Of Dreck & Drink: Black Belt Jones and Red Brick Thick Silky Imperial Porter
Hey, remember Scatman Crothers? You know …the voice of Hong Kong Phooey? Dick Hallorann from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, the only other person (besides Danny) in the film to exhibit that titular power? Remember that likable fellow? Have you ever wanted to see him punched in the face until dead? You didn’t? Oh. Well then, maybe Black Belt Jones isn’t for you, after all.
This is undoubtedly a “genre fulfilling” month for Of Dreck & Drink, the product of looking at my past history and realizing that I’d never tackled a “blaxploitation” classic. If you don’t know, blaxploitation is a subgenre of film that exploded into popularity in the 1970s, at first targeted specifically at black, urban audiences. They presented typical genre pictures (action, crime, martial arts, horror, comedy, etc) with the not-so-subtle twist of filling their entire casts with black actors, setting the action to funk and soul music, and generally being the cheesiest things imaginable. We’re talking movies like Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song here. Films like Shaft. Like Three the Hard Way. Even like the self-parodying Dolemite. You can say this for blaxploitation—it went from its invention to biting self-parody in record time. There’s only a couple of years between its invention in 1971 and the farcical parody of Dolemite in 1975. That’s a pretty self-aware genre, all things considered.
Black Belt Jones, on the other hand, is hilariously sincere most of the time, despite being on the later side in 1974. As the titular character, it stars karate champion Jim Kelly, fresh off his star-making appearance in Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon one year earlier. It is in pretty much all respects the perfect example of an archetypal blaxploitation feature, which makes it ideal for our purposes.
And lo and behold, I also have the ideal beer, and I mean ideal. Never before, in fact, have I had a beer that so perfectly fits its theme, because I managed to find a blaxploitation parody to match this blaxploitation film, Red Brick Brewing Co.’s “Thick Silky” Double Chocolate Oatmeal Porter. A pimp dressed like Willy Wonka, brandishing revolvers akimbo? That’s exactly the label this feature needs, thank you very much. To quote the hilariously on-point bottle text:
”Thick Silky is a man with a plan and a Kung Fu backhand, you dig? He runs the chocolate game in this city, and when it comes to all the haters he shows no pity. With his fine, foxy ladies sitting pretty in a tricked-out ‘73 Cadillac DeVille, he’s down with the double chocolate oatmeal scene and keeping it real.”
Are these the finest attempts at rhyme we’ve heard? They are most certainly not—but worthy of a tip of our pimp hats for effort, certainly.
The story of Black Belt Jones is not hard to grasp: A gang of Italian mafiosos are snatching up land in an area of the city that will soon be increasing in value. The only building they haven’t acquired yet? That would be the karate school where Black Belt Jones trains, headed up by Scatman Crothers as the least believable martial arts master of all time. Seriously, the guy is tertiarily involved in a few fight scenes, but his attempts at throwing a punch are largely derived through creative editing, rather than any overexerted movement of his brittle limbs. He looks like he should be put on a rocking chair on the porch and ensconced with a layer of bubble wrap, just in case.