Customer Reviews

Dolemite [VHS]

5 star:		(53)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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.

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

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.

If you have ever seen a better movie, I would like to hear about it. What other movie can you see the boom microphone periodically at the top on the screen? Rudy Ray Moore's one-liners are clever and amusing("You best be lettin' me pass, before they have to be pullin' these Hush Puppies out yo m*****f*****' a**!"). It is my opinion that nobody has ever written anything that can come close to Dolemite. The only thing that Dolemite lacked was the budget. I may also argue that that's what made the movie so good. I have seen this movie at least 100 times and it gets better everytime. All I have to say is buying Dolemite is the best low cost investment I have made my entire life.

The story of a good-hearted pimp framed by some dirty cops and his arch-rival Willie Greenand then released from prison so he and his all girl army of kung fu hookers can clean up the streets. Rudy Ray Moore is a stand up comedic genius and I once I became a fan and learned that he had actually made a series of movies based on one of his characters, Dolemite, I had to get it and see it.

This movie is so bad, you can't help loving it. The acting is sub-par, especially from the pair of dirty cops. The camera crew's shadows can be seen, boom mikes can be seen at the top and bottom of the screen, and the lights used to keep the actors lit sometimes move off target and can be seen lighting up the background in an attempt to illuminate their target character.

Despite the poor production values the movie is a riot of laughter almost from start to finish with Rudy (as the titular character Dolemite) delivering some of the funniest dialogue I've heard in a long time. The action scenes, with the kung fu girls against the evil army of Willie Green, are laughable. Dolemite apparently has a cook on his side that you only see in these fight scenes. Dolemite eventually defeats his nemisis by tearing out his heart (perhaps it's his liver because he tears it out of his stomach, and when his FBI agent ally sees this he fires a shot into the corpse to take the blame away from Dolemite, as if no one will notice his heart (liver?) torn out by hand.)

If you love bad movies, you'll love Dolemite!

Charles Mingus once said that "exact perfection or exact imperfection are both perfection when they stand to be judged alone." Well, keeping that in mind, and provided that you're not one of those film critics who can't go thirty minutes without thinking of Citizen Kane, you should be able to enjoy Dolemite for all of the bizarre dialogue, wooden delivery and technical mishaps... not despite it. Rudy Ray Moore and D'Urville Martin do such a great job moving the film along on a shoestring budget, you barely have time to notice the boom mics hanging in their faces.

Although I enjoyed the 2nd installment, "The Human Tornado" a little more than I did this one, I enjoyed this movie. The plot, if you can call it that, involves Dolemite being released from jail to take down another pimp, Willie Green.

Along the way, there are all of the prerequisites for movies of this particular genre, the racist white cops, the pimped out rides, the "jive sucka" laced dialogue, the pimped out clothing and lots of T&A.

The fight scene at the end is so corny it will leave you in tears. The musical performances are even funnier!! This is definitely a MUST SEE 70's movie.

As an avid fan of the Blaxploitation Genre, you find that quite often, people shoot down these classics. The reasons ranging from Bad acting to terrible DVD Quality. However, if you don't try and dissect these films, but just watch them, then you will be greatly entertained. "Dolemite" is no doubt a prime example. I own the Box Set of "Dolemite" films, and it is very much worth watching. I see hanging mics, and various other mistakes in filmmaking (including poor editing of a love scene), but I found myself laughing until I cried. In addition to that, I have borrowed some very memorable lines for conversations at work!!!

I bought this DVD for a trip down memory lane and ended up splitting my sides laughing. I knew going in that the production values were lacking and the editing worse. I was there in the clubs in the 70's & 80's and I remember the SuperFly wannabes in their Sammy Davis suits . The bad, and I don't mean good, wardrobe in the film will have you talking to the TV. And Dolomite is no clothes horse. With that big butt and waist he certainly doesn't look like a kung fu master. Pimp?! He's pigeon-toed and walks like Andy Griffith. The love scenes are cut so poorly you'll howl! The music resembles nothing I ever heard in that era and in the club scenes, the entertainment will have you screaming with their choreography & costumes.

With the overt racism, sophomoric profanity & too many other corny things to count, this movie is great for a laugh when I am bored. This movie should be on a list with "Plan X from Outer Space"

So there's really not anything that's actually "good" about this movie. The boom mike has a starring role, the acting is completely atrocious, and I can't remember what the story was 5 minutes after watching the film.

Even so, this movie is totally and wonderfully great. It posesses in spades what many hugh blockbuster do not have: soul and inspiration. Rudy Ray Moore is a middle aged, pretty flabby dude. By looking at him, I'm simply not going to buy into him being a kung fu master and Don Juan to all the ladies. But he seems to believe that he is, and this giddy fun manages to translate to the film.

Don't pop in this DVD if you want a well-made, conventional film; "Dolemite" sits firmly in cult territory. For the cult film lover though, it's hard to disparage bad kung fu, kung fu prostitutes, a hero that commits some pretty serious crimes (which the movie wonderfully fails to adress) and strange and bewildering proto-rapping from Moore himself. This movie is endlessly rewatchable.