Three the Hard Way

Plot synopsis:
Three The Hard Way was released in 1974 and is considered one of the classic action movies of the blaxploitation genre. Directed by the acclaimed Gordon Parks Jr., son of Gordon Parks (Shaft 1971) and director of Super Fly (1972), the film stars the three biggest black action stars of the era; Jim Brown (The Dirty Dozen, El Condor, Slaughter) as record producer Jimmy Lait, Fred Williamson (Black Caesar, Bucktown) as entrepreneur Jagger Daniels, and Jim Kelly (Enter the Dragon, Black Samurai, Black Belt Jones, One Down Two to Go) as martial arts master Mister Keyes.
Jimmy Lait and his girlfriend, Wendy, come across Jimmy's friend, House, wounded and dying. Lait learns from House that he had escaped from a secret medical experimentation facility. Later in the hospital, a delirious House tells Lait that there is someone who aims to "kill us all" and that they have a way of doing it. However, Lait has to return to the studio to supervise a recording session with a group he's producing, The Impressions (who also sing the soundtrack for the movie). He leaves Wendy (Sheila Frazier - Super Fly, The Super Cops, Starsky and Hutch) to watch over House in the hospital.
While Wendy talks to Jimmy on the phone outside of the room, two men climb through the window and shoot House in cold blood. Wendy walks back in as this is happening and she's kidnapped by the assassins. After finding out about her kidnapping, Jimmy begins a quest to find the whereabouts of his girlfriend, but encounters many attackers trying to stop him. He soon realizes that the job is too much for one man, so he enlists the help of his friends Jagger Daniels and Mister Keyes (named "Mister" by his mother so people would be forced to show him respect), and the three start a rampage of gun fights, fist fights, and explosions to save their race.
The three action stars soon find out that they must defeat a worldwide plot of black genocide concocted by the evil, and nefarious Monroe Feather (Jay Robinson - Hawaii Five-0, Planet of the Apes, Cheers). Monroe Feather is the leader of a secret neo-nazi, white supremacist organization whose chief scientist Dr. Fortrero, (Richard Angarola), has developed a poison that is lethal and only affects African Americans. The organization plans to deploy the serum into the water systems of Washington D.C., Detroit, and Los Angeles, and kill off the black populations.
The movie continues through action scenes and explosions with the three protagonists easily killing and/or disposing of numerous henchmen of the racist organization. Two of the most memorable scenes are Mister Keyes’ New York City fight scene versus a group of crooked police and the interrogation of a captive white supremacist by the female friends of Jagger Daniels. In the former scene, Keyes is framed by NYPD officers placing cocaine in his car. Keyes is confronted by a street cop and upon realizing the officers intentions he engages in a series of martial art kicks, punches, and chops to foil a series of crooked police and get out of the situation. In this scene Jim Kelly shows off his trademark Bruce Lee-like fighting techniques that made him one of the most famous black martial-artist actors of all time. In the latter scene, the three are unable to make a captured man give up his secrets, so Jagger Daniels makes a call to his three multi-cultural friends (black, white, and Asian): The Countess (Pamela Serpe), The Empress (Irene Tsu), and The Princess (Marie O'Henry). These three feminine dominatrixes arrive in style. They are riding blue, red, and white Japanese racing motorcycles with matching leather suits. The three women are all-business and "hungry" to inflict real damage to their captive in order to make him talk. Daniels shows the women much respect and warns Keyes to stay out of their way or he "might not survive". The half-naked dominatrixes, baring their chests, approach the captive man who is in a room by himself. The man, seemingly unafraid at first, believes he is going to have sex with the three women because of their initial appearance. However, he soon finds out he is in for great amounts of pain and humiliation when the women open up their "equipment bags". After some time the women notify the three heroes that the man is ready to talk and they find him in a corner shaking in the fetal position. After the men hear what the captive has to say, the women return to continue their craft but upon seeing them once more the supremacist lets out a yelp and falls over, dead.

Tags: violence, murder

Review:
"Three the Hard Way" earned its reputation on the presence of (and chemistry between) its three roundly diverse Black action stars - Fred Williamson, Jim Brown and Jim Kelly.
It featured some sweet eye-candy along the way (including the always divine Sheila Frazier as imperiled "Wendy" - fresh off of "Superfly" - a more devilish interracial trio of masochistic beauties, and Fred in the bed with yet another babe), an underrated soundtrack by a quartet edition of The Impressions (post-Curtis Mayfield but featured on-screen in a recording session as record producer Brown's rising stars) and all the tricked-out blaxploitation trimmings.The problem is that because the script was anemic of healthy plot twists, padding is embarrassingly in full effect...including an overly long speedboat sequence that plays like a vanity piece for Williamson to pose and look pretty (with a second classy lady by his side less than 5 minutes after leaving the first one - "playa-playa," we get the point), and an equally long stretch of the aforementioned leather-clad "hench-bitches" rumbling into town on their choppers.
Ironically, MVP honors go not to former football giants Brown or Williamson but to Jim Kelly, whoopin' on a crooked cracker cop that makes the mistake of planting some illicit substances in his gold-plated ride.
While the stars' talents weren't totally wasted, "Three the Hard Way" should have been much more epic.Someday an ambitious director and a cast of wanna-be's (likely a rapper or two) will try to remake this flick.
Three the hard way is one of, if not the best blaxplotation movies to come out of the '70s.
The trio consists of Fred Williamson, Jim 'The Dragon' Kelly and Jim Brown on a non-stop thrill ride, a truly fun movie..
"Three The Hard Way" starring Jim Brown, Jim Kelly from "Enter The Dragon", and Fred "The Hammer" Williamson, is an excellent action flick about three black action heroes who go up against a racist (fascist)organization, who are out to kill the black population.
In addition, Jim Kelly, Jim "Slaughter" Brown, and Fred Williamson do an extraordinary job displaying their action hero skills, and should always be remembered as the action heroes who came before Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
However, when I had seen this movie on video, the lighting in some of the action scenes were very hard to see making it very difficult to enjoy throughout the film.
Nevertheless, this movie will always be, in my opinion, one of the best blaxploitation films alongside "Shaft", "Superfly", and "Cleopatra Jones"..
As a fan of the genre, I can say this movie was one of the best low-ends of the genre...i.e. its no Superfly or Shaft, but it doesn't try to be....just pure, clean, racist-killing fun.
Three the Hard Way stars football greats Jim Brown and fred Williamson, and former karate middleweight champion Jim Kelly.
When a neo-nazi leader(Jay"Dr. Shrinker" Robinson) plots to contaminate the waters of three big cities to the extent that only black-americans will be affected, the trio springs into action using street fighting, exploding gun fights,and high kickin' martial arts to thwart the evil villain..
When I was a kid I'd read Right On magazine, and when they said that they were going to make a picture with Jim Brown, Fred(The Hammer) Williamson, Jim(Enter the Dragon)Kelly I couldn't belive it, and then when I went to see another movie at the theater, and seen the previews of "Three the Hard Way" I knew this was a winner, and I was right; this is the best action movie of all time.
The action scenes was non-stop, and the plot was not all that, but the way the big three got together was good, and Sheila Frazier is still beautiful as ever.
Much more ambitious than the usual genre fare, the movie is slickly made, starring three of the most famous stars of the time, Jim Brown, Jim Kelly and Fred Williamson.
The original version included a nude scene by the three motorcycle riding women "interogators" and more closeup kung fu violence, by Jim Kelly.
A group of neo-Nazis plot to poison the water supply of three major American cities with a chemical that will wipe out the black population.
Enter Fred Williamson, Jim Brown and Jim Kelly.
This trio of badasses get on the case and immediately start kicking Nazi butt.Three the Hard Way is an action-packed blaxploitation flick that's main selling point seems to be the inclusion of three big stars of the genre in one movie.
We also have a trio of inter-racial colour co-ordinated topless motorcycle dominatrixes who interrogate one Nazi with methods we can only imagine.This is a fun film full of action and three charismatic leads.
Blaxploitation icons Jim Brown, Fred "The Hammer" Williamson, and Jim Kelly team up for this ass kicking feature.
Entertaining though somewhat lame action film Blaxplotation.Starring Jim Brown, Fred Williamson and the charismatic martial artist Jim Kelly, eternally remembered for his participation in the great martial arts film, Operation Dragon, along with the legendary and ill-fated Bruce Lee, the demolition is a film of pure and simple action.It does not live in marginal places or deal with obscure characters like many other films of its genre but it has a strong pop air, with a very good and colorful photograph.Here is a film of shootings, persecutions and explosions, where the goal is to rescue the damsel in distress, kidnapped by evil whites, as is usual in the genre, whose goal is nothing less than eradicating the black race.Of course, the three black heroes will try to prevent it.There is practically no script or a deep story or anything like it, this is pure cinema of evasion, pure fun, with anthological moments and without much sense, like the three punishing girls, which are the best, the funniest and most interesting of the film by far .The film however stands out for introducing elements of martial arts within the genre in an attempt to bring something new and novel when Blaxplotation and the martial arts genre were at the peak of their popularity.The film then, it is entertaining and curious but not for that reason it is quite simple and without much substance.With everything it is seen quite well..
Three the Hard Way (1974) *** (out of 4) A group of evil whites have come up with a special chemical that can be put into water and it will only harm the black people who drink it.
One black man escapes from their facilities and manages to get word back to Jimmy Lait (Jim Brown) who calls upon Jagger (Fred Williamson) and Mister Keyes (Jim Kelly) to go after the crackers.THREE THE HARD WAY isn't a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination but if you're a fan of the 70's blaxploitation then you're bound to have a good time with it.
The film is pretty much what you'd expect from an exploitation picture of this era as it features a pretty wild and over-the-top story where every white person is a racist nut and every black person is a hero.It appears that director Gordon Parks, Jr. was a fan of explosions because there are quite a few that happen throughout this picture.
This certainly adds to the fun and we've also got several other fun action scenes including a highlight where Brown is being chased around a parking garage constantly having to get out of the way of these cars trying to smash him.As I said, there's certainly nothing ground-breaking from a technical standpoint but fans of the genre should have some fun with this.
Jim Brown, Fred Williamson and Jim Kelly together?
Three The Hard Way is a pretty good 70's action/blaxsploitation flick starring Jim Brown, Fred Williamson and Jim Kelly.
Set to a ridiculous plot, where white neo nazi scientists thought of a way to poison the water supply that is fatal to blacks, but harmless to non blacks.
This sets our three black superheroes in action and Three The Hard Way is packed with lots of beat em'up, shoot em'up and chop sockey butt kicking.
There are scenes in this film that are spoofed in both I'm Gonna Git You Sucka and Black Dynamite, so you know the film is important and a considered a classic in the genre..
I also spotted a goof, when Jim Brown and Fred Williamson were fighting in Chicago and they went from street shoes to sneakers in the same shot.
Whitey has been up to no good as Jim Kelly kicks into action to stop the doomsday for his black people.
From a bad 70's score, to not enough light in many of its scenes, 3 The Hard Way ends with "the 3" blowing up Whiteys car.A cool story to say the very least, I give it an overall score of 3 out of 10 since its fits the category of being a true "black action" film..
"Three the Hard Way" is one of the best Blacksploitation films of the 1970s.
Both are well worth your time and are a lot of fun.When the film begins, an injured black man makes his way to his old friend, Jimmy (Jim Brown).
Well, to help figure all this out, Jim calls in his friends Jagger (Fred Williamson) and Mister Keyes (Jim Kelly).
But when things heat up and a group of assassins tries to take all three of them out, Jagger calls in for reinforcements to fight the evil Mr. Feather (Jay Robinson) and his henchmen.The film has one of the most insane plots I've ever seen in a Blacksploitation movie--so using it as the inspiration for the mega- goofy "Black Dynamite" wasn't a bad idea.
How could you go wrong with Jim Brown, Jim Kelly and Fred Williamson?!
If you are going to send a bunch of rednecks after Jim Brown (Slaughter, The Dirty Dozen), Fred Williamson (Mr. mean, Black Ceasar), and Jim Kelly (Black Belt Jones, Black Samauri), you better bring one thing - a whole bunch of body bags.The ignorant rednecks that planned to kill millions of Afroican-Americans by poisoning the water supply forgot that and suffered for their mistake.Sure, this is another 70's Blaxploitation flick, but it was fun to watch these three in action against dozens of red beret-ed American Nazis who got their ass kicked but good.Also features 70s beauty Jeannie Bell (T.N.T. Jackson, Sex on the Run)..
A white supremacist movements heinous attempts to pollute the water supply of America with a racially selective virus serves as the background for this action packed Blaxploitation classic starring three of the genres biggest stars namely, Jim Brown, Fred Williamson and Jim Kelly.OK, so the acting is mightily ropey in parts, there's a fair bit of padding throughout (usually involving shots of the protagonists driving cars/boats or motorbikes etc whilst the cool and very memorable, groovy conceptual soundtrack plays over the scenes) and the proceedings do require one to really stretch the limits of the suspension of disbelief, but..this is simply so damn cool throughout!
The plot about "Ethnic cleansing" is certainly still topical today, although the way the story is handled is a bit heavy-handed, but what do you expect from a 70's blaxploitation flick?
It's not hard to see why we indulge '70s movies like this THE EASY WAY!.
It features three of the top actors during the era: Jim Brown (SLAUGHTER), Fred Williamson (BLACK CAESAR), and Jim Kelly (BLACK BELT JONES).
The plot sounds fishy, as if it were from a comic book, as terrorists plan to poison the country with toxic chemicals, but much of the action scenes look too darkly filmed only to prevent any further enjoyment.
THREE THE HARD WAY is a colorful blaxploitation movie, albeit not as much fun as it could have been.
The cleansing of the races on this continent is our goal, especially within our great nation, you see?" But the self-proclaimed white supremacists have not reckon with the resistance of the "three icy professionals (German title), Jim Brown and Fred Williamson, two superstars of American Football and Karate Champ Jim Kelly"(German VHS).
THREE THE HARD WAY was staged by Gordon Parks Jr. after the pattern of action films, tailored especially for a black audience, which his father Gordon Parks has successfully established in the early '70s with SHAFT.
The opening of the movie shows Jim Brown driving through L.A. with a white Rolls Royce, accompanied by an extremely cheesy theme song, intoned by the "Impressions", who get the opportunity to present more second-class soul and funk music in the course of the film, sometimes lasting for seemingly endless minutes.
Unfortunately, the film is a bit to epic in scale with it's 93 minutes running time, so the occasionally quite good action and martial arts sequences are not that effective, because too much space has been granted for the dialogs and romantic scenes.
At least, the film is a bit more fun than the majority of the genre, especially because of some pretty slanted ingredients like the neo-fascists who are dressed up with red uniform caps and brown shirts, and the symbol of their organization is clearly reminiscent of the Nazi-SS runes.
"Jimmy Lait" (Jim Brown) is a record producer in Los Angeles who finds out a good friend of his has been shot.
Realizing he needs help he travels first to Chicago to enlist the assistance of a man named "Jagger Daniels" (Fred Williamson) and then to New York for a martial arts expert by the name of "Mister Keyes" (Jim Kelly).
Unfortunately, this movie was hampered by an incredibly far-fetched plot along with several action scenes which were equally unrealistic.
***SPOILERS*** Over the top Blaxploitatiopn flick with the three baddest dudes on the planet Misters Lait Daniels & Keys, Jim Brown Fred Williamson & Jim Kelly, joining forces to take on this Neo-Nazi white supremacist army of red caped brown shirts sh*t kickers who are about to wipe out the black race in cities like Detroit L.A D.C and even Hackensack New Jersey!
That just before he was killed by a band of Neo-Nazies who broke into his hospital room and kidnapped Lait's woman Wendy Kane, Sheila Frazier.Realizing the seriousness of the situation Lait got in touch with his two butt-kicking friends Daniels & Keys to put an end to this danger and do it with style.
Lead by the wimpy looking radio talk-show host Bob Grant look alike Monroe Feather,Jay Robinson, and his partner the evil Dr. Fortero,Richard Angarola, they plan to poison the cities water systems with a toxin, invented by Dr. Fortero,that will only effect the black not white or Asian populations.
With time running out the three black heroes have to find out when the toxin will be put into the city's waters systems before it's too late.
Now with Robinson and his band of Neo-Nazis now history Lait Daniels Kelly and the now freed Webdy Kane are seen happily dancing down the yellow brick road to the jazzy and funky theme music of the movie "Three the Hard Way" during the films ending credits..
Both Jim Brown & Fred Williamson are better actors than were portrayed in this movie.
I remember thinking that both Jim Brown & Fred Williamson should have been ashamed to have this movie released.
Gordon Parks directs some of the action with a sure eye (although there are the usual gaffes one finds in low budget action films, like Jim Kelly's boots changing to tennis shoes during one fight scene), but it's his stars who make this one worth seeing.
While both Jim Brown (a much better actor than one might imagine) and Fred Williamson do their thing, it's the charismatic Jim Kelly who steals the show: he plays Mister Keyes (long before Mister T), a karateka who enlists the aid of one of his students (David Chow, who was the technical adviser on the KUNG FU teleseries) to help him infiltrate a water treatment plant and stop the bad guys.
Jim Kelly was always worth seeing, even in the worst of films (movies like HOT POTATO and THE TATTOO CONNECTION come to mind, though TAKE A HARD RIDE- in which he played a "half-breed" who karate-chops the legs from under a charging horse- come to mind).
When diabolical racist/fascist/evil white cracker Monroe Feather (Robinson), with the help of fellow evil whitey, scientist Dr. Fortrero (Richard Angarola) invent a red serum that is harmless to whites and lethal to blacks and plan to dump it in the water supplies of Washington D.C., Detroit and L.A., they didn't count on one thing - the awesome power of Jimmy Lait (Brown), Jagger Daniels (Williamson) and Mister Keyes (Kelly)!
The action kicks off when Feather's goons kidnap his old lady, Wendy (Frazier), and Lt. Di Nisco (Rocco) is more interested in Lait than in the bad guys.
Perhaps this was such an appealing concept it inspired the movie Ebony, Ivory and Jade (1976).Three the Hard Way is a much better version of the team-up concept than the much later Williamson/Brown outing On the Edge (2002), and provides a lot of the obvious inspiration behind the parodies I'm Gonna Git You Sucka (1988) and Black Dynamite (2008).
All of this came together in the end to produce an above-average blaxploitation film.While it does start to drag a bit right before the climax, travel back in time to when cars were gigantic and boatlike, and when Williamson, Brown and Kelly were the undisputed kings of soulful action..
How's this for a gloriously wild and ludicrous premise: Rich evil white supremacist Monroe Feather (a perfectly slimy portrayal by Jay Robinson) plans on killing the entire black population in America by dumping a lethal serum into the water supply of three major cities.
It's up to three rough'n'tumble macho black super warriors -- music executive Jimmy Lait (big, bad Jim Brown), private eye Jagger Daniels (the ever cool Fred Williamson), and ace martial artist Mister Keyes (an extremely amiable Jim Kelly) -- to stop Feather before it's too late.