“Where you going?”
“Out in the moonlight, baby.”
Sad to hear yesterday of the death of karate and tennis pro and sometime totally-awesome-movie-star Jim Kelly.
Just a few weeks ago, I spent a nice afternoon on the couch watching ‘Enter The Dragon’ on VHS – first time I’d seen it in a while, and a welcome reminder of what an extraordinarily entertaining picture it is. Post-screening, conversation turned, as is inevitably the case, to what an incredible bad-ass Jim Kelly is, what a bad decision it was to kill him off before the film’s finale (oops – spoiler alert?), and how sad it is that he only played significant roles in about five films, rather than, like, a thousand.
I’ve not yet had the pleasure of catching any of his subsequent blaxploitation flicks (‘Black Belt Jones’, ‘Three The Hard Way’, ‘Black Samurai’ etc.), but based solely on his performance in ‘..Dragon’, I think it’s safe to say he had the potential to be one of the most effortlessly cool, charismatic, capable and just plain funny action stars of all time. R.I.P.
