Ebony, Ivory & Jade (1976)

Wow! Such a good movie.

What a beautiful movie!

The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

I can't believe I made eye contact with someone in the process of renting this movie. Renting this movie is a f###ing shameless act. It starts out strong. Charmingly low budget. Slow motion of women running. Bad acting in weird settings. But my God this movie is boring. There are some sweet fight scenes, but it is a real slog between them. A huge section of this movie is shot using the "technology" of filming in the daytime and then making the colors muddy and awful to simulate the scene being at night. It sucks.

A middle-of-the-road entry into the '70s action adventure mould, mixing girls-with-guns shoot-outs, martial arts, blaxploitation and even a little women-in-prison peril into an action-fuelled, sometimes exciting odyssey. Cirio H. Santiago directs with his usual workmanlike abilities, avoiding style at every turn and instead offering up a bog standard and rather routine movie that never gets tiresome at a pacy eighty minutes. Shot in the Philippines with a bare minimum of expertise and money, the film chronicles the adventures of three ass-kicking femme fatales as they find themselves kidnapped for nefarious reasons by a gang of ugly Chinese and Filipino bad guys. As their relations (including a P.I. and a SHAFT wannabe detective) search desperately for the missing girls, they launch repeated escape attempts, which invariably result in some solid if not amazing kung-fu fight techniques.The best thing the film has to offer is this action, which takes place in a nice range of varied locales - my favourite is the shoot-out in the graveyard. Santiago makes good use of the Filipino locations to provide an interesting visual backdrop to the story and maintains a sense of realism at all times. However, being a PG-rated movie, there is little of the explicit sex or violence which categorise '70s blaxploitation/women-in-peril drive-in movies, aside from a nice meaty moment where a bad guy is pushed into a mangler - hilariously entertaining! The acting is of an adequate standard, but there are no really outstanding performances or memorable turns from the cast here - many of the Filipino extras mingle together, Colleen Camp is a fairly annoying woman, and Katon and Anderson prove to be more adept at high-kicking than quality acting. Although the film does offer the basic minimum of entertainment, it still packs a punch in places and there isn't anything really to dislike about it. Personally I would have preferred something a bit more spectacular but hey, that's Cirio H. Santiago for you...

A gaggle of sassy female pro athletes are kidnapped by some would-be Hong Kong Symbionesers and their opportunistic leader. These women get shot, stabbed, raped, drugged, and sold into the sex trade, and not only is it not offensive, it is both hilarious and peppered with righteous Black Power sentiments so unmediated they could only be emanating from the Phillipines. The kidnapper with Commie nationalist tendencies turns out to be an OK guy, whereas the cigar-chomping capitalist tries his best to murder and/or sell his own daughter! Who knows what their motivation is supposed to be; and I don't know why they didn't give Jade more to do instead of doubling the Ebony. But this sucker, like Santiago's Vampire Hookers, even has something resembling an actual screenplay - one that moves on from the inevitable stupid-detectives-in-office scenes as quickly as it can and helps you through the crummy lighting and ragged fight choreography. I don't have to read any fanboys to know that Tarantino studied this sucker up and down, and good for him.

Ebony Ivory And Jade is a ok film for fans of martial arts flicks, but if you're into dirty 70's b-movies, check yourself. The recent reissue on VHS and DVD barely mentions it in the liner notes, but this is a PG film. Considering the content of most 70's films, as well as the fact that this is considered a blax/sexploitation film, it's as bland as possible. The martial arts work is certainly impressive, and there's plenty of it. But it seems that the only reason this wasn't G rated, is because of the cartoonish violence.I'm certainly biased towards quality period black action, with the likes of Pam Grier, Fred Williamson, Antonio Fargas, Rudy Ray Moore, Isaac Hayes, and so on. The grit and scintillation of those films makes me wanting more here. This movie was filmed in the Phillipines, which instantly puts it in league with many women-in-prison flicks (Big Doll House, Big Bird Cage, Black Mama White Mama, etc).Whereas many of the films of the time focus upon sex and drugs, it's clear that the scenery and location of this film mattered to the people who made it. There are some unusual (for the genre) shots and an overall usage of the locale as much as possible. From jungle shots, to plains and shallow waterways, the feel here is more expansive than many backlot productions.It's not that it's a bad flick, but it's a pretty harmless one. Fans of 70's film should know that the 'edge' that runs through many 70's b-flicks is missing here.