Once you’re familiar enough with blaxploitation movies, you have to watch Black Dynamite. A movie this bad can only be good, especially since it’s bad on purpose.

So, let me tell you a little bit about Black Dynamite. He’s a former Vietnam vet and CIA agent, and by all accounts, a pimp… who vows to clean up the streets after his brother is killed. In the process of avenging his brother’s death, he finds out that his brother worked for the CIA and that some shady organization is filling the orphanages with heroin.

So what’s Black Dynamite – who has a sweet theme song, by the way – going to do? He’s “gonna shake the tree from the roots, rake up the fruits, rip it up out the ground to find out what’s goin down. Don’t worry ‘bout tomorrow ‘cause tonight, Dynamite is gonna make it all right.” I should note, however, that if you interrupt him and finish the quote for him, he’ll threaten to “send your ass back to Crenshaw Pete, with his hot ass coat hangers.” Can you dig it? I can dig it.

Anyway, here are 20 things I learned from watching Black Dynamite.WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS.

1. If you speak in a quasi-English accent with precise diction, a crime boss will not believe you’re really from the streets.  For example, you can’t say something like, “Come on you jive turkeys. What kind of rundown is this?” (with a half-second pause between each word.) You have to say, “C’mon you jive turkeys. What kinda rundown is this?” (with no pauses.) Also, specifying that you’re from the streets and proclaiming you’re not a snitch is probably going to make the crime boss’ goons kill you.

2. In the 70s, car phones looked a lot like regular, home phones. They even have the same rings.

3. It’s okay to Kung Fu kick old ladies – but only if you’re 100% sure they’re hiding cats named Nipsy who haven’t paid up.

4. Never interrupt a black man’s Kung Fu. On a side note, if you’re going to practice Kung Fu, a red bandana, a red sash, and a pair of black pants is the only acceptable uniform to wear. You can not wear a shirt! When fighting goons, however, you can wear whatever you’d like.

5. The “old pie in the windowsill” trick consists of tricking someone into thinking you’re in front of them when in fact you’ve circled back behind them and turned the tables. CIA agents easily fall for this.

6. My friends need better nicknames. I don’t know about you, but if I had friends I called “Bullhorn, Cream Corn, Chicago Wind, Chocolate Giddy-Up, and Tasty Freeze” that would be pretty awesome, and I think my life would be much more interesting. Chocolate Giddy-Up!

7. If you drive off a cliff, your car will explode before hitting the ground. Also, if the car is expensive, say a Porsche, it will switch to a much cheaper car before driving off said cliff and blowing up.

8. CIA badges say “License to Kill” on them.

9. You can’t shake the “poisonous s–t” (smack) out of a little kid’s “smacked-up body.” Others have tried to no avail.

10. Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles started out as Roscoe’s Chili and Donuts. Cream Corn should be credited with giving Roscoe the idea of chicken and waffles.

11. Donuts don’t wear alligator shoes.

12. Pimps hold meetings in which they take votes.

13. Zodialogical astronomy was created by the Greeks in 785 BC, and 785 is the area code of Topeka, Kansas.

14. The old “Birthday candle” trick is when you fake being shot, confusing the person who is pointing a gun at you. Then, as they look around to see where the bullet came from, you shoot them.

15. There is, in actuality, a place called Kung Fu Island. It has palm trees and, for some odd reason, as least one building there flies both a Dixie flag and an American flag. Well, I should say flew because the building was blown up.

16. Asian Kung Fu masters methodically stoke their freakishly long, white goatees. I presume this is to project a sinister look.

17. Kung Fu treachery is one hell of a way to die. If someone is decapitated, there will be no blood as long as they were killed by Kung Fu treachery.

18. President Nixon owns a pair of nunchaku and knows Kung Fu. Whether or not he is any good using either one is debatable.

19. The ghost of Abraham Lincoln knows Kung Fu. He appears to know Tiger’s Claw.

20. If you pimp-slap the First Lady into a china cabinet, you should apologize even if she shot at you but did not connect. If she did connect, however, pimp-slapping her into the china cabinet is justified.

Trailer:

Most people are used to the higher prices at the theater, and they have little or no response. But, there are others who are completely shocked. They open their eyes and mouths wide. Then, they look perplexed, as if I made some sort of mistake. I usually run down their order, so they know what they’re paying for. Once they realize it’s no mistake, they make a comment about the exorbitant prices.

A lot of people complain about the cost of a movie ticket, which is $10 at my theater. Unfortunately, the theater doesn’t really set that price. Movie distributors set the price. They can be entitled to 100% of the gross ticket sales for a movie’s opening weekend. That’s an extreme case, though. In most cases, the distributors receive 70% to 80%.  That means that the theater doesn’t make a profit off of ticket sales when you factor in the operational costs of showing the movie. They’re actually losing money.

As the movie continues its run in a theater, the distributor’s share goes down, meaning the theater keeps more of the ticket-sales money.
 
Few movies illustrate this better than the Telugu language movies from India that my theater exhibits. The distributors of these films vary more than US distributors. For example, no matter what US movie you see, the price will be the same (unless it is in 3-D). Telugu movies vary in price. On its opening weekend, Magadheera was $15. Three weeks later, it was $12. A month or so after that, it was $8.

When we have two or three Telugu movies running in the same week, there could be as much as a $7 price difference between them.

With distributors being entitled to so much of the gross ticket sales, theaters are left with two options to turn a profit, raise ticket prices, or raise concession prices.

It makes more sense to raise concession prices, from a consumer standpoint, because concessions are “frill” items, in that a customer doesn’t need to buy concessions to see a movie. They do, however, need to buy a ticket. So, by pricing the secondary product (concessions) higher and keeping the primary product (tickets) prices relatively low, price-sensitive people are not priced out of seeing a movie.

This is how theaters can afford to run matinees and “discount days.” By eating the loss on ticket prices during off-peak times or days, the theaters attract people who wouldn’t otherwise come to see a movie that day. And, the more people they attract with the price, the more opportunities there are for people to purchase concessions, which will drive up a theater’s profit.

And that, my friends, is why it costs so much for movie theater popcorn: so you can enjoy discount days and matiness, and so the price-conscious can still see movies.

I know many of you are thinking, “What about the money theaters get from advertising?” That’s a good question, but it’s way too big of an issue to get into for this posting.  I’ll address that later.

At least three times (Yes! THREE times) per week, an unsuspecting moviegoer will approach the box office to purchase tickets only to bang their head on the glass. While this is comical to us movie theater employees – and we will most likely share your story with other employees for a good laugh – I would like to save you the embarrassment and the pain of a head-glass collision.

I’m not really sure what leads to head-glass encounters at the box office. Perhaps, more and more people have depth-perception problems? I thought for a second that maybe people can’t see it, but that argument is debunked by the fact that the glass is not incredibly clean, and we post signs on it. How can you miss it?

Accidentally banging your head on the glass will result in a very loud, comical BANG! You’ll also leave a skin-oil mark at the point of impact. This will be used later to confirm to other employees that someone did, in fact, bang their head. It will also create more work for us employees as we now have to Windex your mark. You’ll also create an uncomfortable environment where I, the movie theater employee, will attempt to complete your transaction without laughing at you. That’s incredibly tough!

Again, the collisions occur more often than you think. The reason? Most people look at the person behind the window instead of the window itself, or they look at the movie listings board.

I’m not saying stare at the window. That would just be weird. But, you should certainly be aware of the window. Make a mental note of the location of the window, and be cautious around it.

Also, watch out for the occasional douche movie theater employee. This person puts the pen/tickets/receipt far inside the ticket window so you’ll have to reach for it. If you’re reaching, you’re looking at what you’re reaching for, not the window, and BANG! You’ve just been owned.

Together we can put an end to box office, head-glass collisions! Thank you.

The last 15 years have not been so kind to Van Damme, movie-wise. He went from big action star to direct-to-DVD joke in that time, which explains why I hadn’t seen any of his recent movies. It has gotten so bad that I couldn’t even watch them when they came on the TBS. They were just so… bad. But, I decided to take a chance on JCVD.

What originally led me to JCVD was the premise. In the movie, Van Damme plays himself caught in a robbery for which he is wrongly accused. Sure, it might not be Oscar-worthy material, but I thought it might be interesting to see what twists and turns the move took.

I didn’t expect to see a classic (circa 1990s) Van Damme movie with kicking, punching, and cheesy dialogue. I expected something more of a confessional from Van Damme, and JCVD did not fail to deliver.

This movie is easily Van Damme’s most brilliant and pure performance to date. We don’t see a former soldier, a cop, a fireman, or some other kind of hero. No. In JCVD, we see a past-his-prime, struggling, broke, aged actor whose life is falling apart. The story, obviously, mirrors his own life struggles, and it serves as a way for Van Damme to exorcise his demons.

At the heart of the movie is a seven-minute soliloquy from Van Damme, in which we get to see the real Van Damme. I could easily call it his best dramatic performance, but I don’t think that would do it justice. It wasn’t acting. Van Damme peeled off all of the layers and exposed everyone to his inner most demons. No kicks. No punches. Just pure, raw emotion.

Most people don’t have the guts to put their true selves out there in front of people as Van Damme did. And, the fact that he put it on film for the world to see speaks volumes about who Jean Clause Van Damme really is.

This film showed that the action star we saw on the big screen in the 90s is just a fabrication. The Van Damme in this movie is so real that I should probably call him Van Varenberg – his birthname.

I would highly recommend this movie to Van Damme fans with a caveat: don’t expect kicking, punching, and cheesy dialogue. I would also recommend it to people who aren’t Van Damme fans. It’s very rare that you get a peek at raw and real emotion on film.

After his henchmen fail to kill the shrink and the Black Ninja, the mob boss hires a Red Ninja to kill them both. I should note that the Red Ninja also killed the Black Ninja’s wife and kids before he was the Black Ninja. It’s what drove him to become a ninja. Apparently, RN was pissed that BN charged him $100,000 (RN’s life savings) to defend him. I wonder how long it takes a ninja to save $100,000. What does the average ninja make these days? We are in a recession, so those few ninjas who manage to survive ninja layoffs probably had to take a pay cut.

Anyway, instead of killing the shrink (as he was hired to do) the RN kidnaps her and forces the BN to steal a diamond from a museum to recoup his $100,000 in exchange for the shrink. The BN does it, but RN does not give up the shrink. So, BN hunts him down to get the shrink back. Sounds pretty bad, doesn’t it? Well, as bad as you think it sounds, it’s about 14 times worse if you watch it.
  
Imagine if you got about 10 friends together with your home camcorder and made a movie. That’s exactly what The Black Ninja looks, sounds and feels like. So, I bet you’re wondering why I watched it. Well, my old college roommate was in it. Otherwise I would have skipped it. It was worse than awful, but it did teach me a few interesting things.
 
Lesson number 1: It doesn’t take any sort of fighting skill to be a ninja. All you have to do is watch Enter the Dragon once, wear a Kato-style outfit, and own a Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle. You don’t need a sword, shurikens, or any other kind of weapons. You don’t even need to know how to turn on the motorcycle, riding in a straight line will do.

Lesson number 2: All you have to do is tell the cops you’re an old friend of someone and they’ll give you the address where that person is staying, even if said person is a witness in a cop-murder trial.
 
Lesson number 3: “My client is too stupid to have committed the crime” is an actual legal defense, and it works.
 
Lesson number 4: Personal effects, including dolls and photos, can withstand rain, sleet, snow, and anything else for five years when left outside on a gravestone.

Lesson number 5: Thugs can scream even if their mouths are closed.

Lesson number 6: Dead bodies around a bed disappear if you’re about to have sex in said bed.

Lesson number 7: Punching someone sounds exactly the same as giving them a high five.

Lesson number 8: Black ninjas wear masks, red ninjas don’t.
 
Lesson number 9: Stealing an expensive diamond from a museum requires only baby powder and a dental mirror.

Lesson number 10: Never having people over is a valid reason for having no furniture.

And, lesson number 11: There’s no such thing as a bad time to use a triple-replay during a fight scene.

Just think… if I had never watched The Black Ninja, I never would have known these interesting little nuggets. But then again, I would have that 91 minutes of my life back. So, in the end, watching it wasn’t really worth it.

Black Ninja Trailer: