"T.N.T. Jackson" is, admittedly, the kind of thing I wouldn't consider "good", but it does deliver a fair amount of exploitative fun, combining the blaxploitation and martial arts genres. Co-written by actor Ken Metcalf, who plays the white drug lord Sid, and actor Dick Miller - yeah, *that* Dick Miller! - it stars pretty, voluptuous former Playboy Playmate Jeannie Bell as Diana "T.N.T." Jackson, a karate expert who travels to Hong Kong (the movie was actually shot, like many of its kind, in the Philippines) in search of her brother, who was murdered by American hoodlum Charlie (Stan Shaw), who's determined to gain control of the entire local drug trade. T.N.T. teams with local martial arts instructor Joe to take on the bad guys. As produced and directed by the ubiquitous Cirio H. Santiago, the movie is breezy fun, that at the very least is fairly well paced, getting down to business quickly enough and including as many fights as it can. Bell, who displays *plenty* of attitude, comes off well enough in the fight scenes, and has some chemistry with Chiquito, who plays Joe. Incidentally, the write-up in the annual paperback guide to movies by Leonard Maltin and associates has it wrong in that Ms. Bell is *not* constantly getting her top yanked off. She only displays her breasts twice, but in one of these scenes she shows off her body in a highly amusing fight with multiple bad guys that she plays almost totally nude, which has to rank as the highlight of the movie for trash fans watching. The acting from the cast is engaging, with Shaw, who had a respectable subsequent career as a character actor, making for a fun villain, and sexy blonde Pat Anderson playing the lady in Sid's employ who turns out to be a federal agent, or as T.N.T. would put it, a "pig". The fight scenes indeed don't quite work and could have been better choreographed. Accompanied by a typically funky and energetic music score (by Tito Sotto), "T.N.T. Jackson" still makes for an acceptable diversion, if not on the level of blaxploitation icon Pam Grier's best vehicles. The ending is just too abrupt, although it features an unexpected, unlikely, and utterly hilarious act of brutality. Fans of this sort of thing may be reasonably entertained. Seven out of 10.
Review of TNT Jackson
