TNT Jackson - La furia di Harlem

Now any Blaxploiation fan will recognise the ingredients: big Afros, topless babes, surreally bad fashions and some 'jive' talk. In this case add in a lead who can't act, a plot that makes little sense, editing by someone with no hands who has been blindfolded and the most god-awful fight scenes and you have 'TNT Jackson'. Not quite bad enough to be good, but not good enough to be bad, this is a wonderful mess from start to finish. I especially loved the endless continuity errors and the lead's white stunt double.

This is so '70s bad Far Eastern martial arts meets black power that it hurts, but boy it hurts so good! I am ashamed to admit that I almost enjoyed it.

Movies from the 1970's were different and much not to the norm and true they had plenty of action and the skin scenes and nudity combined with violence made most of them a real eye candy treat to watch. This low budget 1974 film "TNT Jackson" fits all of those themes. It featured "Playboy" playmate Jeanne Bell as TNT Jackson in this blaxploitation take which has her to travel from Harlem to Hong Kong to look for her missing brother who has gotten himself in trouble with the mob and this world involves the mob and plenty of violence. Miss Jackson poses and goes undercover as a prostitute in order to find out some information along the way this film is a fun eye candy treat of sex, nudity and action which includes topless karate. Good watch to pass a little time a nice fun independent film that gets right into it and doesn't take itself to serious.

Recently found a series of DVDs called Women Who Kick Ass. I've seen a few kung fu films over the years. Some were superb, some were ok and some were lousy. The common denominator in all being the action scenes were pretty good. The acting, writing and general filmaking in this film is terrible plus the fight scenes really suck. It looks like most the action scenes were done by stunt people and the actresses didn't know much about martial arts.

All this taken into account it is still a fun film to watch.

In a giant sea of blaxploitation films, "TNT Jackson" doesn't stand out from the crowd other than its setting and gender of the protagonist..and its copious nudity. Otherwise, it's a standard cheap action film of the 70s and not a lot more.

Ex-playboy model Jeannie Bell stars as TNT Jackson, a lovely lady from Harlem who has ventured to the worst part of Hong Kong in order to discover what's happened to her brother. Apparently, he got on the bad side of a organized drug ring...and she soon gets their attention. To help her is a local Chinese man as well as an undercover federal agent.

The martial arts are spotty...though the double who does all the acrobatics for TNT was very good and it's very hard to tell that a double was used...so kudos for the director for this. Unfortunately, in the close combat scenes, they are spotty...from pretty good to pretty bad. As for the story...it's all pretty tandard stuff apart from the setting (Hong Kong). For fans of the genre, this one in't bad but it certainly won't convert anyone to the genres of blaxploitation or martial arts.

"TNT Jackson" isn't completely unwatchable. But either the version I saw on DVD was edited with a weed-whacker, or the screenplay itself is the lowest level of grind-house/blaxploitation sausage. Or maybe both.

Jeanne Bell is supposed to have been a Playmate at one point in her career,and the movie makes the most of the connection by displaying her breasts at least two times more than was really necessary (including a hilarious topless fight scene that I am pretty sure was meant to be funny). I will admit, they are quite nice. Still, she's sort of average looking and doesn't have the charisma of a Foxy Brown, or a Cleopatra Jones. She does have her moments as an actress in the film, though, but it would have been nice if the director had pushed her a little harder or the screenplay had given her a chance to do more than emote "attitude" and kick people.

Speaking of kicking people, the fight scenes (the other putative reason to watch a film like this) are pretty poorly done.There's no real choreography to speak of here, just people posing and sticking feet and fists in the general direction of their opponents. One minor exception is a nice moment with an opponent equipped with butterfly folding knives; another is a sequence near the very end where an obvious stunt double for Bell (and maybe for Stan Shaw) leap around and do some decent sweeps and groundwork for a minute or two before Bell/"Jackson" punches her enemy's liver out, Shaw collapses and the screenplay just stops. (Again, I will admit that this is very much in the tradition of Shaw Brother quickies since time immemorial).

There are a couple of supporting actors who are actually better than the film deserves (I'm thinking of "Joe" and the fellow playing the drug lord's right hand man). There's a halfway decent funk laden soundtrack that complements the action on the screen and add a star to the rating by itself. There's a semi-dodgy sex scene that manages to be effective almost in spite of itself.

This one is strictly for hardcore fans of blaxploitation. I saw it out of sheer curiosity, and I'm not sorry I took the time. But I can't imagine wanting to take the time to see it again unless I decide to write a dissertation on the pop culture intersections of "Kung Fu Theater" and "Foxy Brown".