Product Details

• Actors: Brenda Banks (II), Jana Bisbing, Brenda DeLong, Pat Haywood, Karolynn Hill
• Format: Color, EP, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Xenon
• VHS Release Date: February 24, 1998
• Run Time: 91 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (73 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6303203914
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #296,899 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Who's the baddest motherf****r to blow onto blaxploitation screens? Forget Shaft and just ask X-rated comic and "godfather of rap" Rudy Ray Moore. He'll give you the gospel of Dolemite. Street hustler, pimp, and all-around ghetto superhero Dolemite began life as a character in Moore's nightclub act and was a natural character for his self-financed film debut, a revenge tale set on the corrupt streets of L.A.

Dolemite is sprung from prison by an impossibly understanding warden so he can find the drug-dealing, gun-smuggling crooks who framed him. With the help of his all-girl army of kung fu killers and the most flamboyant wardrobe this side of Cher, he lays waste to dozens of bad guys while spouting his funky raps. Thick, slow and sleepy, Moore is neither a natural actor not a convincing martial arts action hero, but his lazy line deliveries are great, lyrical cascades of four-letter words and "ghetto expressions," and he performs two of his most famous stand-up raps, "Shine and the Great Titanic" and "The Signifying Monkey."

Dolemite is not a particularly competent movie--the direction (by costar D'Urville Martin) is clumsy, the performances flat, and microphones peek in from time to time (get that video letterboxed, Xenon!)--but the outrageous mix of nightclub rap, kung-fu action, and Moore's four-letter dialogue turned it into an instant urban hit and has kept it alive as a cult classic. Dolemite returns in The Human Tornado. The DVD also features clips from the documentary The Legend of Dolemite and the complete lyrics to his raps. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cinematic Masterpiece!!, July 13, 2005

By 

Michael Sekac (Port Angeles, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dolemite (DVD)

I recently had the pleasure of watching a film starring the Hunkiest specimen of Man-meat ever to grace the silver screen. It was Rudy Ray Moore in Dolemite. Let me start off by saying this is quite possibly the finest film ever made. Dolemite himself is a man so baaad that he doesn't even feel the need to be in good shape to impress us, he let's his martial arts do the talkin'. If Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Tony Jaa were all combined into one glorious person they would still aspire to be Dolemite. To the untrained eye it would appear that Dolemite is not actually hitting people in the fight scenes. In reality he is just so fast that he can snap his hands and feet there and back so quickly that it gives the viewer the illusion that his foot is six inches away from the targets head.

This movie also has the flyest honeys ever captured on film. Queen Bee, the leader of Dolemite's kung fu strumpets, somehow manages to become more mesmerizing in each scene.

Dolemite's insults are so cutting that it would make Don Rickles weep uncontrollably. This is a man who knows in order to hurt someone's feelings you need to scream "muthaf***a" at the end of every insult. Also to showcase his wit there are five minute poetry reciting scenes. Some would say these scenes are waaay to long and very unnecessary, but that is just plum rediculous. It shows that he is a jack of all trades.

The emotion also runs rampant in this movie. I cried for hours after the tragic and untimely death of the "Hamburger Pimp". That's right the "Hamburger Pimp". Why hasn't Hollywood thought to name every character in every movie that. This movie is so gritty and real that they decided to make the boom mike visible in numerous scenes just to remind the audience that its just a movie.

All in all, if you see one movie in your entire life make it Dolemite.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Only two reasons:, October 12, 2005

By 

Christian M. Montoya "scroogem" (San Diego, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Dolemite (DVD)

This movie is worth buying just for these two reasons:

1) The Hamburger Pimp (think of him as a crack-headed, nappy-haired version of Popeye's Wimpy). And he has his own theme music.

2) This movie contains the greatest single line in cinematic history.
Just as the two crooked cops (with their sideburns down to here) pull Dolemite over in a futile attempt to frame the baddest motha' around, they taunt, "You think you're so bad, Dolemite...riding around in your big fancy cars, wearing all them fancy clothes, with all of your black b*tches!" our hero snaps back with, "You forgot about the white one!"

They just don't make movies like they used two. Buy two copies, one to permanently leave in your DVD player. And the other to put under your pillow when you sleep.

-C

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Of The Bad, December 9, 1999

By 

Anonymous (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dolemite (DVD)

This movie is so bad that one has to watch it with a grain of salt and just laugh out loud. Watch it with friends and look for the errors....Light flags that actors hit with their head, flubbed lines they actually kept in ("...head of the hospital") and how horribly written the dialogue is. Don't buy this if you are looking for something good. Buy if you are a lover of bad movies.