"Dolemite" was definitely not made for a "rat-soup-eatin', insecure honky MF" like me but I liked it anyway. The movie is a 'Blaxploitation classic' (which some people may consider an oxymoron) – it's hard to say what's worse: the acting or the karate fights, but it's also hard to say what's better: the pimp suits or the funk. I find it amusing that these extremely crude, subversive, counterculture movies now show up, unedited, on TV Turner Classic Movies – it's like seeing poisonous snakes in a display case at a petting zoo. Times have certainly changed. Worth watching for its own sake as well as from a cultural history perspective, as a lot of modern comedy and rap culture are rooted in movies like this.

I like bad movies. In fact, I'm still trying to get AFI to show Eckes vs Sever in their next film festival. I own Aztec Mummy vs the Robot Monster. What you call "hell", I call "entertainment"...Dolemite is a very very bad movie. I've narrowed down its problems to the acting, directing, writing and cinematography.Most of the cast in this movie are non-actors and it shows. Most of the cast members mumble their lines as if on a Thorazine binge. Some of the lines were meant to be spoken with great feeling which makes it all the more hilarious when they are said with the same flat mien as one would have ordering a MacDonald's breakfast. The few competent actors in this movie just make the rest of the cast look even worse. Who do I blame? The director, of course! You can tell this movie had a director or the actors would've just wandered off the lot during filming and gone about their lives; however, none of the acting seems to be directed. Maybe the director just gave up after seeing the......writing. Odd when the drugged monotone of a narrated flashback matches the exact dialog after the flashback. And, a warden letting a man out of prison to find who framed him is essentially a plot built from Ad Libs during a car ride. Bad bad writing. But, at least you have the...Cinematography... Oh forget it...This is a jaw-droppingly bad movie. I'm not saying that anyone should avoid it. Historically, it is worth watching because the seventies were an interesting time for grind-house movies...

Blaxploitation "classic" that introduced the movie-going public to Rudy Ray Moore. The plot, such as it is, has pimp Dolemite (Moore) being framed and sent to prison. A friendly warden believes Dolemite is innocent, so he lets him out of prison to prove it (!). Dolemite sets out to take back control of his pimp business and get revenge against the man who set him up: Willie Greene (D'Urville Martin, also the director).If you're unfamiliar with Rudy Ray Moore, this is as good a place to start as any. Dolemite features the standards of every Moore film: inept direction, unintentionally hilarious fight scenes, and the worst excuse for acting you'll ever see. Not to mention more colorful ways to fit the word 'mothereffer' into a sentence than I ever thought possible. A fun game to play while watching this cheapie is "spot the boom mic."

The blaxploitation genre certainly produced some bizarre oddities that's for sure. Dolemite is firmly in this category. On a technical level its appalling, with bad camera work, acting, action and story. The boom mic is visible so often that it really deserves a mention in the credits. But these considerations are ultimately irrelevant. In fact, the sheer scale of the cinematic incompetence is certainly one of the actual joys of the movie. The film-makers just didn't care and seemingly knocked this one out with little concern for such matters.The rough and ready style of Dolemite kind of seems appropriate though, given the nature of the central character, who is a super-shady bad mutha in a pimp suit. This character, Dolemite, spends most of the film swearing in creative ways. His routines are like proto-rap and seem to have influenced hip-hop culture. The movie is really a superb time-capsule flick. The insane fashions and jive talk are all almost alien in their bizarreness now. While the movie sports various other strange characters such as Reverend Gibbs, the mayor and the Hamburger Pimp. The latter of which actually appears to be out of his head on something or other – I don't think this bloke was really acting! There's also an extended scene near the end in a nightclub that really has to be seen to be believed. It has a priceless performance from a soul act and a crazy dance routine with some guy battering hell out of a drum-kit, it then climaxes with Dolemite's swearing rap thing. It's strange, like the movie in general. This may be super-trashy but it's highly original. It's yet another example of why the 70's ruled when it came to movies.