Hot on the heels of ‘Dolemite’ Rudy Ray Moore had developed a taste for cinema, and by GOD he wanted more. Taking his now ‘screen’ famous character ‘Dolemite’ back out on the road for a sequel that clearly shows growth and development from the budding film maker…But also a little more work to go.

The plot follows Dolemite getting caught up in a heap of trouble, a young white womans paying him to do stuff to her and Dolemites just the kind of cool cat who’ll do that sort of thing AND attend a happening party…or charity fundraiser…or…something?…its not clear. What IS clear shortly thereafter though is that the gathering is in danger.

When two local bumpkin racists flag to the equally racist townie cops that a load of black people are having a party up in the hills, they grab their guns and head up there looking to have the WORST kind of fun. and what does the sheriff find? his wife, in bed, with DOLEMITE. Naturally the Sheriff kills his wife…

Well, as you can imagine it all hits the fan quite quickly and Dolemite and his posse are forced to flee to California to try and lie low while the heats up. But on arriving in Cali and reuniting with the old gang, its revealed that one of Dolemites nightclubs has been taken over by a rival gang and that 2 of his ‘girls’ have been kidnapped and are being tortured ‘bloodsucking freaks’ style in someones ‘fungeon’.

Complicating matters further, the sheriff from the opening wont let it lie that his wife slept with a black man, and he and his deputies make it their personal mission to try and put Dolemite in the ground one way or another.

And, this reviews going to be a LOT more straightforward than my review of ‘Dolemite’. Because the big change here between that film and this, is that competency and coherency have had a VAST improvement…and thats ultimately good and bad for the movie in about equal measures.

For a starters, the script is much more coherent, structured and organised. Theres less random sequences of hamburger pimps and random cuts to Dolemite performing on the street, and the main emphasis is back predominantly on the main storyline. Which is good! its essentially a bit of a rehash of elements of the first movie, but I dont mind that so much as long as its made compelling enough for me to want to stick with the damn thing.

The first act opens strong with some solid fight scenes, a decent set up and its clear they’ve finally managed to nail the tone that they wanted to go for with this one. ‘Dolemite’ was all over the place being silly, aggressive, serious, sad, depressing, and erotic all in spikes and troughs.

‘The Human Tornado’ is a clean cut comedy. they have one or two serious moments, but nothings taken too heavy handedly, everythings nice and light and a bit manic. Which is good! im glad the films picked a lane and is working to its strengths. They even better intigrate the ‘lounge act’ sequences, which unfortunately do return for this film, but they all take place in a club dolemite owns, and a lot of the plot centers around the club, so when it starts to lean more into that kind of stuff through the second act, it doesnt feel as jarring or out of place.

In fact, its only the 3rd act really where it starts to come unstuck a bit. they have all these nice plot elements bubbling along across the runtime, and the finale is essentially supposed to be a free for all raid on the bad guys mansion with cops, dolemite and his gang, and the baddies all jostling to come out on top. The problem is, thats a lot of plates to keep spinning and even a more seasoned director would struggle to keep all of that afloat. and, as such, the last 15 minutes is minor chaos, random sped up fight sequences, torture, chase scenes,total incoherency on the screen, I imagine the last 3 pages of the script for this thing was essentially written like a novel rather than a script.

That being said it is, overall, improvements all around, with characters getting a bit more screen time, and with the tone being firmly picked it means that the complexities dont have to be quite so deep given its an outright comedy now, they give us ‘enough’ from each of the key characters here to make it feel like I know them relatively well. And even though Dolemites character has changed a bit here…he’s gone from shouting and angry in literally every scene, and kung-fu’ing in every other scene to now actually having a bit of a joke and a laugh in some scenes, and only letting the anger out every so often. He’s still overall some of the best parts of this movie and very enjoyable.

Same goes for the direction really, this feels much more technically proficient, scenes feel much more crafted, theres consideration for camera placement, prop usage, set design. They actually bother to try and utilize creative coloured lighting for scenes throughout the movie and it really makes a difference. The characters markers are more considered, there arnt nearly as many ‘booms’ in shot or random characters blocking the camera. this, for the most part looks like an ‘up market’ blacksploitation picture. Which is a pretty impressive feat honestly.

Same goes for the cine, composition is *mostly* better (there are still a lot of shots framed randomly or with a weird cropping put in place) sequences flow a lot smoother, the edit feels tighter, the whole thing feels like it builds on ‘Dolemite’ and you really get the sense that both the cast and crew have ACTUALLY started believing in this as a viable franchise production.

But! for the good, theres also the bad…and its a weird thing to mark a film down for, but a lot of the charm from ‘Dolemite’ came from the ‘thrown together’ nature of the picture, it came from Rudy randomly deciding to insert randome Dolemite improve scenes into the film, random line deliveries that just came across as weird, the rough nature of the fight choreography and Rudy basically just throwing crap at the screen and seeing what stuck. By polishing this production up, I cant deny that its overall a much more pleasent and better viewing experience, but losing that rough edge means losing some of the moments that genuinely made me bust a gut laughing in the last film. As such, It feels at times like its trying *too* hard to try and make people laugh, and while there ARE some unbelievable moments in this one. nothing quite hits as hard as ‘Dolemite’ for that weird and funny feeling.

Performance wise, its a similar problem, I wished characters had a bit more to go on in ‘Dolemite’, but here? they give those characters a bit more to go on, but its at the cost of losing their eccentricities. I miss the likes of ‘Hamburger pimp’ and ‘Willie Green’, the baddies in this are just kind of generic and other than some blatent homophobia here and there, NON of the characters really stand out. Even Dolemites been toned back a bit and doesnt seem to get as many BIG moments…well…barring the opening act where, thanks to freeze frame technology you can see Rudys Stunt mans ‘BIG moment’…

The performances are fine, but I dont think they reach the surreal and dizzying highs of ‘Dolemite’.

The soundtracks equally as funky as ‘Dolemite’, but lacks those big hitter tracks, the ones that’ll have you humming them out the door of your theater…which is a shame, but again the trade up is bigger, higher quality full sounding compositions, that are well edited and suit the film, even if they wont suit my CD player.

‘The Human Tornado’ is technically a HUGE step forward for the works of Rudy Ray Moore. its got a tighter, better composed script, decent direction and cine, consistent performances and a high quality original soundtrack. But the trade off is it loses a little bit of its heart and soul that really makes ‘Dolemite’ the over the top exploitation piece it is.

This film? I think i’d prefer to watch it over ‘Dolemite’ *JUST*…like, by a hairs Breadth. But ‘The Human Tornado’ does manage to just lose a little bit of that edge in the process of tidying itself up. And thats a bit of a shame. Non the less, if you’ve watched ‘Dolemite’ I compel you to watch the sequel. Its a good time and a solid follow up.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/the-human-tornado/