Black Samurai (1976)

The acting in this movie is really good.

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Al Adamson had little luck mastering the horror genre and it would appear from this misbegotten, Jim Kelly vehicle that his gleeful ineptitude as a director was at its zenith with 'Black Samurai'. If they haven't benumbed themselves already, bad movie aficionados will find themselves in a terminal state of physical and spiritual paralysis mid-way through a screening of this confounding example of horribly inept and sickeningly opportunistic "cinenema". It's such a shame that the name of Ed Wood gets bandied around as filmdom's most foolhardy auteur, when a myopic, amputee, feral child could have edited 'Black Samurai' with more panache than Adamson; you could gaffer tape a Bolex into the hand of a 30 year old corpse and engender a more profound cinematic statement than 'Black Samurai'. If one had the choice of ramming a frozen stoat repeatedly into both eyes, or watch 'Black Samurai'; find yourself an icy mammal, as I can assure you the latter is infinitely more painful.

It is still one of the funniest things I have ever seen. The action is terrible, but punctuated with great sound effects. Midgets come out of nowhere, and partner up with African tribesman as the targets for Jim Kelly's wrath. The movie isn't at all PC, and if you can find it in an uncut edition, there's even a fair amount of bad stripping! All this before we even get to the climax. All in all, this movie is truly a must-see for anyone who wants to understand why America moved on from the 1970s. That said, I haven't laughed this long and hard during a movie for a long long time. Please: this movie is bad, it is oh so gloriously bad, but worth every minute you invest in it.

The movie "The Black Samurai" has everything you could ever want in a film: kung-fu, midgets, a mariachi band, a vulture, a jet-pack, a sassy black woman, cool sound effects, a car-chase, and random explosions. PLUS: A gay devil-worshiping badguy, a secret agent organization, a fire-spouting pen, snakes, afros, a scene where the good guy kills tons of badguys with a grenade because he's tired...and with SEX APPEAL! The only thing lacking in this movie is gratuitous gore and nudity! Wow what a feature!

I never thought I'd see something that makes "Astro-Zombies" look like "Citizen Kane", but "Black Samurai" succeeds in this dubious honor. The word "poor" can't begin to describe this cheap, slapped-together bit of tripe; the flick's unrelenting stupidity and general half-assedness make its reputation as a guilty pleasure completely undeserved. Sure, it had a couple of mildly amusing moments (the jet-pack silliness and a bit of the midget-fu), but it's mostly a painful endurance test, even for those of us accustomed to laughing at grade-Z exploitation flicks. I seldom feel embarrassed for the actors in these sorts of things, but watching Jim Kelly flail around in this awful mess evoked a genuine feel of pity for the guy in me (I might add that this empathy completely evaporated when I learned that he starred in another of Al "Hack" Adamson's martial arts "extravanganzas" after this...shame on you, Jim Kelly!).If you're in the mood for an amusing martial arts movie, track down something enjoyable like "Black Belt Jones" or "Master of the Flying Guillotine." Leave this wretched time-killer on the shelf gathering dust, where it belongs.