Portland State University professor and pop culture geek Walidah Imarisha says, “I feel like I actually learned the nucleus for many of my political ideologies from Jim Kelly movies. Seeing the solidarity and connection between Kelly and Bruce Lee, the commonality of people of color's experiences was encapsulated so well in the line by Kelly: ‘Ghettos are the same all over the world. They stink.’ Seeing that, our oppressions globally are connected.”
Writer David Walker, who currently scripts comics for Dark Horse, used to publish the blaxplotation-themed movie magazine Bad Azz Mofo. “The first time I ever saw Jim Kelly, I'd never really seen a black man carry himself like that in a movie before," he says. "It really created a whole concept of heroism for me, which was profound. After seeing the movie, me and my cousin started wishing we could grow an afro and sideburns like his, and pretending that we knew karate.”
Indeed, I could remember the many fake karate fights in our neighborhood shortly after we exited the movie theater: throwing punches and kicks until inevitably somebody got hurt and the tears started flowing.
Over the next couple of years, Kelly made a handful of other films, including Three the Hard Way (1974); Black Belt Jones, which co-starred stunning Gloria Hendry as his equally deadly partner Sydney; and Black Samurai (1976). “Jim Kelly as Robert Sand, the Black Samurai, based on the paperback series created by Marc Olden, was a favorite,” says Los Angeles based crime writer Gary Phillips, co-editor of the recently released Black Pulp (Pro Se Press). “And how can you top him as a karate-chopping, kung-fu punching Native American in Take a Hard Ride, maybe the first spaghetti western-blaxploitation mash-up?”
Three the Hard Way—directed by Gordon Parks Jr., who was also the ghetto auteur behind Super Fly—is perhaps one of the worst movies ever made, but it does have a great Jim Kelly fight scene in the beginning where he kicks the butts of two cops trying to set him up. Seconds later, Jim Brown and Fred Williamson show-up to whisk him away on a crazy adventure.
“Jim Kelly was always the odd man out of the Black Action Film heroes to me,” says producer and former Invisible Woman film blogger Rocky Seker. “He obviously had looks, confidence, and incredible martial arts skills, but I always found him a bit boring, especially compared to Jim Brown and Fred Williamson. It was like he had an almost robotic-like personality, and the acting skills of a robot to match.”
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