cult film freak: JIM KELLY'S NOT BLACK BELT JONES IN 'THE TATTOO CONNECTION'

Jim Kelly in THE TATTOO CONNECTION Year: 1978 Rating: ***1/2

With the famous style of camera zooms going quickly forward and pulling back even quicker, THE TATTOO CONNECTION is more of a noirish Asian crime flick than martial arts... although with groovy-smooth ENTER THE DRAGON co-star Jim Kelly imported for universal value and local master kicker Tao-Liang Tan the third-billed buried-lead, there's a whole lot of the latter...

Misleadingly deemed BLACK BELT JONES 2, Kelly (who returned as Jones in HOT POTATO) is an agent named Lucas, and appears about twenty-minutes in after establishing a frantic underworld where a young man's in-hiding after turning on the formidable mob boss...

From THE TATTOO CONNECTION

His sister's played by the extremely cute Shu-Ying Cheng, and one of the main problems is she looks almost identical to Tan's stripper girlfriend Nami Misaki: both women with the same motivation to keep their men out of the crime world...

One of who's killed off quickly, while Tan eventually joins with Kelly to take down the heavies (from low-lit backrooms to seedy nightclubs to industrial train yards to dingy boat decks) in an action-packed potboiler with pretty much everything needed to quench Bruce Lee fans still suffering from the loss: including the finale reunion of Kelly vs muscular henchman Bolo Yeung.