Black Dynamite

Black Dynamite does for Blaxploitation films what Machete did for the wild west revenge flick genre. It's a tongue-in-cheek film in which the stereotypes and tropes of a genre are exploited to great comic effect. Everything from the 1970s Blaxploitation era is here, from massive hair to clean-cut suits, exploding cars to laughably evil white characters and phrases like "Jive Turkey".

The plot (as much as it matters) follows the exploits of 'Black Dynamite', an all-round paragon who discovers that local drug dealers have killed his brother. Black Dynamite is some kind of amalgam of all the heroic figures of Blaxploitation movies; he's a kung fu fighter, ladies man, Vietnam-vet, ex-CIA agent and all-round legend wrapped up in a perfectly-tailored suit with his very own theme tune for when he walks into a room.

Not only is the material of the Blaxploitation era lampooned, also the production values of many of the films of the era are too. One awesome moment sees the main character stand up quickly from a desk and hit his head on a sound boom while the camera struggles to follow. It gets even better a few minutes later when an actor changes in the middle of a fight scene. There's also a surreal sequence when Black Dynamite and his crew 'solve' the central mystery in a diner with some fantastically illogical thought processes ("The Roman god of war is Mars, which if you spell backwards and remove the 's' is Ram - which is the symbol of the astrological sign Aries" and on and on...).

It all goes a bit mental at the end when Black Dynamite has a nunchucks fighter with Richard Nixon in the Oval Office (seriously - that's what happens), and obviously it's not 'Airplane', but as spoofs go there have been few funnier in recent years.