Jim Kelly June Jamboree: One Down, Two to Go (1982)

THE MOVIE

We begin at a karate tournament, which is headlined by a battle between a team from New Jersey and a team from Los Angeles; each team has put up $200,000 and the winner gets all the money. The team's coaches are introduced and the Los Angeles coach is my main man Jim Kelly!

He provides absolutely zero cornering help to his students, and instead just crouches by the ring, clearly trying to distance himself from the most hilariously terrible kickboxing fights imaginable.

His buddy Ralph (Richard Roundtree - SHAFT) comes over, and they think something fishy is going on, because the Los Angeles team are losing fights. It couldn't be that they suck... Chuck (Jim Kelly) heads backstage and discovers the New Jersey team has been loading their gloves with metal, because "the local business owners" (translation: the mob) behind their side of the money refuse to lose. Chuck is spotted by some of their henchmen, so he gives them a good whooping, but then when he's trying to get in his car they shoot him. Boo!

After the Los Angeles team are somehow victorious, it quickly becomes clear Ralph and Chuck aren't going to be getting their money. I mean, they showed absolutely zero patience and chased after it only about 10 minutes after the tournament ended, but these New Jersey crooks were definitely not going to pay.

Chuck turns up with a bullet wound, so his girlfriend, Teri, and Ralph sneak him out of town to try and get him healed up. Chuck tells Teri to call a couple of friends to come in and help with the situation. Which is lucky, because the next morning, all these bad white dudes find them, beat Ralph with a post, rape Teri, and shoot Chuck some more. That's a bad start to any day!

Chuck's friends arrive - it's Jim Brown and Fred Williamson. So you know shit is about to go down!

Their first order of business is to get their money, which involves Jim Brown shaking down a bank manager and then wiping out some mob boss and his goons.

Fred Williamson bags him a white girl and... I think that was all he was doing. They manage to find Chuck and Ralph, who were being cared for by some other decent black folk, but Teri has been kidnapped by the main bad guys. So they set about saving her and putting an end to the bad guys' operation once and for all. Which means lots of shooting and explosions and these three tough men just being tough.

REACTION

This is a relatively fun blaxploitation action film, made all the better because of having the four baddest dudes on the planet working together. And they all just deliver hilariously badass dialogue and threats with effortless cool. Odd to me that they were constantly giving the sheriff loads of shit, even though he didn't arrest them for, you know, walking around town with big guns and shooting a whole bunch of people and blowing up cars. But really, this type of movie is just your stereotypical blaxploitation-type of thing; short on story, but heavy on the action and the cool. And I'm here for it.

JIM KELLY

He whooped some dudes, but my man had a pretty bad spell in this movie; he got shot, his woman was violated, and he spent the majority of the movie in bed trying to recover. I don't think I saw a tennis racquet at any point.. And his karate students looked like shit! No wonder he topped making movies after this (and this was already after a few years off).

I'd like to see some boutique label do a blu-ray of this movie, because the only way to view it right now is on the youtube. Which you should do. It's free and it's the right thing to do.

Jim Kelly June Jamboree: Take a Hard Ride (1975)

THE MOVIE
We begin with a bounty hunter (Lee Van Cleef) having a bit of a standoff with some wanted man that he has tracked down. Dude tries to deny he is the man in question, and then some friends of his or something are like "We don't take kindly to bounty hunters around here". So you'd rather have criminals? They draw, Bounty Hunter wins - story over?

Pike (Jim Brown) and his boss, Morgan, are in town to sell cattle. They cross paths with the bounty hunter, and he and Pike make some serious eye contact. Foreboding?

Anyways, they are in town to sell some cattle and take the money back to their hometown, which is actually in Mexico, I think. Morgan suddenly drops dead, but not before making Pike promise him he will deliver the money to their hometown. Word gets out that there is a solo black man riding around with $86,000 and all the bad dudes in the area are keen to take him out and get that money for themselves - including our bounty hunter from earlier and a couple of losers that worked for Morgan. A dandy by the name of Tyree (Fred Williamson) gets wind of all this and, after helping Pike fight off a few low-lives, they make a deal that Tyree will help him cross the border - but after that, he will fight him for the money.

Along the way, they rescue a woman named Catherine and her friend, Kashtok, from a group of bandits that have attacked her group and murdered her husband. Kashtok is, in fact, my main Jim Kelly - sans moustache! He is a Native American. With no tongue - so he can not speak. Huh... 

He can still do karate, though.

So they all travel together to the Mexican border, battling off attack after attack - including some church group coming after them with a machine gun. Catherine and Pike talk a lot about redemption and second chances in life. More foreboding? Anyways, they eventually make it to the border - where Tyree lives up to his end of the deal by getting into a rumble with Pike for the money. But before they can decide on a winner, the bounty hunter turns up with a veritable army of bandits. They have one last standoff for a winner takes all kind of deal. I guess...

REACTION
Well, there wasn't really much to say about this film. It was fine, and certainly not awful, but I can't help but feel like there was something missing. It came across as somewhat of a low-budget made for TV western.

And I'm not sure how I felt about Fred Williamson and his Louisiana drawl... But what actually worked for the film was Jim Brown; dude had some kind of earnest quality that makes you see him as a good guy, so you always had that trust that he was doing the right thing. And also, I was surprised that race wasn't such a big plot point. Sure, the N word got thrown around a little, but mostly by Tyree; no one seemed to make too big of a deal about Morgan's right-hand man being African-American. Which was somewhat unexpected. So yeah, I came in expecting some type of Blaxploitation Western, but really got more of a Western that just happened to have a couple of Blaxploitation heroes in the lead.

JIM KELLY
I'll say again. He was portraying a Native American. Who could not speak. But knew karate. He still didn't do enough butt-whooping for me - and he wore a hat the whole time that covered up that afro! It felt like a bit of a waste, but at the same time it was a role that relied heavily on him conveying emotions and expressing them without words.

I like that we got something a little bit different, but the movie lacks something that stops it from being just... there. Fine Sunday afternoon viewing or something, but not anything you need to go out of your way to watch. Unless you are watching every Jim Kelly movie...

Jim Kelly June Jamboree: Three The Hard Way (1974)

THE MOVIE
We start things off at some sort of farm-prison-camp-type-thing, where an inmate(?) is serving food to other inmates. Eventually he breaks free and steals a gun, shooting a bunch of the guards - and getting shot himself, but still managing to escape. He makes his way to his good friend and clearly very successful record producer, Jimmy (Jim Brown), who gets him to a hospital. Jimmy wants to know what happened, but the dude is too traumatised. So Jimmy's girlfriend convinces him to leave her in charge at the hospital and head back to the studio, because he needs to get back to telling The Inspirations they look bad and sound worse (he said it, not me!).

Of course, once he leaves, the bad dudes come in and kill the escaped prisoner and kidnap Jimmy's woman.

Then the bad guys start chasing Jimmy and trying to kill him - and not particularly subtly, either. 

Meanwhile, Jimmy's woman is taken back to the home of Monroe Feather. He's says he has a plan to wipe African-Americans off the face of the Earth with science. 

So Jimmy heads to Chicago and hits up his other pal, Jagger (Fred Williamson)

and then they both go meet up with their other good friend, Mister Keyes - my main man, Jim Kelly! With a funky new moustache.

After a battle with the bad guys in a car wash (does Jim Kelly just enjoy keeping clean while busting fools?) they capture one of these clowns and Keyes enlists the help of three topless women to torture him. Yes, you read that correct. Anyways, the dude is so emotionally scarred by seeing naked boobs that he tells them all about Feather's evil plan to poison the water supply with a chemical that will only kill Africans. He even tells them it's all going down in L.A., Detroit and Washington! Then, he promptly dies - boobs are scary, yo!

From there, our heroes go on an all-out attack to put an end to Feather's plans; each man takes a city and whoops Feather's henchmen before they can contaminate the waters. African-American people are now safe! Apart from, you know, all the racism and police brutality. But then they reunite and head to Feather's home, where he is hosting some sort of Nazi dinner or some bullshit. So they need to bust in, save Jimmy's woman, and put a stop to Feather and his Nazi bullshit once and for all!

REACTION
Where Black Belt Jones was a tour de force of action-comedy, Three the Hard Way is just a straight action movie with a sprinkling of humour, and some serious race issues driving the absolutely bonkers plot. Having these three iconic actors come together for the first time, I did come in with high expectations that weren't quite met. But overall, it is still an entertaining and fast-paced ride. Jim Brown and Fred Williamson always deliver when you need some tough dudes to dish out justice.

JIM KELLY
Mister Keyes is one bad mutha! His introduction in the movie involves being setup by the pigs by planting drugs in his car, and he just don't play that! He explains that his first name is in fact "Mister" - his mother named him that so people would be forced to show him respect. Then he just takes that respect by beating up the entire Chicago police force for being dishonest pigs trying to set him up.

My favourite part here was when he is standing over all the carnage of smashed police cars and unconscious police officers, Jimmy and Jagger appear, and then these dudes have a bit of a chat, like they are just running in to each other at a cafe or something and not a fucking warzone. That Keyes should probably be fleeing as quickly as possible. But then again, I think that speaks to how much of a total badass the man is - he just gives zero fucks! Come and get him, you dirty racist pigs! Also of note; when they are infiltrating Feather's house, all three men are dressed in black - because, you know, blending in with the night or whatever. But as soon as they actually start their plan to get inside, Keyes ditches his top and just decides to go shirtless for the whole operation. Good stuffs.

If you're looking for three black men blowing shit up and whooping Nazis, then I have the movie for you...