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Cinema PSYOPS is a weekly film review podcast where we experiment on an impressionable mind to find out why physical wounds heal, but Cinematic ones don't.
Hello, and welcome to the 463rd consecutive week of Cinema Psy Ops.
I'm your host, Cort, the guy that is sort of still regretting, but kind of not, but still very much regretting covering the box set for Al Adamson.
And joining me in this canster nation is my co-host, Rhett.
I typically say try to live your life without regrets, but you should regret this.
Yeah, this is a choice.
You should regret this, and it's all your fault.
More so next week than this week.
This week was just not that great film.
Next week is a painful experience to have to try and go through.
Yeah, next week is going to be just the fucking, the shits.
Yeah.
So this week we're talking 1976's Black Samurai starring Jim Kelly.
Yeah, so Jim Kelly is a thing that they tried to make happen because he was a student of Bruce Lee's, wasn't he?
I believe so.
Yeah, because he was in End of the Dragon, right?
Jim Kelly, I believe so.
Yeah, because this is a...
I've never seen End of the Dragon.
Wow.
We need to fix that in year 11, Jesus.
Had I known that before year 10's schedule was locked in and approved, I probably would have added it.
Oh, man, you just completely derailed everything I was thinking about talking about.
I'm just like seriously in shock that you have not seen End of the Dragon.
Never seen End of the Dragon, never seen it.
This breaks me as a human being inside that I have not rectified this yet.
Jesus, if I never see the Godfather.
I've seen the Godfather.
I've personally watched the Godfather with you before.
Of course, I know you've watched the Godfather.
I just seriously, man, I'm blown away.
Like the whole course of action that I was going to try and take, I was going to make this whole joke about how this is Al Adamson taking Jim Kelly out of Enter the Dragon and trying to remake Enter the Dragon with Jim Kelly.
But that's completely useless now because all the jokes that I would make about Enter the Dragon are going to fall on deaf ears from you.
Yeah, I've never seen it.
Christ, I'm going to have to mark up a lot of my notes here.
Can you give me like 10 minutes?
Jesus fucking Christ.
Go ahead, man.
Do whatever you need.
All right, let's just stop the recording for a second and I'll go do this.
All right, we're back.
Jesus fucking Christ, Matt.
You all right over there?
Yeah.
Listen, Matt, I'm sorry, I don't get out a lot.
These notes are gonna be one page now, because my jokes are useless.
Great, we're done.
Yeah, this is gonna be a very quick episode, everybody, so let's stop dwindling and playing around and beating around the bush about it.
Might as well just go ahead and do the show, so we're gonna take the break here.
We'll play the Legion Patreon ad.
And on this week, because the film was purportedly released in 1976, all songs from 1976 on the pirate radio, edit.
So up first is one of my personal favorites, the Ramones, with Blitzkrieg Bop right after this.
This'll keep you quiet.
Oh, hi there.
I didn't see you.
You called me cutting a new show.
I'm Bo Ransdell, and I'm one of the many creators you can find on Legion Podcasts.
I said quiet.
My fellow podcasters and I work hard to bring you the best in horror podcasting, but that comes at a cost.
What's that like to live deliciously?
Not that, but also yes.
No, what I'm getting at is that there are server costs, costs for good microphones and software for editing, all the things that make our shows, you know, fun to listen to.
And you can help.
If you're enjoying the shows on legionpodcasts.com or in the Legion Network available on iTunes and Stitcher, just about anywhere you can download a podcast really, you can help us out and get a little something for your trouble at patreon.com forward slash Legion Podcasts.
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All of that available on patreon.com/LegionPodcasts
We appreciate it, and thank you for listening.
Now, back to the cutting room.
All right, a little confession time for me here.
I always, always, always hate remasters of songs.
There's a version of the song that I'm used to hearing, and when someone remasters it and tweaks that or changes it, and it sounds very different than what I'm used to, the mix that I'm used to, it really bothers my OCD, and I just can't take it.
And that was one of those, because I grabbed that one off of YouTube.
I didn't use my regular clip that I would have of it, or my regular MP3 file that I would have of it.
Just for whatever reason, I just decided to grab it off of YouTube, and now I'm regretting that.
Oh, I mean, it still sounded pretty okay.
Yeah, I just, you know, if there's a certain way that you're used to, like, hearing things over and over again, it really messes with your head when you have the kind of disorders that I do, my friend.
It's just kind of off-putting.
Right, right.
Speaking of off-putting, we should probably talk about 1976's Black Samurai.
Well, all right, let's do it.
All right, so I broke this up into three sections, as 30 minutes, 30 minutes, and 24, because the total runtime was about 84 minutes.
So here we go.
The first 30 opens on a travelogue of what looks like Hong Kong, I think, or maybe it might be Japan.
It's really kind of nebulous as to where it's supposed to be.
And then there is dialogue, so fuck it, that's our first clip.
She's a pretty little thing, isn't she?
We better get out.
Don't lose her.
Come on.
Minister Konuma is winding up a successful series of meetings in which his year-old plan for thwarting the illegal export of narcotics through the port of Hong Kong has gotten a boost by members of the United States and French government agencies.
It's hard to believe he's an honest man, but unfortunately he is.
It's not a shame.
Particularly for his daughter.
The minister's daughter, Toki, will be joining her father next week in the United States, where they both will be the guests of the ambassador to Hong Kong.
Okay, so during the clip, the lady goes about menial traveling tasks of some sort, and then she ends up back in an affluent house, and the three dipshits tail her in the worst attempt at comedic tailing since the last plagiarist of The Marx Brothers before this one.
Yeah, good job.
You had to be sacked while we're at it.
They pad the film with these antics and really take their time going about it.
This is quite a few minutes of screen time so far.
Yeah, Al Adamson loves his padding.
The lady comes out to sunbathe and the three bumbling idiots make a move and poorly kung fu fight their way to the lady by beating up her servants.
They then shoot up the servants once they have the lady, which makes no sense.
They should have just shot them right off the bat instead of the kung fu-ing, but what do I know?
Yeah, I mean, we're not evil geniuses apparently.
They grab the lady and run off.
This starts the opening animated credits and the title card.
This seizure-inducing awfulness of this animation takes us all the way from the five-minute mark to just over the seven-minute mark before it cuts from this to Jim Kelly playing tennis with the phone off the hook outside near him as two stuff-shirt white dudes show up and start delivering some dialogue and our second clip.
That's why we've been getting a busy signal all morning.
30 left.
Good shot.
Sand, I have to talk to you.
Good shot.
Sand, I want to talk to you.
Match point.
Sand.
Call me about three weeks when my vacation's over, and we'll talk about anything you want to talk to me.
You think I drank myself out here for my health?
It's important.
Your idea of what's important and mine are two different things.
All right, three minutes.
Sand, good to see you, man.
Enjoying Mexico?
All right, Pines.
Okay, let's have a look at Forrest's worth.
This one's Janeket.
So?
Janeket's an ancient witch word for the devil.
He's a high priest of the occult.
Digs power, money, and being worshipped.
His followers call him the Warlock.
I don't see nothing here worth me interrupting my vacation.
This is Janeket's Lady Honcho.
What do you think of that?
She's not bad.
Lady, huh?
From what you told me about that one, a man would be safer funnelling a piranha than getting cozy with her.
Okay, let's get to the point, Forrest Worth.
Janeket's deep into black magic, voodoo, devil worship.
So I gather.
And ritual murders.
So he's sick.
So they're all sick, man.
Look, Dragon's got plenty of agents.
I don't want no part of this.
It's more complicated than you think.
He owns these people.
They're his slaves.
He uses them for dope, prostitution, slave trade on an international level.
So tell me something else that's new.
Well, that's Victor Chavez.
One mean bastard.
Argentinian.
He runs Gianna Cutt's private little army.
His favorite pastime, inflicting pain on women.
You mean girls.
Getting interested, Sands?
No deal, man.
Look, I've got two more weeks here on my vacation than I'm going back to the West Coast, and I'm gonna meet a pretty young lady.
I'll pay you a bonus.
Look, you haven't got enough money to interest me.
Scario?
Oh, you know better than that man.
Let me get back to my love set.
Sand, I don't think it's going to be necessary for you to go to the West Coast.
What do you mean by that?
Is this she?
It's Toki.
I hate to tell you this.
I'm sorry, but Janeket's got her.
What for?
They got her two days ago.
What in God's name for, man?
Janeket has a heavy dope line from Southeast Asia.
The US pressure to close it down is beginning to pinch him pretty tight.
He's also putting the screws on Toki's father.
Minister Kanuma.
Look, man, he's the minister of the Samurai Code.
That guy's not going to give him that easy.
Just think what Janeket's reaction to that's going to be.
The minister will never cooperate with...
Will you help us get him?
What do you think?
I knew you'd understand.
Anything else you need?
Just make sure my car is there.
And remember, no interference, man.
Okay, they cut from this to a shot of a landing airplane.
This is parlayed into Jim Kelly walking around and calling a cab, set to 70s discount funk music.
And we watch the car drive in real time to a raised ranch building of some sort where Jim Kelly is dropped off to get into a fancy car, which is apparently the car that they were supposed to have waiting for him in that overdubbed dialogue.
And then he starts driving around some more in real time as that cross dissolves into a flashback of him and the kidnapped lady taking a casual pastoral stroll through what looks like a zoo's habit trail.
They stop to be sweet and kiss every three steps, and it is saccharine and boring as fuck every time they do it.
This routine goes on far too long, and there is no need for it, as a simple few shots of this padding would have gotten this point across.
That flashback finally ends, and the driving bullshit is then immediately switched from a travelogue to a car chase with racist dialogue that is useless to clip over it.
The racist in the big car try to run Jim Kelly off the road and also just straight up shoot him dead at the same time, but he pulls a switch, and that somehow causes their car to green off, and the car then crashes into a fiery explosion.
That is really underwhelming, by the way.
It's like, would somebody set off a sparkler, or what are we doing?
Yeah, it was more underwhelming than the excessive jazz that was playing right after it.
And he just walks into an apartment building after that, they just cut, like nothing ever ended up happening there.
Whoa, okay, whatever.
It cross resolves from this to Jim Kelly doing martial arts weapon practice and some katas of some sort, before two dudes pop up out of nowhere for no fucking reason and get the jump on him meditating.
Then Jim Kelly murderizes the lot of them before a friend shows up and delivers some fucking useful dialogue in our circus.
Easy, Sam, I'm coming in.
Man, you better knock next time.
You okay?
Yeah, I'm all right, man, but your sense of time is not too great.
What the hell are you doing here anyway?
I got the layout in Janica's place.
Fawn's where I thought you might need it.
Just take it easy, Pine.
Take it easy.
There's gonna be a party there tonight.
There's an invitation for you.
How'd you manage this?
Hey, man, I got my sources, you got yours.
Look, Pines, I'm tired of people always on my back.
What the hell?
Besides, I don't like nobody using this body as a target.
You got any idea who it is?
I know this gotta be Janica's work.
How does he know you're into this?
That's what I'm wondering.
Let me see what you got here.
Well, it may not be much, but it's a miracle we got that.
Do you have any idea where Toby's in this?
Oh, you got a big kid.
I guess I have to find out myself.
Then be careful, huh?
Thanks, Pines, but you know what?
I'm always careful.
Oh, brother, I'm always careful.
They cut from that clip to a Mariachi band rocking out at the party that includes a vulture watching over the crowd.
So that is kind of cool.
That gets my attention.
We have to suffer through shots of the crowd while the band plays to pad out the film, but every shot of the vulture keeps my interest while this obvious fucking padding continues.
So much padding.
Some Chad looking dude with a henchman arrives at the party and then some go-go dancing and stripping starts with dialogue about how she is a hooker.
The bikini strip teases the first smart decision this film has made to pad out its runtime.
Yeah, finally something that makes sense.
Then it cuts away from it before we can fully enjoy it to someone stalking around outside this party.
Then it cuts back to more dialogue about how people suck and these guys don't play games, but that henchman guy wants to bang the prostitute that's stripping in front of them because literally if a woman exists, she must be his property to this guy.
Jim Kelly arrives in his refused entry before he flashes an invite and walks around the party.
More topless dancing keeps this somewhat interesting as Jim Kelly max on a lady at the party in our fourth clip.
That must mean that you're free, doesn't it?
Mr.
Marshall.
Mr.
Joe Marshall.
The way it makes you think I think too.
The striptease dance ends, and then they have more dialogue in our next clip.
You changed your mind, huh?
Let's just say my curiosity got the best of me.
And besides, it's almost sun out.
And I might just turn into a pumpkin.
Like Cinderella, huh?
Sin, what connections do you have with this, uh...
We'd like to think of it as family.
And I am the high priestess here.
I'd like to know more about you.
There's really nothing to know.
Do you like her, Victor?
Why must you always be so antisocial?
Come along, Victor.
Walk with me and lower your voice.
Let's see if we can find you a pen, Victor.
Charming possibility, huh, Victor?
You know what I want.
Oh, Victor, you always have such a one-tracked mind.
Oh, Sand.
Joe, hot darling, I'd like to introduce you to Mr.
Joe Marshall.
Oh, no, my dear.
Let me introduce you to Dragon's top agent, Mr.
Sand, otherwise known as the Black Sapphire.
I didn't know we had the pleasure.
Oh, the pleasure's all mine.
The pleasure that comes from the power of the mind, the power of the warlock.
As the spider said to the fly, welcome to my den, and your king.
We'll meet again, Janucat.
Do you believe that?
Get him!
Get sand!
The clip ends with Jim Kelly making his escape, and that takes us over the first 30 minutes of the movie.
There's a whole lot of nothing to get this far.
Yeah, what I will say is that Adamson is very clearly trying to take a martial arts film, like Enter the Dragon, which Matt would know had he ever seen that film, but since he hasn't, I can't make very many references to it.
I mean, you can, the rest of the audience might know.
Yeah, but you're not there to back me up on this, and I need you because I can't hear them, and they don't respond like you do.
Well, I mean, just imagine it.
Would it help if I lied and say that I know exactly what you're talking about?
No, because the audience already knows that that would be a lie.
We should have started...
We could edit that out.
Then I have to go back and edit out all the other gags about me having to cut this shit out.
Oh, well, I mean...
The show will be five minutes, and it'll be us complaining about how we don't like this movie, and Jim Kelly is not a good actor.
That'll be it.
If we start cutting those gags out...
Oh, for fuck's sakes.
Okay, all right.
But what they're trying to do is...
Al Adamson is trying to take his spy slash undercover cop formula and apply it to a martial arts movie here.
That's clearly what's happening.
And his formula for spy slash undercover cop is a whole lot of dialogue that usually takes place at a party, and a bunch of people just talking about every single nefarious plan that they have right out in the open while surrounded by other people at a party.
I mean, that's usually how it goes.
That's how I do all my nefarious plans.
Most of your nefarious plans are done at parties out in the open in front of a lot of people, and then you just don't do anything because you have ADHD.
Yeah, that's true.
I come up with plans, but I never really enact them.
Yeah, you have a million started nefarious plans to take over the world, and yet not a single one of them has actually been implemented in any way, shape, or form.
ADD is a big thing, man, you know?
It's an ongoing issue in the SIOP household out there.
It really is.
I almost used the real last name, sorry.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, the SIOP household.
Oh, fuck sakes.
We can just move on.
We're fine.
Alright.
We've padded it out enough, so let's move on.
The next 30, which will take us to the full hour, starts with Jim Kelly running over rooftops in an attempt to make his escape and to also pad out the runtime once more.
The bad guys parkour their way around.
Well, Kelly just balance beams his way across the ridge on the roof and then jumps off some guys with some nut punches and a bunch of homophobic slurs as he does it.
There once again, no reason to have a clips for any of that.
The martial arts in this are poorly choreographed and slow.
The macho dialogue that is overdubbed to make Kelly seem more bad ass is laughable and fails at every turn.
This is just fucking gross is what this is.
Yeah, just bad.
It's not good.
And it's not that Kelly's form does not look good or that he's fighting his poor in these sequences.
It's just that he is working with such amateur stuntmen that they make it look fucking ridiculous on screen.
The way they throw themselves away from his kicks.
I mean, he doesn't really do kicks very well in quite a few of these scenes, but in this one in particular, kicks are very much not his thing.
He looks like he's more of a puncher kind of guy.
Yeah, I don't think he can get his leg up for the good kicks.
Yeah, but even the ones that he does do a decent kick on, the guy's either over or undersell it, and it's just kind of ruined.
And he's clearly not a main guy that you want as a martial artist.
He's just this guy that's got a whole bunch of personality and character to him, and that's it.
Yeah, that's pretty much it.
But again, overall, choreography just bad.
Yes, way bad.
They finally stop all this bullshit and give us some kind of a dialogue, because apparently that's our sixth clip.
He got away.
Needless to say, I'm not pleased.
And Bone, I'm particularly displeased with your poor show in this matter.
It's okay.
I'll get it.
Mr.
Sand, he will know pain, terrible pain, when I catch up with him.
I have a few things to say to Mr.
Sand before you redeem yourself, Bone.
And I'm sure Victor doesn't want to be left out.
An example will have to be made to ensure greater effort in the future.
I never intend to experience anything like this again.
You will be the example.
Don't do this to me!
God, no, no!
Sin, my dear, you were rather quiet tonight.
Did your friend leave you speechless?
You know damn well he's no friend of mine.
It's you I care about.
From the way you were clinging to him, I'd have thought...
You thought wrong.
It was them who let him go.
Sin, my sweet, it's not like you to be so nervous.
If I didn't know you better, I'd think he really did rattle your cage.
I'm going to enjoy this cat-and-mouse game with such a worthy opponent as the Black Samurai.
Has Toki arrived yet?
My friends are very eagerly waiting.
Where do you want to?
Good.
Take her to the tower.
What a pretty girl.
Why must you get involved in such nasty affair?
You know, under any other circumstances, I could have fallen in love with you.
You are the daughter of a very important man.
And that, honey, means money to us.
Why such an intelligent man makes such stupid decisions, I'll never understand.
Ah, but if you are nice to Chavez, I can make arrangements so you stay here and be much more comfortable.
Ah, Mr.
Johnnycutt, please help me.
She's much lovelier than I anticipated.
Do what you want to me, but you never get him.
Sand, what the hell are you doing here?
I think we better have a talk, Pines.
Why?
What happened to you?
What happened?
Johnnycutt knew who I was.
He tried to tell me it's Devil's power, Tony.
But I don't believe in that bullshit.
I think the Devil has a helper.
Meaning?
Meaning you didn't tell me where we got that invitation from.
Hey, cool it, man.
I blow my sources and we ain't got no more sources.
Speaking of which, we got word.
She's here.
Toki, where?
At Chavez's.
Where do I find Chavez's?
Oh, you rented a place in a remote area, out by Little Creek Road.
Hey, where you going?
Chavez's.
Hold it, you're not just gonna rush on in there.
Stand here?
If that dialogue feels a little too rapid in its delivery, it's because I cut out a tremendous amount of dead space in between all the dialogue being delivered.
I was wondering.
That's why it's coming through kind of snappy, everyone.
Yeah.
All right, at the end of the clip, that starts a mini chase scene where Jim Kelly has run off the road by a station wagon load of dudes that chase him into a parking garage structure where he fights them in varying degrees of terrible choreography and stunt work.
Yeah, I just...
This is pretty bad for what's supposed to be, you know, it's supposed to be a kung fu movie, and the kung fu isn't all that great.
Yeah, it's terrible choreography and stunt work that has to be endured to be truly believed at how terrible it actually is.
Yeah.
He kicks all the ass because there is no real threat in this to him at all, because why would there be?
Yeah, right.
And then they dissolve from this to a voiceover describing that he needs a boat so the next sequence makes some sense instead of making absolutely no fucking sense at all.
It should just stay making no sense at all.
He hops on a boat with an old school rocket pack on his back, and this leads to a rocket pack man flyover sequence that finally pads the runtime with something somewhat interesting to watch.
I guess a little.
Well, this goes on for fucking ever.
I start to think about how these jet pack things were all over the 70s TV shows, like $6 million man and shit.
You remember that?
There was a jet pack, so they really thought that was going to be the wave of the future.
Right, like the late 70s, early 80s, jet packs were like all over the place in TV shows and things.
Yeah, we really thought that, we as a people really thought that this shit was going to be fire.
I'm pretty sure that's the way to travel.
I'm pretty sure that's why it ended up in here too.
Like, they just wanted to be the first to include it in a film or something, I guess.
Oh yeah, I get it too.
Someone takes a shot at the Flying Kelly, so he lands the damn thing and has a costume change to emerge from the surrounding forest area.
He sees movement from the corner of his eye and pulls a gun.
He takes the time to silence it, while a munchkin laugh goes off in the background.
And then something comes in and wrecks some shit.
The flying little person somehow takes the gun, and this results in more dialogue and our seventh clip.
I kicked it!
I kicked it!
I am Reinhardt.
You are Mr.
Sand.
And you are here to look for Toki Kanuma.
You don't talk much, do you?
There's only one person I want to talk to, and it sure as hell ain't you, my man.
Yes, yes, I know.
Toki, well, she can talk.
That is, she cannot talk with you.
All right.
I'll play your game.
Now, where is she?
She's safe.
She just can talk now.
But Mr.
Sand, we would like to talk with you.
We?
We.
We have orders to take you back with us, Mr.
Sand.
Now!
Yeah, that wasn't bigoted or anything.
This leads to a sequence of, well, more bad martial arts fighting, but this time it's with black men dressed in fake cheetah fur outfits, and he wants to talk about racially insensitive Jesus Christ.
Yeah, yeah, not exactly the most racially sensitive times back in the 70s.
Yeah, but I got a feeling that Adamson's a little bit more bigoted than I'd like to admit right now.
Yeah, I think so.
And of course, they are absolutely no threat to Kelly because why should there be any real danger to our hero to make us have any kind of fear that maybe things won't turn out okay for him for suspense or entertainment?
No, you watch it, man.
There's never a problem.
The little person villain gets an Indiana Jones whip stranglehold on Jim Kelly, which was like the first interesting thing that happens in this fight, but it's really not a big deal and barely even an inconvenience as Kelly somehow kills him with the game of tug of war that ensues from that, I guess.
I guess.
They cut from this before we can question it too much to a phone call in his fucking car in the 70s and some more dialogue, so that's our eighth clip.
Robert Sand.
Man, your credibility has reached an all time low.
She wasn't there in case you didn't know, Pines.
You moved too fast, I couldn't keep up with you.
Or maybe you moved just a little bit too slow, huh?
And now I guess you're going to tell me that Toki's at Jannecott's place.
As a matter of fact, that other tip was a plant.
That Jannecott's a sneaky bastard.
Yeah, now you're going to tell me that you're ready to move out and you want me to meet you there, right, Pines?
Right.
Nicely done.
The government even trains its agents to be fairly good actors, Mr.
Pines.
Now, boss...
I have a more interesting way to take care of our friend here, and that son of a bitch, the Black Samurai, as well.
From what I've seen so far, you've more than met your match with Sand.
Up until now, I haven't even been trying.
But by this time tomorrow, the Black Samurai will be no more than a legend.
And you won't even be that good a man.
Come on.
Now what's next?
We're going to have a ceremony honoring Mr.
Sand.
That black magic shit.
Isn't that enough to get Mr.
Sand?
I'm getting fed up with you.
Now you'd better wise up, Johnnica.
Victor, you had better get a grip on yourself.
I'll handle Sand.
Oh, I would love that.
You do that.
Victor, I had better get rid of you.
Dragon to Sand, Dragon to Sand.
Come in, please.
Sand to Dragon.
The local authorities are demanding an explanation for the bloodshed at the Chavez Villa.
So what?
We'll straighten that out.
We're pretty sure now that they have Tokyo Janikons.
That's where I'm going.
Good luck.
Be careful.
Gotcha.
Again, cut the dialogue down a little bit to make it feel a little snappier than it actually is, everybody.
Yeah.
So you're welcome.
There's a lot more silence in there.
This starts a voodoo ritual sequence that is mixed with Kelly sneaking his way back onto the compound.
There is nudity during the ritual, and we see some titties, so that's at least something.
Yeah, thanks, movie.
It's mostly a terrible interpretive dance routine that if you saw it at a burlesque variety show, however, you would be relatively bored by it.
Yeah.
Yeah, you would not be enjoying it.
The film tries to make it more interesting by having a blonde in an ape costume smear fake blood on her tits, and even that's kind of dull even to me.
Yeah, I was like, oh, Mort must be enjoying this, and I guess not.
Kelly lurks around some more, and they cut from this to sin in her room.
Victor gets creepy, well, even creepier than he normally does in our next clip.
Mr.
Jannicott say that you could accommodate me.
Jannicott always tells me of the man he wants me to accommodate, and you're not one of them, Chavez.
No, no, no, chiquita.
If I tell Mr.
Jannicott that you're not nice to Victor, he's not going to like it, and he's going to make a little scene that you're not going to like.
You see, Victor Chavez is very important to Mr.
Jannicott, and you are not.
That was nice.
Now, Chavez is going to show you something that you never thought could be done.
You never look so good.
Let's see if you're as good as they say.
I'm better.
You'll know it when I'm through.
Weird that they have that.
Let's see if as good as you say you are discussion after the guy tried to rape somebody, and then there's some sexual innuendo intention between the two of them.
Yeah, right.
It's strange that they threw that in there.
That and all the homophobic slurs make me feel like there's something else that they were trying to do with this film that was just under the subtext that some of these men didn't want to deal with.
As you heard, Kelly interrupts this would-be rape with his fancy footwork and a flatline delivery, so this starts a sequence of the two men fighting.
It's mostly the rapist trying to stab or slash Kelly and him dodging the obvious swipes before knocking the guy out with a few punches, because again, barely any convenience, barely any kind of threat.
Yeah, of course.
No threat to this man.
His fighting skills are too legendary.
He then starts talking once again, and there has not been that much usable dialogue, so fuck it, that's our tenth clip.
I don't think you're friends like me.
Come to my rescue.
Never the white knight, baby.
Now, where have they hidden Toki?
I would be stupid to tell you that.
I'm not sure.
Better start guessing, then.
You wouldn't hurt me.
Don't bet your blind guess.
I might like that.
That was what I had in mind.
You never quit.
Jen and Clark and all his men are downstairs waiting for you.
Don't tell me he's angry I didn't dance with him.
Look, I'm through playing around with you and your friends.
Now, for the last time, where is she?
Why worry about her?
I'm here.
Come to Mama.
You bastard, nobody turns me down.
You're gonna be one dead ass.
With one blow, I can knock your ass out.
Take your choice, live or die.
She's in the towel.
For fuck's sakes.
Yeah, it's a lot.
During the clip, the sleazy guy slinks off, and we see the film cut to him sneaking into a car and smoking on a cigarillo before starting the car and it exploding with some henchmen watching.
It cuts from this to Jim Kelly breaking into the Princess Tower cell that we were talking about earlier in that clip to save the girl only to immediately fall into a fucking obvious fucking trap.
Yeah.
I get bored by all of this, but then the film cuts back to the vulture, and I am entertained once again.
Once more, the vulture.
They paid for the vulture, and god damn it, they're going to use it.
They're going to use that fucking vulture all day long.
The camera then pans around to the good guys tied up and the bad guys standing around trying to look menacing, and that takes us right past the hour mark.
Well, I mean, what can you really say about this movie, other than the acting is not great, the fighting sequences aren't great.
The stunts are not great.
The stunts aren't great, and the story isn't all that great.
The vulture is about all we got.
The only thing that really keeps this entertaining is you get the feeling that Jim Kelly knows he's in a piece of shit film and just wants the money because he's more or less mugging and winking at the camera, like, hey, I got paid to do this, so what?
Right, yeah.
You feel like every single scene, he's looking at the camera and directly saying that to you.
Yeah, I get that feeling.
It's like he knows...
He's just going to break the fourth wall and go, just, huh?
He's like, yeah, I know this is bullshit, but hey, they paid me, so I'm just going to fake kick these people.
I got rent to pay too, you know.
Right, I don't fault him for being in this at all.
I mean, after Enter the Dragon and, you know, Bruce's death, what was he going to do, right?
Yeah, right, yeah.
He had to try and make movies or do something to still make money, and well, you know, unfortunately, he hooked up with Al Adamson and made this.
Yeah, dummies.
Yeah, I mean, we got the run to the end after this.
I don't really know how much more to pad it out, but we've at least gotten to enough of a runtime to where we should, with a story time, get over an hour, so I'm going to go if you are.
Let's go.
All right, so the run to the end starts with a clip that actually kind of began just before the hour mark, but I'm fucking lazy, so here's our clip.
Let the festivities begin.
Noble black samurai, so far you have been a worthy opponent for the warlock.
Now I have an amusing little finale for our game.
Sin, the high priestess, shall have the honor of carrying out the execution.
Sin knows how to amuse me, Mr.
Sand.
I like suspense, surprise.
She might surprise us both and not kill you.
But she already knows that would be her last surprise.
So it's really only a matter of how much she feels like playing for us.
He does not go across nearly as menacing as they think he does.
No, not even a little bit.
Sin walks downstairs and towards the captives and reveals that the kidnapped love interest will also be executed because she was the one that had the bags still over her head.
She delivers more dialogue, so fuck it.
That's our ultimate clip.
Well, Mr.
Sand, it looks like it would have been smarter of you to have been nicer to me.
I'd like to be kissed before I die.
Your arrogance, it will soon end.
After this, she grabs a samurai sword and goes after the love interest.
Jim Kelly somehow still has gadgets on him because they didn't pat him down and take things out of his pockets, I guess.
You think you would want to do that with your captive, but whatever.
You might want to check them, yeah.
Yeah, what do I fucking know?
No, no, no.
I'm just going to not check him for anything, and then I'm going to put it behind a closed door and assume everything went well.
I don't get it.
What's wrong?
He somehow gets this gadget out and starts trying to burn the rope free.
She comes over to menace him with that small samurai sword.
She takes a swing and Kelly breaks free, getting the weapon and then freeing his partner and demanding he do the same for his love interest.
And this starts a martial arts battle between the women that is even more poorly performed than what we saw previously with Kelly and anything he had to do.
Yeah, pretty much.
The would-be slobberknocker starts with no real threat to Kelly or his sidekick as the ladies struggle with a knife and the voodoo priestess lady loses that fight.
She ends up being stabbed.
That's what I mean by loses that fight, everyone.
Yeah, yeah.
Kelly deals with some...
She ends up getting stabbed to death.
Kelly deals with some dudes with spears in such a ridiculously fancy footwork display as the partner fights two little people, bad guy types.
And this pattern of endless henchmen being thrown at them into battles continues, but again, none of them are really any kind of a threat to them in any way.
Just when I get super bored, the vulture is ordered to attack Kelly and kill him.
So they start a sequence of him fighting for his life against the vulture and then somehow decking it to knock it out.
I went frame by frame and really, really slow.
Jim Kelly pulls his hand back very quickly from the vulture and makes a fist as he's doing it to make it look like he retreated, making a fist and punching the vulture.
He was actually just holding the thing down, and they were just play wrestling the whole time, and it doesn't look like the vulture was harmed in any way for that sequence.
So good on you folks.
Good on you guys, because you don't want to see him hurt.
That's the only good thing about the movie.
And also, I think if you punch a vulture, that vulture is going to fuck you up, Jim Kelly, so I'm glad you didn't do that.
It'll remember.
Yeah, no kidding.
All right, so this leads into a chase scene, because we still have like 16 minutes of screen time to fill here, so Kelly goes parkouring around the levels of the building and fighting various battles at each level.
And believe me, that sounds way more entertaining than what we actually got on film.
Yeah, right.
At one point, a henchman tries to drag him over the edge of the balcony to fall to their deaths together, but Kelly just strips off his tracksuit jacket and begins fighting dudes while shirtless, because, of course, that's what you do.
The chase scene continues as more people try to stop Kelly from reaching the main bad guy.
The menacing sadist bald guy is the only real slight challenge Kelly has seen yet in this film, and that is only because they need to pad out the fucking runtime at this point.
Right?
Jesus.
The fight finds its way into a small freight elevator which had a decent falling stunt built into it, I have to say.
They fight their way out of that area and into a courtyard where we see them fight some more with some really homophobic shit talking dubbed over top of the fight.
This is really the lowest point in this film and is so bad it makes Rudy Ray more look like Stanley Kubrick for filmmaking for fuck's sake.
Kelly does some kind of a camel clutch move with putting his foot into the middle of the bad guy's back and snaps his back.
We hear him say something like, Good luck walking after that with some more of a homophobic slur.
And then he runs off to find the main bad guy with even more padding because we still got like 10 minutes of screen time still left to fill.
No, I'm serious.
The chase ends in an old cellar as they run around the old tunnels and corridors under the house.
Some cool scenery that is used poorly, I might add.
Yes.
And we know the chase will last up until the last minute of the film because that is the equivalent of storytelling as far as Adamson is concerned.
That's all he needs.
I get distracted while spell checking my notes, and in a cut scene, the bad guy tricks Kelly into the area where...
I thought maybe the vulture came back again.
Yeah, maybe.
But anyway, the iron cell door that we saw earlier where the guy got locked in and is screaming for his life and it causes some kind of instant death with that door.
Kelly gets tricked through that door and knocked down with a chair shot to his back.
He is locked in, and it seems it's some kind of a snake pit, but there is no real pit, so the cell door that's all bars would not really keep any of these serpents in place if they wanted to get out, but let's not think about that too much because we have very little runtime left.
Kelly uses his flame pen, which also is like a flamethrower when you need it to be, apparently.
And that scares off the snakes.
Then he uses it somehow to open the door like it's a torch, I guess.
It's like a sonic screwdriver, only it's a flaming pen.
Yeah, but I like the sonic screwdriver better.
Being locked in a viperous pit of death was barely an inconvenience as the chase continues as the bad guy waits to get the drop on Kelly with an axe with only five minutes of screen time left.
That fails and Kelly beats him helpless, then fakes chopping him up with an axe only to kick the shit out of him each time he fakes the chop.
Then he subdues him and drags him into the snake room where he locks him in and leaves him with a parting homophobic slur as the snakes creep further towards the guy and kill him.
But we still have three minutes of screen time left to fill so we linger on his corpse for a while before...
And why?
And why is there three minutes of screen time left?
I don't know, but there is.
And they linger on his corpse for a while before Kelly meets up with his lady and partner.
He kisses her, and then more bad guys show up.
But we only have two minutes of screen time left, so Kelly just throws an explosive device that kills them all and says, I guess that is the end.
I roll my eyes so goddamn hard it creates a fucking migraine as they roll those goddamn credits.
He had a set time of 84 minutes that he needed to have that done in, and that's-
Yeah, I don't, yeah, wow.
Really didn't need that.
I know, man.
It's just like, what the flying fuck, really.
Just what the flying fuck.
It was bad.
Real fucking bad.
I mean, even like, this is kind of the step back.
This is the first real serious step back where like some of the other earlier movies are better.
Like Dracula vs.
Frankenstein was our demarcation point, but some of the ones before this were better than this.
We are definitely on the downhill slope, and it just continues to slide from here is my guess.
Yeah, I'm assuming that that's gonna be correct.
We were officially kind of fucked.
Yeah, I don't really know exactly what to do with that or how to deal with it, other than we're just gonna be making a run to the end of year nine with this, and at least we only have five weeks after this one.
Yeah, right, we're almost done.
Yeah, I really don't know what else to add about it.
There's a few moments where Jim Kelly does some stuff that's kind of cool, but as anyone who's seen Enter the Dragon will know, Jim Kelly is more about his personality and his on-screen persona than his actually ability to perform martial arts on screen.
I'm sure that he was more than adequate at defending himself in any way, shape, or form that he needed to do from being under Bruce Lee's tutelage, sure, but he cannot do the choreography performance that other martial artists are capable of.
And that may be the case.
There are some musicians who are just studio musicians.
They are not live performing musicians.
They're not capable of that.
They're more suited to studio performances and being able to record.
They're recording musicians.
And in this case, I think that Jim Kelly is an actual martial artist.
He is not a choreographed martial artist performer.
Not anyway.
I mean, I think he should just shut the fuck up.
I think he probably should have found a different job than trying to do this.
But hey, everyone's got bills to pay.
I can't really fault him for that.
But at the same time, his contemporaries like Rudy Ray Moore and those other guys couldn't do martial arts at fucking all, at least some of the things that he does looks convincing like martial arts.
And he's capable of doing some really nice physical feats and things.
He just needed a safer environment to do them in to where he could take more risks and have maybe some pads he could fall into so that it could look cooler than what Adamson was able to deliver for him.
This is just an all around fail on multiple levels.
And I don't want to put it all on Jim Kelly's shoulders because there's genuine moments in here where he's got charisma and I'm actually kind of entertained by him.
But it's drowned out by so much fucking doldrum that's in this film and padding.
That is also true, yeah, it's so much padding.
Like you said, how many dead spaces you had to cut out for your clips, it's a lot.
And it didn't need to be like this.
No, no, they woke up and chose to make it bad.
Like you could still have it be cheap and still do some things to make it a little bit better.
And like I said, you get the sensation that Jim Kelly was aware of that, that this was not gonna be good and he was just having some fun with it because it really doesn't seem to take it serious at all.
Yep, not at all.
All right, well, let's just fucking end talking about this and I'll come up with something for our story time here.
Because there was a woman who was named Sin and did some evil stuff, and also the song is from 1976.
Back on the show is the song Devil Woman from Cliff Richard on our pirate radio edit.
And then following this, we will have our story time.
Okay, so if the Devil Woman's gonna get me from behind, why should I beware unless that's not the sort of thing that I'm into?
I mean, they're just trying to let you know what's gonna happen.
I don't even know if it's a warning so much as they're just like, hey, this, this, this is, she's gonna come at you from behind.
Just letting you know, not, it could be a good thing, could be a bad thing.
I don't know, but that's just how life is.
Well, maybe I'll have something that'll tell us about how life is in our next storytime.
Okay, so, I have seen Black Samurai before this, before doing this show.
I'm sorry.
I didn't realize it, but it's a really kind of interesting story, right?
So, one of my wife's co-workers was really into cheeseball movies and laughing at things and kind of doing riffing and, you know, like the whole MST3K thing that a lot of people in our age group liked and was that sort of like person where he would watch a movie just to be able to laugh at it.
Obviously, he liked other things as well, but his taste in my movies and my taste in movies did not line up when it came to things that I wanted to be able to laugh at as much, right?
And so, he recommended to my wife that we watch this movie because it's absolutely hilarious and cheeseball and, you know, just playing something to laugh at and make fun of.
So, this was back in the day when, I don't know if you remember this, everybody puts your old folks hat on, when Netflix used to send DVDs to your house.
Say what?
Yeah.
Do you remember that?
You would go online and you would order DVDs from Netflix and they would mail them to you.
I can't believe, I think you're lying to me.
It was a precursor to streaming and it was the thing that killed the video store for the most part before streaming really completely put the nails in the coffin, right?
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because, I mean, that was something that Blockbuster and other video stores like Hollywood Video tried to do something similar where they would mail the shit to you too, and it just failed miserably.
And that's not what my story is about, not the death of the video store because of Netflix and mailing, but anyway.
So my wife said that she wanted to try this film because the coworker was telling her about it.
And I looked it up real quick and I went, oof, Al Adamson, you're going to regret this.
Yeah.
I don't know why that person told you it was going to be good.
Right.
And I'm seriously, I'm like, oof, we're going to regret this.
But if you really want to watch it and you think it's going to be fun, then we can do it.
I'll watch it with you because I'll watch terrible movies anyway.
It's going to be fine.
I mean, we'll all get through this together.
We'll have a moment.
Right.
Now, the reason that I remembered that this was something that I had watched with my wife is because I got to a certain point in the film to where she stopped the DVD and refused to watch it anymore.
I mean, yeah, I get it.
Right.
Would you like to guess how far she made it into the film before that took place, Matt?
I'm going to say 45 minutes.
Oh, you're giving my wife's tolerance a lot more credit than what it ended up being.
It was within the first 30 minutes, remember when I talked about he goes into the parking garage and does the martial arts fighting?
Yeah.
Yeah, that was within the first 30 minutes.
That's where it took place.
That's the fighting in the garage is where she's like, no, and just called it quits.
She was done.
Yep.
And that was the end of Black Samurai in the PsyOps household for her to watch it.
I on the other hand, since she didn't want to finish it, came back and finished it from that point because I just have to finish things once I start them.
There's very few movies that I won't finish.
Yeah.
Maybe that's nice.
No matter how much I fucking pass out while watching it because I'm really not enjoying it and I'm hating it, I even finished Birdemic, right?
My body spontaneously put me to sleep to try and stop me from watching the film, but I kept going back to finish it.
I was still surprised even though I finished Night of the Lemur with my wife.
My wife finished that.
She finished watching the whole movie with me.
Night of the Lepus.
Yeah, that's-
Lepus.
Lepus.
Lepus.
Yeah.
Now, that's the kind of cornball that I can get into because it's ridiculous and cute, and it's almost intentionally self-parody, you know, because the rabbits are not really that terrifying.
They're just adorable with the little berry juice smeared on their face, popping around in bottles and stuff.
It's just fucking cute.
Yeah.
It was.
They were adorable.
Yeah.
And, you know, kudos to your wife for making it the whole way through and enjoying that film, for being the ridiculous weird thing that it is.
But yeah, I don't blame my wife for calling it quits and Black Samurai during that fight sequence because she knew she wasn't going to enjoy the rest.
Yeah, no, right?
Yeah, that's just bad stuff.
Oh, and coincidentally, just a little postscript to that story, just to, you know, pad out our episode's runtime a little bit more.
That coworker now has a filter to when he recommends her to try something in the future.
From that point forward, it gets filtered through IMDB and other people's suggestions.
And then also my wife will take my word over his now, at least.
Yeah, I mean, that's for the best.
I mean, she should have done that in the beginning.
Well, you know, sometimes she thinks that I'm the one that's trying to manipulate her into watching things that she really wouldn't want to watch, whereas I really just want to watch things with her that I know she's going to enjoy, you know?
Yeah.
So, and I love that she'll trust me when I'm like, no, you're not going to like that.
I'm pretty sure you're not going to like that.
But there's some things where she won't listen to me on, and then she's like, you're right, I didn't like it.
I'm like, I tried to tell you.
I mean, I tried to get in on this with you, but you wouldn't listen to me.
And it's the same thing, like if I want to watch any kind of like Hearts and Flowers shows, like that does happen occasionally, where I'll get the draw to watch something that's Hearts and Flowers.
And if my wife knows that I'm about to watch it, she'll want to watch it with me.
And sometimes she'll be like, oh, that might be a little too Hearts and Flowers for you.
Just a little too Hearts and Flowery.
Right.
Just basically any Hearts and Flowers is almost too much Hearts and Flowers for me.
Yeah.
You don't want a happy ending over here.
I'm an angry, upset, fucking twisted individual.
I really truly am.
Hey, we finally hit the whole hour.
We can stop talking about my problems.
You know, I had a major breakthrough in my last therapy session.
It was amazing.
Did you?
Yeah.
Really?
Yeah.
Really?
Was the breakthrough, you're fucking crazy?
No, the breakthrough was that my tattoo is almost finished.
No, God, Jesus, that's not a therapy session.
According to my tattoo artist, it is.
So I'm going to take this work.
Well, your tattoo artist is getting paid to tell you things that you want to hear.
No, he's getting paid to put ink in my arm, and that's what he's doing.
Well, let's go ahead and fucking end this show.
We're going to play the show Housekeeping and immediately after that on the pirate radio edit because there were some dirty deeds done dirt cheap.
I decided to include that song that was released in 1976 from ACDC right after this.
If you've decided you can't get enough of the show and would like to check out more of it, we're available at legionpodcasts.com.
Just do a quick search for Cinema PsyOps or just enter this entire URL into your browser at www.legionpodcasts.com forward slash cinema dash PsyOps dash podcast.
Also available along with all of the fellow Legioneers on the Legion Discord chat.
And now let's give you a rundown of the memes and how you're going to get them through Cinema PsyOps.
The easiest place to go is to subscribe to our Instagram feed, which is our main meme repository at cinema_PsyOps.
Or you could also follow the Facebook page of Cinema PsyOps because they are immediately posted there after they get posted to the Instagram repository.
And you can also check out the Facebook group of Cinema PsyOps and the memes are shared there.
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Thanks for listening to the show.
I still can't believe that you're subscribed to us or here every week, just like us.
See Ah, man, Bondscott ACDC is prime ACDC as far as I'm concerned.
It just doesn't get much better than that.
Yeah, it's pretty fucking good.
I got no problems with Brian Johnson ACDC.
It's just that there's something about the music in that era that I prefer.
Like anything that's Bondscott's era is just, it resonates with me better, you know?
It just does.
Well, good.
Yeah.
Good for you.
While you're out there wondering what the fuck I mean by ACDC resonating with me in any way, shape, or form, and thinking I'm a pretentious piece of shit, well, you're absolutely right.
So enjoy that fact, and kick the fuck out of this weekend.
Make it your bitch.
While you enjoy Rainbow with the song A Light in the Black on the Pirate Radio Edit.
All right, let's get this going and done, so that we can get you on with the rest of your father's day.
Yeah.
Where I go to work.
Right, yeah, because capitalism is trying to slowly kill you.
Nothing's slow about it, man.
Yeah, it's doing it rather quickly, isn't it?
Yeah, it's getting the job done pretty well.
All right, I got this opened up, and can you hear this?
That's coming through just fine?
Yep.
All right, and all the recordings are recordings, so let's go ahead and start with a little bit of the theme to get us in here.
Here we go.
Let's hit this bitch.
One.
This starts an opening animated credits, which...
That's why we've been getting a busy schedule.
Words of no form so well for court today.
No words.
Sand.
And the car crash...
Just a second, started chewing some ice, thought I had some more time.
Guess I didn't.
They have more dialogue in our next clip.
That's just because I didn't feel like editing the two of them together.
Let's just say my curiosity...
All right, so Kelly deals with some dudes with spears.
I already said that.
And then pattern, blah, blah, blah.
I already said that.
Vulture, blah, blah, blah.
Said that.
I should probably put more breaks in this.
I just wrote the last fucking stream of consciousness notes, and I don't have any breaks at all.
While you're out there wondering what the fuck I mean by ACDC resonating with me in any way, shape, or form, and thinking I'm a pretentious piece of shit, well, you're absolutely right, so enjoy that fact and kick the fuck out of this week and make it your bitch, while you enjoy Rainbow with the song A Light in the Black on the Pirate Radio Edit.
Wow.
I fucking love Rainbow.
Yeah.
Anything Ronnie James Dio is singing on is just, you know, I'm gonna love it.
That's just how it goes.
Good shit.
Yeah, I'm sorry I had to stop it, but I also wanted to stop it so that I could stop this.
Recording stopped.
Stopped.