In the seventies the martial arts craze took solid hold on
movie theaters. With the release of Bruce Lee’s ENTER THE DRAGON the demand
increased. His sudden death called for a replacement and while none could quite
compare the list of stars made on his popularity was vast. Not only that, a
number of films came out with the term “dragon” in them to capitalize on his
nickname.
At the same time there was another huge player on the
exploitation scene known as Blaxploitation films. These movies featured
African-Americans in the lead roles and had themes more inclined towards urban
audiences than most. While some would consider these stereotypical in a bad way
at the time they were highly praised. Characters most often were pimps and
mobsters taking on the man in charge.
But there was a different sort of black hero on the rise
that found the merging of these two genres. The black martial arts star was a
combination that drew audiences in. Jim Kelly was the first of these stars,
having been featured in Lee’s ENTER. But another on the scene was Ron van
Clief. A former US Marine who went on to study martial arts and win numerous
competitions, Clief parlayed that ability into a film career. While that film
career was short lived, it did produce enough movies for fans to enjoy him in
the role of hero.
Which brings us to BLACK DRAGON’S REVENGE. In the film Clief
is hired by a billionaire to find out who was responsible for the death of
Bruce Lee, a common theme after Lee’s death in movies like this. He heads to
the orient to pursue what few leads he has and gets an assist from an old
friend named Charles (Charles Bonet). As the two begin to search for the
assassin of Lee they find a mysterious organization trying to thwart their
efforts. What follows is attempts on their lives, plenty of martial arts action
and some incredibly weak story building.
Let’s face the facts here, martial arts movies at the time
with the exception of Lee’s were pretty much low budget with the least amount
of money being spent on the scripts. These were mostly tossed together with
little more than finding a way to progress from one fight sequence to the next
with enough story to make it seem plausible, though sometimes not even worrying
about that. Fans wanted to see the fights and that was the focus.
But there were two sorts of films that featured those as
well. One set was made in China and featured some amazing abilities captured on
rather poor quality film stock. These films featured high wire effects and were
performed more by acrobats than by actual martial arts stars. Their leaps would
provide them with the ability to jump over walls and into trees. It was a fast
paced choreography that has led to countless stars since that time including Jackie
Chan and Jet Li.
The other sort featured actual martial artists like van
Clief. These films tended to have decent fight sequences but were played more
for reality and the choreography in these tended to be much slower and more an
attempt to show the styles and result in less actual damage to the stars and
stuntmen involved. It’s not that they were bad, just that in comparison they
were less eye popping for viewers. Perhaps the worst example of this was the TV
series KUNG FU which featured David Carradine moving so slow that slow motion
effects were used during the fight sequences to make it appear that this was
why it seemed that way. It doesn’t make it bad, it just makes it different.
So how does this movie fare in the end? It offers an
evening’s worth of entertainment for fans of both martial arts and
Blaxploitation genres. Van Clief fans will be glad they can find a quality copy
of the film to add to their collection. Film Detective is offering a quality
print of the film on blu-ray, at least as clean as you can get considering the
source material available, the original camera negative. Perhaps the most
important thing is that in doing so they’ve preserved a part of film history
that many may have chosen to ignore of forget. But for fans this means they can
add another film to their collection to enjoy when they fondly remember these
types of films. For those fans you’ll want to pick this one up.
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