Oh, Dolemite, where have you gone? Sure, you're getting a revamp/parody done by Black Dynamite in 2009, but in your own time and place you were quite the bad-mother-f***er! So many bad movies, so so bad...
In Dolemite, played by Rudy Ray Moore, he is about the baddest mofo around the way. He gets an early release from jail in order to take down an arch-rival, only to still have the fuzz after him on top of a whole gang of... well, anyone willing to take him on, frankly. But Dolamite's got back-up in the form of an all-girl army of kung-fu killers, and the mob, frankly my dears, don't stand a motherf***ing chance... sorry for the mother****** it comes up so much in the movie you'll loose count (certainly it would make one of the deadliest drinking games ever, or perhaps a match-up with Samuel L. Jackson).
Dolamite is hardcore blaxsploitation, black to the bone and proud of it, and it even features its star, (sometimes) comedian Rudy Ray Moore, reciting poetry- not rap, *poetry*- on the streets in order to prove to folks, in true bad-ass fashion, that he is, indeed, Mr. Dolamite Esq. He's such a strange, raw screen presence that one can kind of forgive that he's not a very good actor - he reads his lines like each one is meant to make its mark on-every-step-like-THIS-motherf***er, and when he goes into martial arts mode, watch out (especially those kicks that, erm, don't connect)! Maybe it is all meant to be one big gag on Moore's part, and maybe in some backwards-ass way maybe he succeeded. Or, perhaps, not at all. It's a sight to see him at work, either way, and he's missed today.
Adding to this is the direction by Mr D'Urville Martin, someone I am not familiar with and am perhaps glad to keep it that way. His work here makes Jack Hill, a competent director, look like Orson Welles; he can barely frame or light in most scenes, and the big gag (one that has been repeated uproariously, if obviously, in Black Dynamite) of the boom Mic coming into shot is one that has to be seen to be believed. Whatever sense of action or comedy he has is usually off-center, or pushed to such a trashy degree that you can't help but laugh - at it, of course, and it is on this level that Dolamite succeeds best today. It's like opening up a time capsule and instead of having a face melt ala the ark of the covenant it just hangs with jaw open, wondering how this thing even exists, or how the action works or how anything actually plays out well.
And yet, it would be hard-pressed for me to find a more quotable line than the following: "When I see a ghost, I cut the mutha-f***a." That's gotta be worth something...
In Dolemite, played by Rudy Ray Moore, he is about the baddest mofo around the way. He gets an early release from jail in order to take down an arch-rival, only to still have the fuzz after him on top of a whole gang of... well, anyone willing to take him on, frankly. But Dolamite's got back-up in the form of an all-girl army of kung-fu killers, and the mob, frankly my dears, don't stand a motherf***ing chance... sorry for the mother****** it comes up so much in the movie you'll loose count (certainly it would make one of the deadliest drinking games ever, or perhaps a match-up with Samuel L. Jackson).
Dolamite is hardcore blaxsploitation, black to the bone and proud of it, and it even features its star, (sometimes) comedian Rudy Ray Moore, reciting poetry- not rap, *poetry*- on the streets in order to prove to folks, in true bad-ass fashion, that he is, indeed, Mr. Dolamite Esq. He's such a strange, raw screen presence that one can kind of forgive that he's not a very good actor - he reads his lines like each one is meant to make its mark on-every-step-like-THIS-motherf***er, and when he goes into martial arts mode, watch out (especially those kicks that, erm, don't connect)! Maybe it is all meant to be one big gag on Moore's part, and maybe in some backwards-ass way maybe he succeeded. Or, perhaps, not at all. It's a sight to see him at work, either way, and he's missed today.
Adding to this is the direction by Mr D'Urville Martin, someone I am not familiar with and am perhaps glad to keep it that way. His work here makes Jack Hill, a competent director, look like Orson Welles; he can barely frame or light in most scenes, and the big gag (one that has been repeated uproariously, if obviously, in Black Dynamite) of the boom Mic coming into shot is one that has to be seen to be believed. Whatever sense of action or comedy he has is usually off-center, or pushed to such a trashy degree that you can't help but laugh - at it, of course, and it is on this level that Dolamite succeeds best today. It's like opening up a time capsule and instead of having a face melt ala the ark of the covenant it just hangs with jaw open, wondering how this thing even exists, or how the action works or how anything actually plays out well.
And yet, it would be hard-pressed for me to find a more quotable line than the following: "When I see a ghost, I cut the mutha-f***a." That's gotta be worth something...