Blackbelt: The Roger Corman Collection

If proof were needed that Roger Corman could produce just about anything can, this first batch of The Roger Corman Collection would be Exhibit A. As the set includes a sci-fi thriller (Forbidden World), a horror movie (The Unborn), a period crime thriller (Big Bad Mama) and the blaxploitation women in prison movie (The Big Bird Cage) plus this, an action drama, it really shows the range of films that came out of Roger Corman's film studio.

When making a martial arts film, the filmmakers need to choose whether to employ actors who can fight or fighters who can act. From the opening credits, you know that Roger Corman and the director, Charles Philip Moore, have gone with the latter as the actors' names appear not with their character names, but with their achievements inside the squared circle. After doing some fastidious research (read: looking on the IMDb and Wikipedia), I found out that the lead actor, Don the Dragon Wilson, is regarded as the finest kickboxer who has ever lived and that Mattias Hues is a German martial artist who has managed to drop his Teutonic accent and looks like Rutger Hauer on steroids. This fundamental choice means that the fight scenes will have people who really know how to pull off a roundhouse kick but whose thespian talents leave a lot to be desired.

In Blackbelt, there is a psychopathic serial killer with a mother fixation on the rage and, in the opening sequence, he leaves a hooker in the hotel bedroom telling her he's going to get something from the bar and goes next door where he kills six people with a variety of deadly martial arts moves before returning to the bedroom and murdering the prostitute. Nice guy, huh?!

All of this has something to do with our muscular murder's calling card, a Queen of spades playing card, and his fascination with a cheesy pop ballad currently being recorded by a pop star called Shanna. Her best friend is so concerned for Shanna's safety that she brings the singer to an ex-cop and martial arts teacher called Jack Dillon and asks him to be Shanna's personal bodyguard will stop. Dillon is one of those guys who left the force and wants to be left in peace but something brings him back -- he is the archetypal reluctant hero who you just know will battle personal demons but faces up to the bad guy in the final reel and emerge victorious. Oh, if you've really going to follow genre conventions closely, he also has to find the soft side of the leading woman's tough exterior and then be torn between her and his almost nomadic way of life.


Blackbelt follows just about every genre convention there is with a series of cookie cutter characters, straight out of filmmaking 101, and the entire narrative arc leaves nothing to the imagination so there isn't a modicum of suspense to be had.

These quibbles don't really matter as this is a martial arts movie so what you want to see is people beating each other up and, with a psychopathic killer targeting Shanna on one hand, and her useless manager who is mobbed up to the ears on the other, there are no shortage of bad guys for Dillon to beat up. In order to properly showcase his skill and physique, the camerawork concentrates on his kickboxing skills and two scenes actively call for him to take off his T-shirt before he starts fighting! In the final confrontation between Dillon and Sweet, both guys stripped down to the waist, obviously a must in the crazy world of underground kickboxing.

Blackbelt is a predictably silly and cheesy martial arts film which doesn't hold a candle to the Bruce Lee movies, but then again so few do. If you want to put your brain in neutral and watch something with a paint by the numbers plot with some decent kickboxing and tae kwon do action, some of which is shown in slow motion and/or several times as in the instant replay you get with live sports, then this will check a lot of boxes.

The Disc

The Picture
For full frame picture isn't half bad, with a look that screams straight to TV movie -- the lighting, costumes and sets are all from that stable of films that you'd see on cable TV late at night.

The fight choreography is alright, nothing special, and there are several occasions where Sweet is up against numerous opponents who, in time-honoured fashion, attack him one at a time to give him ample opportunity to beat them up and then wait for the next one to step up to the plate. It does have the aforementioned action replay style which didn't bother me as much as I thought it would.

The Sound
As with the visuals, the audio track is a cheesy affair that sounds at least 10 years older than the film with songs and a score that scream mid-1980s rather than 1992. All of the fight scenes have the typical exaggerated sounds of fists, elbows or knees hitting flesh that come with kung fu movies.


Final Thoughts
If you want a martial arts movie that works on both as a cerebral and visceral level then watch The Big Boss, Fist of Fury or Enter the Dragon but if you just want something that's a sub-Steven Segal action movie where you can sit down with a bowl of popcorn, nachos or whatever else takes your fancy, then this is reasonable entertainment.