Things I Learned from "Black Belt Jones"

Having seen the 1974 Blaxsploitation classic "Black Belt Jones" with Jim Kelly (the tall, afro-ed black guy from "Enter the Dragon") and Gloria Hendry (the James Bond girl from "Live and Let Die" who wasn't Jane Seymour) I learned a lot about that era and what film could tell us about life.

1) Apparently, it's perfectly normal for a top government agent who is "the best" and happens to be over 6 feet tall to drive around in an AMC Gremlin.

2) It's also perfectly acceptable for a movie heroine to repeatedly make anti-gay slurs in challenging the manhood of the hero.

3) Any Italians you ever meet are going to be gangsters. Even if the actors playing them look about as Italian as a Pizza Hut.

4) The Mafia regularly guards its headquarters with completely unarmed men who aren't any good at fighting. Fortunately, the bad guys never try to use guns, and stick to the tried and true "attack him one man at a time" approach.

5) If you're a gangster, you can kill every government agent sent to investigate you because you are friends with some crooked politicians. But if you kill an old lecher who runs a Karate Studio and is played by the black guy from "The Shining", you're going to be inviting a world of hurt.

6) If these mobsters were so connected, what was the point of capturing and bringing them to the police at the end? Especially when this involved bringing absolutely no evidence of a crime with you??? Did no one ask the director about this when they filmed it????

7) Apparently when someone says "we have you surrounded" that really means they're sitting in a car on the side of the road near your house. Don't worry, you can just get in your own car and drive right past them like Black Belt Jones did.

8) You can apparently take multiple hard blows to the groin and still pop up to fight a few seconds later. Kids, don't try that at home!

9) If the last six guys who (one at a time) tried to fight Black Belt Jones and he beat the hell out of them, go ahead and be the seventh guy, you might get a lucky punch in. Or not.

10) Getting kicked or smacked will make a sound like a paddle smashing into plywood.

11) Everyone was pretty damn ugly in 1974. No wonder Nixon resigned. Who'd want to be president of an ugly country?