With this, director Robert Clouse made what is easily Bruce Lee’s finest film (and then proceeded to follow it up with a never-ending string of schlock). While Lee is technically one point of a heroic triangle — with A Nightmare on Elm Street’s John Saxon and blaxploitation icon Jim Kelly being the others — let’s […]
blaxploitation
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Cool Breeze
To get this right out of the way: Shaft, it is not. Heck, it’s not even Shaft in Africa. But it’s good enough for a temporary kick, like a mild beer buzz. Per its trailer, “Cool Breeze is cold business.” To continue the Shaft math, Thalmus Rasulala (whose other blaxploitation forays included roles in — […]
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42nd Street Forever: Blu-ray Edition
That adds up to nearly four hours of absolutely outrageous ads. Trust me: Whether you watch in a single sitting or several, it’s a real car-chasing, cycle-revving, bomb-exploding, fist-punching, karate-chopping, foot-kicking, gun-shooting, knife-throwing, laser-blasting, woman-screaming, race-baiting, acid-pouring, eye-gouging, head-chopping, phallus-castrating, breast-squeezing, bed-writhing, succubus-sucking, wrist-tying, drug-injecting, butt-whipping, panty-ripping, bikini-filling, disco-dancing, jail-busting, snake-attacking, robot-battling, voodoo-pinning, slime-invading, dominatrix-singing, […]
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Police Story: Season One
Shout! Factory has released the first season — all 22 episodes of it — on a six-disc set. It was worth the wait. Now I just pray the remainder will follow. “Police Story” makes for terse drama. As Wambaugh states on the bonus interview with him, the series is not about the cop on the […]
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Gordon’s War / Off Limits
Not much, other than having an African-American star and Vietnam as a plot point, but that’s enough for Shout! Factory to pair them on a single-disc double feature. The former isn’t your average blaxploitation picture; the latter is your below-average cop film. Directed by veteran actor Ossie Davis (from TV’s “The Defenders” to Spike Lee’s […]