I coulda sworn I'd seen this one before somewhere over the years but after giving it a watch last night I realized I had only ever seen the sequel, CLEOPATRA JONES AND THE CASINO OF GOLD, numerous times before. This one is a bit of an improvement as it seems to have a bigger budget and while we don't have Mr. Roper(Norman Fell) here, as in Part 2, we do get a whole slew of other big-name stars including Huggy Bear(Antonio Fargas), Dr. Black(Bernie Casey), Mama Evans from GOOD TIMES(Esther Rolle) and of course Cleopatra's arch-nemesis Shelley Winters as the evil drug lord Mommy. With a script written by THE MACK(Max Julien) himself it's a pretty simple action-filled blaxploitation spectacle where drug-pushers, pimps and racist cops are punished equally by our extra-tall martial-arts proficient hero. Also while chopsockeying bad-guys she makes some similar sounds as BLACK BELT JONES so perhaps they were related. Tamara Dobson as Miss Jones cuts a sorta strange figure for a believeable ass-kicking character. I mean she's definitely got the height advantage on almost everyone but she seems more like a groovy model(what with the changing of her ultra-fashionable wardrobe almost every scene) than someone who's been in many brawls, but what do I know? The only other questionable thing is the PG-rating which seems to keep things from getting very raunchy and keeping it firmly in the mainstream sensibility of the times. This was popular enough though to enough folks that the sequel(produced by one of the Shaw Brothers!) was released 2 years later. Also it has a pretty sweet soundtrack as is usually the case with any blaxploitation from this era.
Known in France as DYNAMITE JONES!:
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