52: Black Belt Jones
About this episode
The episode discusses the 1974 blaxploitation film Black Belt Jones, exploring its themes and cultural context.
This week our Black History Month series continues with a look at the 1974 blaxploitation martial arts mashup, Black Belt Jones, starring Jim Kelly and Gloria Hendry. Kelly was coming in hot off of his run in the legendary Bruce Lee movie, Enter The Dragon and with Bruce dead and a public appetite ravenous for more martial arts movies it just made sense to spin off one of its stars to their own martial arts movie. Hendry was coming in off her turn as a Bond girl in Live and Let Die and a string of excellent blaxploitation movies like Black Caesar and Hell Up In Harlem. In this absolute cartoon of a martial arts movie, the mafia has bought into a valuable city project to build a new civic center in South Central Los Angeles but the only thing holding up the development is one holdout, a karate school that refuses to sell out. The mafia calls up a local loan shark to put the pressure on the school and when they accidentally kill the school's owner it's up to Black Belt Jones and the owner's daughter to team up, rip off the gangsters and get justice. Things get a little blurry between the beginning and the end but in spite of it flying by the seat of its pants and barely making any…
People in this episode
Hosts: Bryan White, Dave White
Topics covered
- blaxploitation
- martial arts
- film analysis
- Black History Month
- 1970s cinema
Keywords
- Jim Kelly
- Black Belt Jones
- Gloria Hendry
- blaxploitation
- martial arts
- 1974 film
Mentioned in this episode
Books & works: Black Belt Jones, Enter The Dragon, Live and Let Die, Black Caesar, Hell Up In Harlem
Places: South Central Los Angeles
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