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Review
by
Brian Lindsey
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6
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6 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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Dolemite,
the pimp/nightclub entertainer/martial artist persona created
by raunchy comedian and rap pioneer Rudy Ray Moore, returns
for more hijinx in the sequel to the 1975 original. Yet another
exercise in low rent blaxploitation filmmaking, The
Human Tornado — also known as Dolemite II — has
the exact same thrift shop production design and is as incompetently
helmed as its predecessor. (I didn't realize that was possible.)
But this doesn't mean it's just as funny. The shock of Moore's
4-letter, in-your-face audacity just isn't quite as potent if
you've already seen Dolemite. The
sequel certainly is weirder, though.
Set to the title song "Human Tornado" — warbled by Rudy
Ray himself — the opening credits are positively the most amateurish
I've ever seen in a film. Moore goes through a series of costume
changes while leaping into the air and striking ridiculous kung
fu-style poses; the lettering is handpainted (by a 6 year old?)
and sometimes completely illegible. The director's credit even
has his astrological sign (Libra) by his name. Ah, the '70s...
After a sequence culled from Moore's nightclub comedy act pads
out a few more minutes of film, the story finally gets underway.
Dolemite is in Alabama (which looks suspiciously like southern
California), where, at his hilltop mansion, a party is in full
swing. Dolemite himself is entertaining a white lady friend
in the privacy of his bedroom. The woman — actually the wife
of the local sheriff — is paying him for his prodigious sexual
services. Naturally this doesn't sit well with the redneck lawman,
Sheriff Bently (a terrible J.B. Baron), who catches his spouse
in the act when he and a posse of racist good ol' boys swoop
in to bust up the party. "He made me do it!" Mrs. Bently cries,
a claim belied by the circumstances of the situation. "Bitch,
are you for real?!!" our astonished hero exclaims. Outraged,
Bently orders his thickskulled deputy to kill them both. The
idiot actually shoots the woman first, blowing her way with
a shotgun. This gives Dolemite time to scramble for his gatt;
within seconds of gunning the cracker down he's scooped up his
threads and dashed out the back door. (You'll see more of Rudy's
bare backside in this flick than you ever thought possible in
your worst nightmares.) With the sheriff and his boys in hot
pursuit, Dolemite takes a flying, buck naked leap down the hillside
— the scene is even briefly freeze-framed so that Rudy can make
a pithy voice-over comment to the audience: "So you don't
believe I jumped, huh? Well, watch this good shit!" Rolling
down the slope in his birthday suit, Dolemite is picked up at
the bottom of the hill by a carload of his homeboys, who lead
the sheriff and his men on a speeded-up car chase while the
D-Man raps lines from the back seat. (Yes, that's Ernie Hudson,
of Ghostbusters fame, as one of
Dolemite's crew.) In an embarrassingly inept action scene Dolemite
and company lay an ambush, blowing up some of the pursuing vehicles
and likely most of the budget. They then take off for California,
stealing the car of a super-nelly gay white man. (Blacks, whites,
gays, women — the stereotypes are laid on extra thick.
But at least Moore is an equal opportunity offender.)
When Dolemite returns
to L.A. he learns his old friend Queen Bee (Lady Reed, reprising
her role from the original film) is being threatened by Mafia
operative Cavaletti (Herb Graham), who covets her profitable
nightclub. To pressure her into signing the property over to
him Cavaletti has Queen roughed up and two of her girls kidnapped.
Dolemite nobly swings into action to stop the gangster's plan.
To learn where the women are being held, Dolemite approaches
Cavaletti's busty, nymphomaniac wife posing as a door-to-door
erotic art salesman ...with a Chinese accent. After balling
her so hard that the bed spins, pictures fly off the wall and
the ceiling caves in, the exhausted mob moll lets slip the secret.
While Queen Bee organizes a strike force to wipe out Cavaletti's
gang during a party, Dolemite battles a platoon of the mobster's
thugs to rescue the prisoners. And if this weren't enough trouble,
the vengeful redneck Sheriff Bently has tracked Dolemite to
California and is gunning for him...
The
Human Tornado, believe it or not, is even tackier than
the original. Moore's films became progressively stranger after
Dolemite, treading where no other
blaxploitation pics were willing (or had the good sense) to
go. Parts of Human Tornado are
quite bizarre, notably the surreal dream sequence in which Cavaletti's
wife fantasizes about muscular naked men emerging from a toy
box while she reclines on a giant-sized set of children's alphabet
blocks. There are also some spectacularly awful cabaret acts
— including a black dance troupe that exhibits less soul than
the Brady Bunch kids — while the entertainment provided at the
villain's party consists of a guy demonstrating nun-chuks clad
only in his underwear. The flick's kung fu action scenes are
even more ridiculous than those on display in the first movie...
Moore has absolutely no qualms about making an ass of himself
in this regard. Striking ludicrous poses, grimacing wildly and
growling like Bruce Lee on acid, the man is more human cartoon
than human tornado.
And that's as it should
be. Anyone not normally
entertained by crass, super-politically incorrect cinema
of the cheesiest possible kind will be offended if not downright
horrified. One should keep in mind that, unlike most blaxploitation
movies of the '70s, the Rudy Ray Moore films weren't made by
whites trying to get a piece of blacks' disposable income by
cranking out 'Afrocentric' flicks with ethnic casts. Not exactly
a paragon of good taste, Moore financed and co-wrote his own
films, so what you get is pretty much Rudy's vision. That vision
is unapologetically crude and often just plain weird. It can
also be pretty damn funny — whether intentionally so or not.
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Human Tornado was previously
released on DVD by Xenon in 1999. In March 2002 the company reissued
it, along with its progenitor, Dolemite,
and 5 other Rudy Ray Moore discs (Petey
Wheatstraw, Disco Godfather,
Rude, Live
at the Wetlands and The Legend of
Dolemite) as part of the Dolemite Collection boxed
set. (The DVDs are also available individually.) Don't expect
a pristine transfer. The film is presented fullframe (1.33:1 TV
format) with a serviceable Digital Mono audio track. Of course
we're not talking Lawrence of Arabia
here so impact is minimal. (No big loss, really, especially when
one factors in the low cost — around $13.) The reissued disc's
extras include animated menu screens, a series of "urban" radio
spots for Rudy Ray movies, the theatrical trailers for Human
Tornado, Dolemite and Disco
Godfather, a rather lame (text only) trivia "game",
and a brief location tour guided by Moore himself. (Shot on a
home camcorder, the sound is quite poor.) 5/17/02 |
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