9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
"One bite and he'll make you flat chested!", June 9, 2006
This review is from: Death Dimension (DVD)
In the annuls of bad career moves, George Lazenby has to rank pretty high on the list...after appearing in the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), he turned down an extensive deal from producers to appear in a number of subsequent Bond films as he thought the contract too demanding, the character would soon be out of vogue, and he would surely get other film roles...well, he was right, but I doubt Death Dimension (1978) was the type of feature he had in mind. Directed by Al Adamson (Satan's Sadists, Dracula vs. Frankenstein), the film features 1970s martial arts star Jim Kelly (Enter the Dragon, Black Belt Jones) in one of his lesser films. Also appearing is, as I've mentioned, George Lazenby (On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Saint Jack), Aldo Ray (The Green Berets, Psychic Killer), Patch Mackenzie (Graduation Day, Fighting Back), Bob Minor (Coffy, Foxy Brown), and Harold Sakata (Mako: The Jaws of Death, The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington), known best as the bowler wearing henchman 'Odd Job' from the James Bond film Goldfinger (1964).
As the movie begins we see a man inserting a microdot into an obviously fake patch of skin on a woman's forehead. Seems the man, named Dr. Mason, is a scientist who has developed a weather control formula for The Pig (Sakata), a master criminal type who intends to use the formula to develop a freeze bomb that he can then sell to the highest bidder. Mason, who developed the formula for altruistic purposes, has encoded all the plans onto a microdot, and now with the aid of his assistant Felicia (Mackenzie), hopes to get the information in the hands of the proper authorities. After a successful demonstration of the freeze bomb (we see some hapless schlubs tied to posts in the desert froze solid after the bomb is detonated), Felicia skips town, and Mason takes his own life. Oh yeah, the demonstration was witnessed by a gooberment agent who looks a lot like Gabe Kaplan, who subsequently gets wasted by The Pig's main henchman, a muscled, facially disfigured black man who likes to spit loogies, played by Bob Minor. Word of the agent's death gets to Captain Gallagher (Lazenby), who assigns Lt. Detective John Ash (Kelly) to the case. Before heading off to Reno (The Pig's home base), we get this wonderful bit of dialog right before John throws one into his old lady...
John's girlfriend: Baby, I love you so much.
John: I love you, too.
John's girlfriend: You will be careful, won't you?
John: I got to...
John's girlfriend: I don't think I can make it without you.
John: Well let's see if you can make it with me now.
Smooooth...anyway, after numerous assassination attempts (all failed ridiculously), John hooks up with a Asian named Lee (who couldn't act to save his life), and the pair set out to take down The Pig. Meanwhile The Pig and his men are searching out Felicia, desperately trying to recover the information so they can sell it to Aldo Ray, who's supposedly the representative of some foreign power, for fifty million dollars. What ensues is a series of car chases, gunfights, hand-to-hand combat sequences, and a helicopter chase, all leading up to a final, climatic showdown in the desert.
Well, I feel I must give this film, which has gone by a number of different titles over the years including Black Eliminator, Freeze Bomb, Dead Dimension, Icy Death, and The Kill Factor, some credit as the plot was so stoopid and wacky it was actually entertaining. Another plus for the movie is Al Adamson managed to keep things together reasonably well (for Al Adamson), spreading enough action throughout to keep me interested. The result isn't a great film, but better than what I would have expected. This wasn't Jim Kelly's, who did his own stunts here, shining moment, but I sure did enjoy watching him fight, and generally, when he did fight, it was usually against multiple opponents, none of whom could stand up to the power of his black kung fu. I did learn a number of things while watching this film, including the following...
1. White guys with afros look supremely idiotic.
2. Drinking malt liquor on a daily basis keeps you healthy and prolongs your life.
3. Harold `Odd Job' Sakata should never, ever be allowed speaking parts in films.
4. When in a fight Jim Kelly has no problem going for the crotch.
5. Giving someone the `thumbs up' sign over the telephone isn't as effective as doing it in person.
6. The Mustang Ranch, The Pig's headquarters in Reno, has some of the most unappealing and downright repellant working girls I've ever seen.
7. Aldo Ray would appear in just about anything to pick up a check.
8. When you're up against an arch villain named The Pig, it's funny to make numerous comments about his hygiene. Below is an example, as John rolls into town and contacts Lee...
John: How's our friend The Pig?
Lee: He stinks!
9. You can actually use a handgun to shoot a small plane out of the sky, despite the fact it's a couple of hundred feet in the air.
10. If you're a henchman, hucking dynamite from a small plane at the hero while he's chasing your boss, both men being on foot, might not be the best idea.
11. Harold `Odd Job' Sakata, despite his enormous, bulky physique, could actually outrun a lean, mean, and physically fit Jim Kelly.
12. Jim Kelly really likes hitting guys in the nads.
As I said, I thought the film was pretty entertaining, but in typical Adamson fashion, there's a whole lot that doesn't jibe. One minute we see our hero involved in a car chase and the next he's on a boat, chasing some thugs who just tried to cap his ash. Harold Sakata plays what has to be the most ridiculous villain I've seen this side of Mike Myers and his role of Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies. Given how difficult it was for him to keep his stuff together, I found it very difficult to buy off on him being the head of an expansive, criminal organization. One really funny aspect was, in a page taken from the James Bond villain handbook, was to give Sakata's character some sort of pet. Where Ernst Stavro Blofeld had his feline, The Pig has his turtle...oh geez...there was just something really unsettling about watching Harold Sakata gleefully stroking a little turtle. The upside of this is it gives him an opportunity to employ a giant, snapping turtle (you know, because turtles are his `thing') during an interrogation.
The picture, presented in widescreen format (sort of) on this Mondo Crash DVD release looks pretty shabby, as the transfer source appears to have been a well worn VHS tape. The aspect ratio looks forced, especially during the opening credits as some of them are cut off on the right side of the screen. As far as the audio, it's about as good as the picture, which is to say not all that great, but it is passable. There are no extras included on the DVD, but there are chapter stops, for what it's worth. All in all this is a fairly cruddy film, but it was also a lot of fun, earning it three out of five stars, even if it only deserves about one and a half.
Cookieman108
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Late blaxploitation flick from Al Adamson is cheap, crazy fun, April 1, 2010
This review is from: Death Dimension (DVD)
I guess DEATH DIMENSION is most readily situated as one of the last gasps of the blaxploitation cycle, being released in 1978 after the genre had long since descended into self-parody, ever cheaper production values, and ever stupider plots, and several of its stars had moved on and up to more mainstream work. But frankly, I didn't find it to be nearly as bad as it's reputation (an under-3 rating on IMDb for one thing) would suggest. Sure, director Al Adamson - who had previously teamed with star Jim Kelly on both of the BLACK BELT JONES films and BLACK SAMURAI - has little idea of how to keep things interesting outside of the fight sequences, and Kelly - maybe the least charismatic of the major blaxploitation lead actors - is as wooden and dull as ever, but there's enough going on here to keep the fan of 70s shlock cinema entertained I think.
Kelly plays Lt. J. Ash, a martial arts expert and undercover LAPD officer - I guess, though I don't remember it ever being stated just what office he belongs to. At any rate, it seems that there's a genius scientist who has been coerced into working for mad villain "The Pig" (Harold Sakata, best known as "Odd Job" in Goldfinger, horrendously dubbed here), who has developed a freeze bomb, which he demonstrates at the beginning of the film to some prospective bidders from various countries. But the scientist gets the secret of the technology smuggled out by his assistant Felicia (Patch Mackenzie), and it's up to Lt. Ash and his friend and fellow martial-arts expect Li (Myron "Bruce" Lee) to save Felecia, keep the secret safe, and defeat the evil Pig. Ash works under Captain Gallagher (another Bond alum, in fact an ex-Bond, George Lazenby who perhaps made the very worst career move in acting history when he bowed out of the series after one film) but it seems like his every move is known to the Pig's trained assassins - could it be his buddy Li, or his boss Gallagher who is on the Pig's take? I'll leave you to find that out yourself.
Death Dimension is at its best when showing the nubile charms - scantily clad or completely undressed - of its various young females (the Pig's hideout is fronted by a whorehouse in Reno), and the action stylings of Kelly and Lee. There are some mediocre car chases and a couple of brief foot chases and shootouts, but most of the action is good ol' kung fu with the typical overdone fake grunting and contact sound effects. Kelly was a serious martial artist and I presume Lee and most of the extras were as well, and the fights look decent enough for such a cheap production which mostly looks to be shot on preexisting sets or in people's real houses. Our star also has one great scene where he explains the benefits of malt liquor ("the black man's beer") to one's health and libido. The last sequence is pretty awesome - a firefight between cablecars which segues into a helicopter chase and finally, our hero gets to shoot down the getaway chopper with a snub-nose .38! Pretty silly, pretty awesome.
Very typical late 70s cheesy score, by Chuck Ransdell. The photography is by Orson Welles' late cinematographer Gary Graver, but it's hard to tell what kind of job he did while watching the very poor VHS-to-DVD transfer from Mondo Crash. This had several other titles, including the somewhat more descrïptive ICY DEATH. All in all then, this isn't one of the top blaxploitation or cheap action films from the period, but it's dumb enough to be fun and at 84 minutes or so, it sure doesn't wear out it's welcome.
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