remember what was being said on the day.

This really is a bit of a train wreck. Just a string of fights with occasional really monotonous cuts back to the villain of the piece being quite boring and “you-have-failed-me” shouty with his henchmen! And the sensibilities of the movie seem to me to be like a film which has been put together in a rush because somebody in production really liked watching Terence Hill/Bud Spencer movies (that’s okay, they can be fun) and tried to tap into that without understanding anything about the character chemistry and how a fight should best be staged and edited. All of Jones mates act crazy and one of them, Rhino, is definitely supposed to be the Bud Spencer part of the equation. But with a little less charm.

Added to this is an unsatisfying score which is an absolute rip-off of the main theme from Kelley’s breakout movie Enter The Dragon, (augmented very occasionally by the base line of Monty Norman’s James Bond Theme). Seriously, I’m amazed that Lalo Schifrin didn’t sue the producers of this movie... it’s that close... but a bit hollow sounding.

I know this is a short blog again but there’s probably not much more I can say about this one. I think I’ll just add one more comment which should sum up nicely how bad this movie is. In 1978 there was a third film in the series made called... Black Belt Jones 2. Yep. Hot Potato is so bad that it seems they wanted people to forget that it was the “original” follow up to Black Belt Jones.

That just says it all about these three... the hard way.

Please fasten your Black Belts!

Black Belt Jones 1974 US

Directed by Robert Clouse

Warner Brothers DVD Region 1

Whoop! Whoop! Ptshh! Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!

Kablang! Whoop! Whoop! Ohooooohoooho! Ptush!

And there you have my full review for Black Belt Jones if I were doing it as an onomatopoeic translation of how title star Jim Kelly might have reviewed the movie... or, you know, it could be my lame intro to try to hook you into reading the rest of this post. Who can tell for sure?

So, yeah, a blaxploitation classic I’ve been wanting to see for a while... Black Belt Jones doesn’t really quite make it for me compared to some of the other genre classics like the FIRST Cleopatra Jones movie, Coffy, Foxy Brown, Shaft etc. Which is a shame because I really like what I saw of Jim Kelly when he was facing off bad guys shoulder to shoulder with Bruce Lee and the legendary John Saxon in Enter the Dragon (anyone watching that movie for Bruce Lee has obviously been blinded to the Saxony-goodness embedded into every frame of celluloid ;-)

But I digress. Black Belt Jones is quite a simple and silly film - nothing wrong with that, I laughed quite a bit as I was watching. Just like in Enter the Dragon, Jim Kelly lets out those bizarre and highly comical “whoops” as he martial arts the bad guys to their early demise. I don’t know exactly why he does this... but it’s very entertaining. And the beautiful Gloria Hendry is on hand as “Sydney” when her father gets killed (played by Scatman Carruthers who is supposed to be a kung-fu legend in this but... well, you are missing out if you haven’t seen Scatman Carruther’s attempting kung-fu). She has bizarre kung-fu skills too. See her go to work on her enemies as a female powerhouse of martial arts mayhem. When she gets mean... she clocks the bad guys clean! ... uh, oh... I might just write most of the rest of the review with phrases like this!

This is what this ridiculous, terrible and strangely watchable movie has to offer any readers who wish to take the plunge in this celluloid frenzy of fist flared funk!

1. A fight scene in a train carriage where every bad guy gets thrown out of a different, shattering window. Im sorry? How many windows has an average train carriage got to smash? Especially when the fight goes on in only one end of the carriage. Eight windows? Ten?

2. A soundtrack that manages to be outrageously funny AND funky at the same time.

3. A main character who’s name really does seem to be “Black Belt”. At times he’s called on as “Belt” (as in, "Hey, Belt. Check this out!") or “BB” or... WHAT? Lucky this character wasn’t christened Bible Belt Jones or I’d be watching a movie about religious tomfoolery in the US!

4. Jim Kelly. He’s a lean, black, fighting machine. Watch him beat up people, often without even actually connecting with them due to bad camera angles. Honestly. Enter the Dragon was just so much better than this one. But I don't care because Jim Kelly is pretty watchable!

5. A really terrible, overlong, anti-climactic fight scene in a car wash as Black Belt Jones and Sydney take on all the bad guys in a big puddle of constant soap bubbles. Frankly, this would have made a lot more sense if there was at least one villain to fight who wasn’t an overweight blob who doesn’t look like he could take on Alfalfa out of The Little Rascals let alone slaughter-machine Jim Kelly.

6. The tagline on the cover... Enter JIM “Dragon” KELLY. HE CLOBBERS THE MOB AS BLACK BELT JONES. Yep... definitely a mob-clobbering movie. If Jim Kelly was blue-eyed Benjamin Grimm The Thing he’d shout out... “It’s Mob-Clobbering Time!” before blinding them with his orange afro!

7. A stupidly, drawn out, padding the movie, lets see Jim and Gloria court each other’s ass by chasing, frolicking and pounding the @*&% out of each other so they can get themselves in the mood to have heavily censored sex!

Ok. That’s probably all the good reasons I can think of for you to either watch or steer clear of this movie... depending on your personal taste. As for me... I’m now up for getting hold of a copy of 1978’s Black Belt Jones 2: The Tattoo Connection. Can anyone who’s read this far recommend that one to me?