Dolemite

Director - D'Urville Martin (Disco 9000)
Starring - Rudy Ray Moore (The Human Tornado), D'Urville Martin (Rosemary's Baby), Jerry Jones (Disco Godfather)
Release Date - 1975
Genre - Action
Tagline - "With his army of kung-fu killers"
Format - Bluray (Personal Collection) (Screener)

Rating (out of 5):

     When I was in middle school my Dad was taking my sister and I to Tennessee to see our older brother and his family.  We stopped at a Wal-Mart in Virginia along the way and a guy approached him with a bag of stuff.  I heard my dad talking to him for a bit and then dad gave him some money and they parted ways.  He opened the car door and tossed the bag in.  It was a bag of DVDs and VHS.  Most were crappy but there was a few gems that stuck with me for years.  The most popular of the movies in the back was the VHS copy of Truck Turner.  The movie was bad.  So fucking bad but I loved it.  I would sit and watch the shit out of it for hours.  This lead me to a sub-genre of exploitation cinema known as blaxploitation.  I later bought the Snoop Dogg film Bones on VHS which was a modern horror blaxploitation throwback.  I loved it and soon found myself renting dozens of blaxploitation films.  One film that I never had the chance to see but always wanted to was the 1975 Rudy Ray Moore classic, Dolemite.  So many people told me to check it out but something always happened and I never could.  Lucky for me, Vinegar Syndrome released the film on blu and was kind enough to hook me up with a review copy.  Once again, I want to thank you guys for hooking me up!

     The film begins with Dolemite (Moore) who is in prison after the FBI planted stolen fur coats in the caddie.  The town he lived in has turned to shit in his absence as a new drug dealer, Willie Green (Martin), has taken over his turf and started selling drugs to kids.  To make matters worse, Dolemite's nephew was just shot dead for trying to turn his back on the drug trade.  The warden has partnered with the governor and an FBI agent and offered to let Dolemite go free if he promises to stop WIllie Green.  Dolemite accepts and starts training his hoes to be killer kung-fu masters before going at Willie Green head on!

     I absolutely love blaxploitation.  I love the colorful characters, the cheap story lines, the wardrobes, the dialogue, and the horribly choreographed kung-fu fights.  They may be cheap but they are always fun.  Dolemite is no exception and was everything I had heard about it.  The acting in this one is extremely fun and extremely bad.  Rudy Ray Moore is brilliant in a comical way.  He adds so much humor to the film while spitting out some of the quickest rhymes ever heard on film.  His rhymes are legendary and he does a great job at that.  However, his fighting skills are not on the same level.  His fight scenes are all over the face adding even more humor and a "so bad it's good" feel to the film.  The remainder of the cast does a solid job as well but Moore is the star of the show and all eyes of are him.  The story for this one is sleazy and brilliant.  The film fully submerges itself into urban culture of the 70s.  The film is full of pimps, hoes, karate, gun fights, and some sweet dialogue.  Finally, the film is full of action but some of it is pretty lame which only adds to the film's humor.  This is the kind of film you watch for the story and acting and not the actions.  Overall, Dolemite is the true definition of what it means to be a blaxploitation film.  The film is historical in it's own right and would be the inspiration for the blaxploitation parody Black Dynamite.  Check out this release from Vinegar Syndrome as soon as you can!