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The online film magazine Combustible Celluloid offers new movie reviews, DVD reviews, film reviews, actor interviews, actress interviews, director interviews, film books and all things cinema related for the thoughtful and passionate. Online for ten years! Over 3000 reviews!

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Kung Fu Theater (2005)

Rating: 2 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

I'm Talkin' 'bout Black Samurai

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Black Samurai on DVD

This double-feature DVD set includes two African-American kung-fu films: Al Adamson's Black Samurai and Rudy Ray Moore's Shaolin Dolemite. The latter is merely a "comically" re-dubbed kung fu movie with new footage of Rudy Ray Moore inserted throughout, but Black Samurai (1977) is a vintage classic of "B" movie luster. Director Adamson (Satan's Sadists, Dracula vs. Frankenstein) was one of the most notorious filmmakers of the 1960s and 70s underground, drive-in period (he was murdered in 1995). He had very little talent for filmmaking and even less for martial arts choreography, but that didn't stop him from putting a great deal of gusto into this Enter the Dragon-like film about a secret agent (Jim Kelly) infiltrating a crime syndicate to set things right. It's slow and heavy on the bad dialogue, but Kelly (Enter the Dragon) is so cool he appears to be acting in a different movie. A number of intentional laughs make this one worth checking out -- unlike Shaolin Dolemite, which commits the sin of trying to be funny and failing.

Starring: Jim Kelly, Rudy Ray Moore
Written by: Rudy Ray Moore, etc.
Directed by: Al Adamson, Robert Tai
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Running Time: 192 minutes
Date: March 6, 2006