The Last Dragon

As I said before, not all Blackbusters are bad. Some of them are awesome such as the 80s classic "The Last Dragon." I've probably seen this movie way too many times to count, and it's still entertaining every time. For several reasons "The Last Dragon" is an obvious Blackbuster:

1. It was produced by Motown's Berry Gordy and any produced by him is a Blackbuster.

2. Anytime I've mentioned this movie to any of my non black friends they have no clue what I'm talking about.

It features actor Taimak as main character Leroy and actress Vanity, Prince's protege, as music video host Laura Charles, Leroy's love interest. Also, there are some surprisingly notable actors in smaller roles like Keisha Knight Pulliam (Rudy from the Cosby Show), Chazz Palminteri, and William H. Macy.

In the movie, Leroy, a black teenage martial arts student living in New York City, desires to be like his idol Bruce Lee and sets out to reach the highest level of martial arts accomplishment known as "The Last Dragon." When one reaches this level, he then possess a mystical energy called "the glow." While on the way to achieving this goal, he encounters a crooked arcade mogul (evil white guy) who kidnaps his girlfriend, and must battle an evil martial arts master named Sho'nuff, the Shogun of Harlem.

But words alone can not do this justice so check out the trailer posted above. It has several attributes that make it a great movie including: black people doing martial arts, one of the best character names ever "Sho'nuff" (origin of my name), cheesy 80s special effects of glowing and an epic last fight scene (skip ahead to the 4:35 mark) with an extremely catchy song also called "The Last Dragon." Not to mention it makes you yell "who's da mastah?" after viewing it.

Recently, Columbia Pictures has decided to produce a remake of the movie with Wu Tang's RZA as a producer and Samuel L. Jackson as Sho'nuff. Rhianna has also been mentioned for the role of Laura Charles. All this might make Taimak (the star of the original "The Last Dragon") happy because he has apparently written a script for a sequel that he's still trying to get made.

Do yourself a favor and see the original film first.