Ten Statements About....BLACK DYNAMITE (2009)

"Stare at my crazy face!  STARE, I say!

“Now Aunt Billy, how many times have I told you not to call here and interrupt my Kung Fu?"

1) Here is the major problem with this film--while comedy should be played straight, the cast plays it so straight that the humor dissipates, leaving just a sad copy of 1970‘s blaxploitation cinema.  For most of its running time, before the story finally gets silly, it’s just dull.

2)  I get it that this is a vanity project of Michael Jai White (you say labor of love, I say vanity project).  That doesn’t mean that Jai White is any good in the role.  He never gives us a sense of Black Dynamite as a character, his overtly earnest delivery never rising above being a guy playing dress-up.  He never gives us a sense of the character and his relationship to the world is (unlike, let’s say, Leslie Neilson’s Detective Drebbin in the Naked Gun movies).White aims for Richard Roundtree but ends up hitting a second rate imitation of Dolemite.

3) Even though he also gives us the sense of a guy playing dress up, I appreciate how Tommy

"I swear the talent in this movie is down here somewhere..."

Davidson’s Cream Corn is patterned so closely on Antonio Fargas that he inadvertently adds a hint of veracity in the proceedings.

4) Seeing Nicole Sullivan playing Pat Nixon mainly makes me wish I could see more of Nicole Sullivan, well, pretty much anywhere.

5) Even though this film is only 83 minutes, there are scenes that just go on forever.  One sequence, set at a version of The Pimp’s Ball, is obsessed more with introducing the actors doing cameos than advancing the story.

6) Yes, there have been blaxploitation films where the soundtrack plays as a Greek chorus, but they never repeated exactly what we’ve seen like this one does...and it’s not funny, it’s annoying.

So is that ‘Din-o-myte/Din-o-myte’ riff you play every time Jai White walks into a room.

7) I will admit that things do pick up once the script embraces the inherent silliness it obviously wants to be known for--but since that happens with only fifteen minutes left in the movie, it’s kinda too late.

President Nixon will kung-fu your ass!

8) I wonder who thought it was funny to have Black Dynomite’s back story contradict itself--first he’s promising his mother he’ll look after his brother, then he’s an orphan when the actor is obviously meant to be younger--but it only serves to  make the viewer question the world the film is set in.

9) I didn’t realize that Kevin Chapman was the same one who played Detective Fusco on Person of Interest until he was cut down in a hail of gunfire.  Which I guess says something about his chops.

10) I’m sorry, but that make-up effect of a fat guy displaying...something that ties in with the film’s MacGuffin...looks nothing like the thing it’s supposed to be.

Overall...An awful film that seems to be congratulating itself about how clever it is, yet is anything but.  It actually makes me yearn for an appearance by Creeper The Hamburger Pimp (look it up)....

Ten Statements About....IT CAME FROM...SOMEWHERE ELSE CHAPTER III (1988)

A visual representation of how I felt watching this movie...

"Your arm is gone!"

"It happens on these country roads. Just proceed home, little minors."

1) You ever gone to a party at a friend's house, and your friend and his pals spend the whole night telling these jokes that make no sense to you, but those others find so hilarious they're rolling on the floor laughing?

That's this movie.

2) I...think I understand the rationale behind this black and white film switching to color during its laughable gore sequences. It's just that said switches don't have the impact I suspect the filmmakers intended it to have. The same goes for the redheaded woman stripping in the middle of the government office.

3) So you think you've earned the right to do a take-off on Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb, movie? I hope the ghost of Kubrick has been paying you nightly visits to disavow you of that belief.

Later in life, Joe Don Baker let himself go badly and became
convinced he was Asian...

4) You know, just dressing a character up to resemble Mr. Rogers or Gilligan and letting that be the joke (at least in the later; the former does have another 'gag' attached to him) isn't enough.

5) Look, I know this is an amateur production pretty much populated by friends and family of the filmmakers (one of the reasons why I'm not going to go into the acting much), but at least have the decency to have an actual story to tell with a beginning, a middle and an end. If you can't be bothered to do that, make this a sketch comedy film.

6) You can intentionally emulate a bad film and produce a good film...but you have to put thought into giving the audience something to make them look beyond the badness of the surface. These filmmakers seem to think the emulation is joke enough. And speaking of which...

7) If you're actually going to recreate a 50's science fiction film, you need to go all in and not include all the foul language. It just pulls the audience (I imagine there were three of them...and a dog) out of the sense that they're watching some lost B movie.

8) Maybe, but maybe, this film could have benefited from streamlining all the craziness, thus giving the 'story' more focus. Throwing in a spacecraft that never actually lands, spontaneous human combustion, nuclear waste, kung fu fighters, an improbably indestructible Mr. Rogers clone and so much more just muddies--and confuses--the waters.



This had nothing to do with this film, but it did come up
when I looked for film stills on Google and both the girl and
the horse headed goof is better looking than anyone in
the film, so...



9) Oh, and this movie is concrete proof that everything is not made better with ninjas. Sometimes, it remains crap, even with ninjas added.

10) At least it's only an hour and ten minutes...even if that hour and ten minutes feels like an ten hours and one minute.

Overall...a prime example of how a cult film can not be consciously created, this is a sad, sad little movie that shows no potential of being anything other than a bunch of kids trying to put on a show in a typically hamfisted way.