ACTION JACKSON

Jeanne Bell karate chops her way across Hong Kong.

TNT Jackson, for which you see the U.S. promo poster painted by John Solie above, is a mid-budget blaxploitation flick shot in the Philippines and Hong Kong, built around clumsy martial arts, a flimsy plot, and shoddy acting. But it has Jeanne Bell. Playboy magazine had made Bell a centerfold in 1969. From there she launched a movie career, with TNT Jackson coming ninth in her filmography.

She plays Diana “TNT” Jackson, who learns that her brother was killed by Hong Kong drug dealers and seeks payback. While the plot is nothing special, Bell certainly is. She was twenty-five and wore a bouffant hair-do when she first appeared in Playboy; in TNT she was thirty and had blossomed into an unforgettable beauty with a frosted afro, kicking and chopping her way across the movie screen.

All the fight scenes are hilarious, with their cut-rate choreography and claw-handed posing, but they’re fun to watch, especially the one in which she kicks the shit out of a bunch of guys while wearing only panties. That bit seems to us a clear homage to Reiko Ike’s totally nude fight in 1973’s Sex & Fury, another movie that surpasses its limitations by piling on style and attitude. Is TNT Jackson actually good? No—but we bet it’ll make you smile. It premiered in the U.S. today in 1974.

Philippines, Hong Kong, New World Pictures, TNT Jackson, Playboy, Jean Bell, Jeanne Bell, Jeannie Bell, Pat Anderson, Stan Shaw, Cirio Santiago, John Solie, poster art, cinema, blaxploitation, movie review

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