Hot Potato (Oscar Williams, 1976)

Carter Rangoon (Sam Hiona) kidnaps June Dunbar (The Big Doll House's Judith Brown), a senator's daughter, to force the U.S. to provide aid to the Asian country of Chang Lan. The U.S. government recruits black agent Jones (Jim Kelly) and mercenary Johnny Chicago (Raw Force's Geoffrey Binney) to lead the rescue mission. Arriving in Chang Lan, they meet their police liaison, Det. Sgt. Pam Varaje (Women of the Prehistoric Planet's Irene Tsu), and recruit Leonardo Pizzarelli, aka the White Rhino, (Mean Streets' George Memmoli), a hefty Texan of Italian descent. Storming Rangoon's lair with elephants, they seemingly rescue June. However, she has actually been replaced with a lookalike, Leslie (also played by Judith Brown).

As noted in my review of The Tattoo Connection, Hot Potato is the sequel to Black Belt Jones that the former film is sometimes touted as, but isn't. The end credits say that the film is "Based on the character created by Alex Rose and Fred Weintraub," both of whom wrote the story for Jones, confirming it's meant to be the same character, though IMDB doesn't list Hot Potato as a sequel to Jones on either films' Connections pages. The fact that Jones has the same name, is played by the same actor, and has a similar personality to Black Belt Jones cements it. Unfortunately, Hot Potato is not nearly as good a film as Black Belt Jones. While the earlier film had some great humor, with the best example being Gloria Hendry's handling of dirty dishes, Hot Potato's comedy is much more forced and slapstick, complete with cartoon music and sound effects. The opening credits are shown over a General being called by Senator Dunbar (whom we can barely hear) about his daughter's kidnapping. The General promises to send Jones, then hangs up and says, "Where the hell's Chang Lan?" Oh shit, my sides! The White Rhino spends a lot of his screen time making bad quips and goofing around with toy police cars.

At times, the Rhino and Johnny seem to have a relationship similar to Monk and Ham from the Doc Savage novels I love so much, though not nearly as entertaining or coherent. ("I ought to blow you up like a ship!" "You know what your trouble is? You don't respect Smokey the Bear!") Johnny himself is given a small bit of pathos when we learn his wife and daughter were killed five years ago in an explosion meant for him, but this is never touched on again, and later he goes through the seven stages of grief faster then I've ever seen anyone. Irene Tsu is decent as the policewoman who winds up falling for Jones (and vice versa), but isn't given much to work with. Jim Kelly himself is cool as ever, and he choreographed his own fight scenes, so his are the most convincing in the film. Carter Rangoon, despite his awesome name, is not a very memorable villain despite his tiger trap, and his right-hand man Krugman  (Hardy Stockmann) even less so. Sadly, this is very much a film for blaxploitation and martial arts completists only.