Bad Movies We Love: Dolemite

Despite these deficiencies and some leaden pacing, the movie gets by on funky charm resulting from Moore's determination that Dolemite be the pimpingest pimp possible. When we begin he's sprung from jail (where he's been chilling after a drugs-and-furs frame-up) on the proviso that he go to work for the police commissioner to put the drug-running gangster Willie Green (Martin) outta business. Outside the prison, Dolemite is met by four of his babes, who've brought him phat threads to change into. No sooner is he dressed than he's undressing to service two of the girls in the back seat of his Cadillac. Then he pulls off to the side of the road so he can coolly ambush and massacre honkies foolish enough to be on his ass.

On it struts, pausing now and again for Moore's amusing toasts -- including "Great Titanic" and "The Signifying Monkey" -- which he delivers with much more confidence than some of his dialogue. Best is when he gets to combine the rhymes and the lines, as in his unforgettable roar: "Dolemite is my name, and fuckin' up motherfuckers is my game!"

Black Dynamite's most obvious riff on Dolemite is Michael Jai White's strident, precise delivery, many of which end with the same "Can you dig it?" As for the rhymes, he leaves that to Bullhorn, who speaks in such boasts, while Dolemite's madam-in-charge-of-plot-exposition Queen Bee becomes Black Dynamite's Honeybee. Similar also is that Dolemite's mission is triggered by hearing that "Guns and dope are being sold to school children everyday" and, worse, his nephew's been shot in a senseless drive-by. "So they killed little Jimmy," he muses, with about 1/8th of an ounce of emotion. Black Dynamite's montage featuring his army of martial arts mamas recalls his predecessor's phalanx of hookers, whom he kindly put through kung-fu school when he was behind bars. That both feature massive white-fur hats, suburban bungalow lairs, sweatily crooked white cops and our hero's supernatural bedroom powers ("I'm gonna give a fuckin' you'll never forget," Dolemite says at one point) is to be expected, but it's nice that Black Dynamite includes a scene where White is harassed in the middle of an important speech by a boom mic poking his Afro.

Happily, this week's release is an all together slicker and faster package, with such deliberate errors included but kept to the simple minimum as a reminder that 35 years earlier black filmmakers like Rudy Ray Moore were getting their visions up on screen by any means necessary, technical limitations be damned. It worked, too. Released in July of 1975, Dolemite was a hit and spawned a better-put-together sequel, 1976's The Human Tornado, and several other movie vehicles for Moore.

While there may have been more professional efforts, such films as Black Dynamite wouldn't have been possible without Dolemite. For that, it's a Bad Movie We Love.

Michael Adams is the author of the upcoming comic memoir Showgirls, Teen Wolves, And Astro Zombies: A Film Critic's Year-Long Quest To Find And Watch The Worst Movie Ever Made (HarperCollins)

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