Watch Dynamite Brothers For Free

Too much of everything

Sadly Over-hyped

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Dynamite Brothers (1974) * 1/2 (out of 4)A Chinese man (Alan Tang) sneaks into America to locate his missing brother and ends up meeting a black man (Timothy Brown) who decides to help him. The two head to Los Angeles where they run into various drug dealers as well as a crooked cop (Aldo Ray) who is in with them.You know, I love watching bad movies and there's really no one worse than Al Adamson. With that said, I really do love Adamson as a filmmaker because no matter how awful his movies are you can at least spot them from a mile away. As with most of the director's films, this one here is pretty darn bad in regards to quality but at the same time you can't help but be mildly entertained just because of how much craziness one person can pack into a single movie.Adamson was certainly the type of director that would just throw everything on the screen and hope that it would work in the end. By doing this, movies such as this one are technically very poorly made and the storyline itself makes very little to no sense. However, you've got crazy stuff happening throughout the picture from car chases to bar fights to one of the dumbest scenes ever using a snake as a deadly weapon. The bad guys are downright silly to say the least and you're certainly never threatened by them.Then there's the cast. Brown is okay in his part of the duo but Tang is pretty boring and never brings any energy to the picture. Carol Speed, best remembered for her role in ABBY, is good as a deaf woman and Don Oliver is rather memorable as a character known as The Smiling Man. Ray, a good actor in his own right, is clearly just picking up a paycheck here as there are a few times where it's obvious he forgot his lines and is looking off screen for some help. We also have James Hong in a small role.DYNAMITE BROTHERS mixes elements of THE DEFIANT ONES with every other blaxploitation and martial arts film from this period. Heck, Ray even gets a brief scene in a mirror that appears to be mimicking the Marlon Brando "contender" speech from ON THE WATERFRONT. Still, this Adamson picture is very poorly made and gets boring after a while but as you can see, there's still a lot of crazy stuff going on.

I'm giving this turkey a one out of 10. It's supposed to be a mix of kung fu action with blaxploitation and it utterly fails to be either. The kung fu scenes are totally lame (there is a Lee Van Cleef look alike who dies at least three times) and the black action is shot in near total darkness and really weak anyhow. Add on that there are ZERO hot chicks in this, the ones in it are average off the street women, big deal! This film has zero going for it, which is probably why the Cinematic Titanic crew picked it to riff. I watched it on Hulu and it's a live audience version. As a riffed film I'm going to give it a 6 or 7'sh. It's not the funniest thing I've seen from this talent but it's not the worst, I laughed several times. Something about Kung Fu films and them getting riffed so far has not been the greatest, although my memory may be lacking I can only think of the Castle Of Fu Manchu and this was better then that early MST3K episode, oh yeah they also riffed the Lee Van Cleef The Master TV show and that was one of the very few things I couldn't finish from MST3K, so I guess this is the best Kung Fu riffed material I've seen but thats not saying much. Since it was probably heavily edited for Cinematic Titanic there may have been some decent nudity and bloody action scenes so maybe I'm being too harsh on it, if it had ANY nudity in it (the mute black chick), I'd give it a 3, but as for the version I watched it's a 1 film on it's own, and a 6 Cinematic Titanic film. I am thinking it's one of the worst things ever made in Hollywood stuff. Epic Fail.

But sadly, we'll never get to see it. Adamson once again demonstrates that he doesn't know how to pace a dramatic scene, frame a fight scene (featuring some pretty good stunt men) or a shootout, get a rookie actor to deliver a decent line of dialog, write dialog, or even tell a story that makes sense. There's a lot of potential to this one (a kung fu flick AND a blaxploitation flick), but about 30 seconds into the opening credits you know it'll never come together.The kung fu guy really doesn't have any personality on camera to speak of (I blame a lot of this on his ESL skills and the lines he's given to work with). The black guy (tellingly named "Stud Brown", what a giveaway) is reasonably smooth and presentable, but his character is just a cardboard stand-in for the Jim Brown flavor of the month. The movie tries for a soul vibe (most obviously with the character of "Smiling Man") and a bohemian hipster vibe and several other changes of pace, but it's all just going through the motions. Watch for the scene where the kung fu guy leaps out through a 2nd story window when a henchman pulls a gun (actually a pretty good idea) shattering glass and wood, and then lands outside without a mark on him. Watch for the stunt scene where the two handcuffed protagonists jump off a supposedly moving truck and one of them rolls in the wrong direction as they land. Also look for the scene where the kung fu guy is tossed into a cave and a rattlesnake is tossed in after him, and the movie tries to ignore the fact that there is obviously plenty of room for the guy to get out of the cave without ever going near the snake. And that's just the stunts, mind you. The whole movie has that characteristic "I just point the cameras and let them roll" feel, and it doesn't look as if there were a whole lot of 2nd takes or unused footage. On the other hand, this is still way better than "Brain Of Blood" and actually has better performances (Aldo Ray is actually pretty decent in a thankless part), so from now on I will remember this director as an "incompetent hack" rather than "an idiot behind a camera".

This is a very cheap 1973 actioner which pits a black man (Brown) with an Asian man (Tang) who is searching for his brother in LA. The two spend a period cuffed together and dealing with racist morons before they eventually meet up with the main villain. Tang, an Asian martial arts star, has no real personality and the fight scenes have obvious sound effects added on which doesn't help. Other stunts in the movie look obviously fake and are almost amusing. The film was originally titled "Stud Brown" (after Brown's character) and was billed as a blaxploitation film but that was misleading as Tang has more screen time and deals with most of the action. Ray,a former big name star, plays a corrupt cop. He appeared in scores of cheap features throughout the 70s but at least here, he has a half decent character and actually gets to emote a little. As expected, there are some amusing hairstyles, sideburns, sunglasses, funky instrumental music and slang like "That's where it's at baby!" The video box tries to convince that the 1998 big budget actioner Rush Hour was derived from this film but that's like comparing a penny to a quarter.