Black Samurai (1977)

Al Adamson tends to be associated with those films he somewhat obsessively kept re-editing and reshaping - sometimes incorporating footage he'd shot years before - sometimes re-releasing them as new movies, under different titles, years apart.  Those and the films he shaped from other people's footage, incorporated into footage he'd newly shot.  But he also directed low budget films more conventionally, sometimes as a 'director-for-hire'.  Black Samurai (1977) is one such film.  A  Kung Fu-James Bond rip off crossover vehicle for Jim Kelly, the film is ostensibly based upon the first of a series of novels by Marc Olden, the script also included 'additional ideas' from at least one credited contributor.  Which is why it feels akin to a patchwork quilt, abruptly jumping between scenarios, with no consistency of tone.  To be fair, Adamson does his best with the material, presenting a film that it is at least professional looking and reasonably well paced, but the script inevitably means that it has a somewhat jerky and sporadic feel, the story never unfolding particularly smoothly.  The script is clearly trying to emulate the successful Bond formula of presenting a series of fast moving action set-pieces to carry the plot forward.  Where it falls down is in failing to provide sufficient expository scenes in-between to keep the audience in the loop as to what is actually going on.  In some respects, this approach does succeed in emulating the feel of some Bond movies of the era, where the action keeps moving from one location to the next, with minimal explanation, frequently leaving the viewer asking 'why is he going there, now?' and trying to make sense of the latest developments.

Black Samurai was clearly also influenced by the relatively recent Bond film, 1973's Live and Let Die, with its theme of voodoo being used as a front by the villain, to terrorise and keep in line both enemies and subordinates.  It even includes a scene of an agent being killed by snake used in a voodoo ceremony, just to ram the home the similarities.  (Clearly designed to cash in on the then Blaxploitation movie boom, Live and Let Die subsequently proved influential on the genre it was ripping off, with a number of Blaxploitation pictures picking up on the voodoo elements).  Despite the Bondian influences, there is no way that Black Samurai would ever be mistaken for the genuine article.  Most obviously, it is clearly made on a very limited budget, with its 'exotic' locations, apart from some establishing shots of Hong Kong', being confined mainly to California and Florida.  The plot is also far too simplistic - master villain holds daughter of high-ranking Japanese diplomat (also DRAGON agent Jim Kelly's girlfried) hostage in an attempt to get his hands on the 'Freeze Bomb' plans - and the villain himself, 'The Warlock' simply not interesting or sophisticated enough to make a worthy opponent for Kelly, with the voodoo angle never really properly exploited.  What the film does have is a series of very lively fight sequences, choreographed by Jim Kelly himself, in which Kelly takes on a small army of henchmen, (including a number of dwarfs).  These are undoubtedly the film's highlights and are almost worth sitting through the whole film for.  As well staged as the fight sequences are, though, Black Samurai still isn't anything like Kelly's best movie.  That accolade probably belongs to Black Belt Jones (1974), which boasts a far stronger script and plot.  Still, as a piece of exploitation cinema, Black Samurai is mindlessly entertaining, if entirely derivative.  The following year Al Adamson would collaborate with Kelly again, once more on a Bond-infuenced action film, Death Dimension (1978), but this time actually featuring two genuine Bond stars in George Lazenby and Harold Sakata.