The Dynamite Brothers is an Al Adamson film from 1974, and as is often the case with Al Adamson films, it has been different things to different people. The film was released as The Dynamite Brothers for the Kung-Fu crowd, but was also put out as ‘Stud Brown’ for the inner-city/blaxploitation market. Stud Brown being one of the names of the two lead characters in the film...not a nickname...that is genuinely the name of the character...and c’mon how can you not have some love in your heart for a film featuring a character called Stud Brown...and no one questions why or finds that funny. Doesn’t that already tell you everything you need to know about this movie.
This is one of Adamson’s more obscure films, it had a DVD release in America in 2002, and a British one in 2003, but they’re both out of print now, and as far as I’m aware no one has done anything with this movie since the early Noughties. Which does illustrate an irony that Adamson’s producer Sam Sherman has frequently commented on. That the professionally made, straightforward and coherent films he and Adamson did together, never seem to command the same level of fascination as their misfit productions like ‘Blood of Ghastly Horror’ and most famously ‘Dracula Vs Frankenstein’, which were often put together from aborted projects and tied in with footage that had been filmed at different times. The rule seems to be that the more malformed Adamson’s films came out, the bigger their cult following became in the long term.
Which is a pity really, as The Dynamite Brothers is a rather overlooked Al Adamson film that has allot of energy and grindhouse charm on its side, and is one of Adamson’s films that I find myself revisiting allot. Simply put this is Adamson’s take on the 1958 Hollywood film The Defiant Ones, in which Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier played handcuffed convicts forced to overcome their racial prejudices when they go on the run, which had already acted as fodder for exploitation movies. ‘Black Mama, White Mama’ the shot in the Philippines, Eddie Romero film starring Pam Grier, being a famous example.
In Adamson’s film it is the turn of ex-American football player Timothy Brown to slip on the cuffs...in a plot that sees his character...Stud Brown... handcuffed to an Asian guy, played by Hong Kong superstar Alan Tang. Making the most of an opportunity to give the cops the slip, the two men go on the lam, first in San Francisco before ending up in the Watts area of Los Angeles. All the while being pursued by a hot-headed, racist cop played by Aldo Ray. This being a film from the time when Aldo Ray and Cameron Mitchell had pretty much cornered the market in playing racist cops in exploitation movies. It tended to be either one or the other. Aldo Ray basically being the guy you went to for playing racist cops...if Cameron Mitchell was away in the Philippines that week...or was recovering from his latest facelift.
The Dynamite Brothers does differ considerably from The Defiant Ones in that there is little antagonism between the two lead characters. Indeed, racial tensions between black and Chinese characters are notably non-existent in this film, with Adamson seemingly being more comfortable with depicting racism as a predominantly white hang-up, in the form of Aldo Ray’s bigoted cop as well as a bunch of rednecks who pick a fight with our heroes in the back of a pick-up truck.
Hateful as he might be Aldo Ray’s character does though come up with what is, hands down, the best insult in the movie when a guy asks for his gun, only for Aldo to bark back “where do you want it, in your face or up your ass”.
While for most of the film Aldo Ray’s character comes across as your typical blaxploitation movie villain. One scene unexpectedly humanises the character, when he breaks down and admits to his glamorous young girlfriend how tainted by corruption he has become, and there is the realisation that there maybe remnants of a decent man buried deep under all that hard-assed, racist exterior. It doesn’t result in you actually liking the character, but it does leave you with surprisingly mixed feelings when this character checks out.
The Dynamite Brothers has a laid back, easy going quality to it. Its basic ‘run-around’ plot might be action packed, as you’d expect from a seasoned exploitation film director –fight scenes, racial insults and female nudity are never far away in the film- but it’s also very undemanding. Meaning that this is the kind of movie you can put on, kick back and just chill out to. The location work in San Francisco and Los Angeles also takes in lots of 1970s colour, look out for great shots of ‘The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic’, the Chinatown district of San Francisco, the backstreets of Watts, and seemingly just about every Chinese restaurant and fast food outlet the mid-1970s had to offer, Adamson apparently being quite the fast food junkie. You definitely get the grand tour of Al Adamson’s America in The Dynamite Brothers.
Once our heroes arrive in Los Angeles and become unshackled, the Alan Tang character goes about investigating his brother’s death, leading him to the chief villain of the piece, a ruthless, castle dwelling, drug dealer played by James Hong, in what seems like a rehearsal for his role in Big Trouble in Little China. Stud Brown on the other hand goes about renewing his friendship with ‘Smiling Man’, an outrageously attired bar owner, whose business is being threatened by Hong’s right hand man, a guy known only as ‘Razor’. It’s difficult to not feel a bit sorry for Alan Tang, this is a film awash with brilliant character names... ‘Stud Brown’, ‘Smiling Man’, ‘Razor’....and the name of his character? ‘Larry Chin’...ermm I guess the well of catchy character names had run dry by the time they got around to naming the Asian guy.
Of course, calling a character ‘Stud Brown’ does give a fella a certain reputation to uphold...with a name like that you’d expect the guy to be getting as much pussy as John Holmes. By blaxploitation standards though, Stud Brown is a fairly monogamous guy, who is highly respectful towards women...he must have been such a disappointment to his parents. I mean...if you call your kid ‘Stud’, you obviously have expectations that they’ll grow up to break a few hearts and bust a few hymens in their time. It turns out though that Stud only has eyes for Sarah (Carol Speed), a mute waitress who works for Smiling Man. Stud even comes up with an impromptu love song about the pair of them.
Even if you take nothing else away from The Dynamite Brothers, I promise you’ll never be able to forget ‘The Ballard of Stud and Sarah’, which Timothy Brown, this big, tough ex-American football player, does seem slightly embarrassed to be performing.
“Sarah and Stud,
Stud and Sarah,
Sarah and Stud,
Stud, and Sarah, Stud
Sarah, Sarah, Stud
Stud and Sarah, Yeah
Stud and Sarah, Yeah”
I bet Bob Dylan wishes he could write songs like that.
We’re getting into spoiler territory here, but I find it hard to believe anyone can’t see from a mile away that the Stud and Sarah storyline isn’t going to end well. After all, she and Stud are blissfully in love...she is a mute...she owns a puppy...you can pretty much tell that she is as marked for death as any love interest or family member of Charles Bronson in a Death Wish film, and that Sarah exists purely to act as a catalyst for Stud Brown to extract some righteous revenge on her killers.
One of the misconceptions about Al Adamson is that his films were always a little behind the times and tame throwbacks to a different age. Something that will leave you unprepared for the tough brutality of several of his films, most notably Satan’s Sadists and The Female Bunch, whose viciousness actually pointed the way forward to the grittier tone that exploitation films adopted in the 1970s. While Adamson’s later films might be a bit more mellower, Sarah’s death (she has her face calved up by a man trying to extract information from her, unaware that she is a mute) ranks alongside the distasteful gang rape in Adamson’s Black Heat, and Georgina Spelvin’s seduction and shooting of a mentally retarded man in Girls For Rent, as evidence that Adamson’s films aren’t without their cruel edges.
Despite being born out of the Kung-Fu and blaxploitation crazies of the day, The Dynamite Brothers is a film that is ahead of its time in someways. Here, Adamson stumbled upon the mismatched buddy action movie, long before Hollywood did. As the UK DVD is rather keen to stress ‘...before Rush Hour, there was The Dynamite Brothers’. A comparison that in itself is starting to date that DVD as a product of the early 00s, Rush Hour not really being the new, hip film to name check anymore.
It is worth noting though that Adamson was working with a predominantly black and Asian cast here, long before diverse casting became fashionable. Something I think Adamson deserves more credit for, especially as he wasn’t one of those white exploitation film directors who threw together a few black cast movies during the blaxploitation days, but then never used black cast members outside of that genre. Adamson’s non-blaxploitation movies seemingly being happy to champion black actresses, notably Marilyn Joi in Nurse Sherri and The Blazing Stewardesses.
Whatever you make of Adamson’s films the general consensus seems to be that the man himself was an ok, straight arrow, average Joe kind of a guy, who no one seems to have a bad word to say about. So, it is all the more regrettable then, that in that grotesque Sharon Tate manner, Adamson is more remembered for the fact that he was murdered, rather than the movie career that preceded it, which often tends to get reduced to a quirky anecdote. Adamson’s death is a well told tale, but if you don’t know, in the mid-1990s, decades after he left the film business, Adamson got into a dispute with his live-in contractor Fred Fulford, who beat Adamson to death and buried his remains under the floor of Adamson’s house, where Adamson’s hot tub had once sat.
a typical day in the life of Al Adamson as depicted in 'A Stranger in my Home'
I’m losing count of how many TV documentaries there have been about Adamson’s murder...three at least. The best of the bunch is an episode of a series called ‘A Stranger in my Home’, which juggles talking heads with recreations of scenes from Adamson’s life. The actors they got to play Adamson and Sam Sherman are pretty spot-on facsimiles of their real –life counterparts. Less so their version of Regina Carrol, Adamson’s wife, who didn’t really look like the actress playing her, but the Stranger in my Home episode might be the closest we’ll get to a full-on biopic of Adamson.
That documentary has been repeated ad-infinitum here in the UK, and as a result it’s often odd to bring up Adamson’s name in conversation with people who aren’t B Movie buffs and have them know who he is. Albeit only because they’ve seen that documentary, and albeit only as ‘the schlock film director who got murdered and buried under his hot tub’.
Al Adamson deserves to be remembered as more than just a homicide victim though, while his horror movies will always hold a special place in my heart, The Dynamite Brothers ranks alongside Satan’s Sadists, The Female Bunch, Black Samurai and Death Dimension as one of the legitimately great Al Adamson films. Its badass credentials are such that clips from the film- and part of its title- even found their way into the affectionate, blaxploitation homage Black Dynamite (2009), and let’s face it if The Dynamite Brothers is good enough for Black Dynamite, then it sure is good enough for yo’ honky asses too.
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