The Shaw Brothers Bootlegs

[dionbrother]

And to whites, any non-Bruce Lee kung fu film was Chop Suey or Chop Sockey. Didn't matter how good, Shaw Bros. or Jackie Chan, it was Chop Sockey. That dismissive term dates back to the Variety reviews of the early 70s. There was no taboo to cultural ignorance or dimissive racism of a film genre. Just the way things were. Hell, Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns were hated in their day by critics but loved by teenage boys. Now they are considered mandatory classics. Standards change.

[Jesse Smooth]

So High: you are right. The dubbing/subbing issue is a "damned if you, damned if you don't" trap the Shaw films fell into.

Mainstream whites can't be bothered to root for non-white heroes, because they don't have to. They've had white heroes since the inception of film. Blacks and Latinos have no problem rooting for heroes of different races, because they grew up with the majority of movies lacking black and latino heroes. So believing in a Chinese hero is not a stretch for them, because they'd been rooting for Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson since childhood. When there was a boom in black action movies in the 70s, black liberals did everything they could to shut that industry down and they did. Just ask Fred Williamson or Jim Brown. No coincidence the Shaw films had their most loyal following in black theaters. Those audiences were open-minded to rooting for Fu Sheng and Gordon Liu.

Thats the reason why Steve James was regulated to playing sidekick roles. That's why Carl Weather's career flopped. That's why Michael Jai White can't get a break, but Jason Statham can. That's why we're stuck with Tyler Perry movies and pseudo-gospel films.

[shaolinkng7]

No, they are still too slow for YOUNG Americans that make up the bulk of dvd viewing audiences. I never sidestepped anything, you are just playing a game of Mockingbird and taking what I say out of context to extend this argument and write lengthy postings.

Okay, lets go over this again. You said that one reason Shaw Brothers will not sell today is that their action is too slow. While I agree that the choreography looks slow compared to the new wave martial arts films from "Young Master" on up, martial arts fans still buy films with slow pace fights. I used Chuck Norris and Steven Seagal as examples because their choreography is far slower than even the 60's Shaw Brothers films. You argued that Norris and Seagal sold because they were white. A completely irrelevant argument. They are still slower than the Shaw Brothers films.

They [ Norris & Seagal ] filled a void. Eastwood and Bronson were getting old.

Filled what void? Eastwood was at his peak in the 80s. Bronson was fading by the end of the 70s. His peak was around the time the first "Death Wish" was released. I do not think anyone was clamoring for a Bronson type hero by 1980. The big star was Burt Reynolds, and when his career imploded Harrison Ford easily took his place. The only void was the one left by the deaths of John Wayne and Steve McQueen, and once they were gone no studio tried to replace them.

I'm old enough to remember the ads for GOOD GUYS WEAR BLACK and Norris was never promoted as the "guy who fought Bruce Lee." He was promoted as the undefeated American karate champ. Plus, he was white.

That was the tag line for "Good Guys Wear Black"?

"He's Americas undefeated Karate champion, plus he is white"?

But seriously, Everyone knew Chuck Norris as the guy who fought Bruce Lee. That was his initial claim to fame, not winning the Karate championship. He won that back in 1968 and it got him nothing but bit parts. His fight with Lee in "Way of the Dragon" gave him his reputation. I remember seeing countless magazine articles mentioning Norris was the villain from one of the Bruce Lee movies. Did any of his movie trailers mention that he fought Bruce Lee? That I don't remember. It would make more sense for them not to mention it as "Way of the Dragon" was being re-released as "Return of the Dragon" and the same fight was repurposed for the opening of "Game of Death". Both films would have still been making the rounds in the grindhouse/drive-in circuit, so why would American Cinema mention the competition if they did not have to? But I doubt anyone going to see "Breaker! Breaker!" or "Good Guys Wear Black" were not aware that Norris was the guy who fought Bruce Lee.

Seagal's first film was a minor hit, ABOVE THE LAW. and HARD TO KILL was a sleeper hit of 1989. UNDER SIEGE was his biggest grosser, but his prior films did extremely well. Bias got him his break, but audiences liked him and he brought the genre back in 1987-1992. No matter what you think of him now, Seagal was more successful than Norris ever dreamed of.

Exactly. The were sleeper hits. At best they made $40 million at the box office. "Under Siege" made $150 million. He was very lucky. He could have made the transition into Schwarzenegger style action films, but decided he was going to write and direct his own movies. It reminds me of my favorite Steven Seagal story. According to Rob Schneider, when Seagal was hosting Saturday Night Live he emerged from his dressing room and said to everyone "I just read the greatest script ever written". "Who wrote it?" asked Rob. "I did!" replied Seagal. I wonder which film it was?

THE PROTECTOR was shelved and Warner Bros. no longer wanted to make Jackie Chan movies. It was dumped on video with little fanfare and WB no longer wanted to deal with JC or Golden Harvest.

No it wasn't. I can not speak for the rest of the country, but "The Protector" was shown in a lot of theaters in New York City. I recall commercials for the film both on television and on the radio. I checked with IMDB and it opened on 89 screens. That is how they did it back then. Open niche films on a few screens, expand the number of screens if the film finds an audience. That is not shelving a film. It got a release in 1985, and did not go to video until 1986. I don't even think there was such a thing as direct to video in the 80s. According to Jackie Chan, Warner Brothers wanted him to continue making films like "The Protector" and it was his decision not to return to Hollywood until they agreed to make films with his HK persona. It was a long wait.

It wasn't the studio, it was the cheapjack directors Clouse and Glickenhaus who thought they needed to make Jackie "appeal to Americans." Just as much Golden Harvest's fault as WB, contrary to what revisionist history tells you. Jackie was glad to break off from Raymond Chow in the 90s, for better or worse.

Clouse did not attempt to remake Chan's screen persona. On the contrary, "The Big Brawl" was some sort of attempt at comedy utilizing the screen persona Chan had built up between "Snake in the Eagles Shadow" and "Young Master". Glickenhause attempted to remake Jackie's screen persona, but after Warner Brothers approval. It was, more or less, the new persona the studio wanted Chan to have after "The Big Brawl" did poorly at the box office. Clouse and Glickenhause refusing to listen to Chan on his ideas for new stunts was not them being dicks. Both directors were basically bitches for the studio that hired them. All stunts, even something as simple as a back flip out of a car, had to be pre-approved by the insurance company. You could not just improvise something new on the set. You would need to call a representatives from the insurance company who would then go over the new stunt to make sure the star could do it without any risk of injury. By then the set would have been shut down anywhere from an hour to perhaps an entire day. The delay would have cost the studio money, something neither director wanted to be blamed for. They did not have the prestige of Steven Spielberg who regularly revised or added stunts on his action films. The studios would never complain about an Indiana Jones film going over budget because they knew it would be a huge box office hit. Clouse of Glickenhause going over budget could result in either director being fired mid production and replaced with a new hack director.

I always thought the reason Shaw Bros. movies didn't do so well in America is because Americans look at them as cheese films. They don't like dubbing and constantly made fun of the how corny they were. If its subtitled its a wrap too because they use the ole I dont wanna read a movie line. Mainstream Americans that is. We here at KFC are the genre fans.

First of all, watching a subtitled HK film from the 70s was futile. None of the HK studios recorded a soundtrack, and that included Shaw Brothers. Hong Kong was simply too noisy a city, especially when you are trying to film exteriors for historical films while jet planes are flying by every few minutes. The solution was not to bother recording a soundtrack. Most of, if not all of the soundtrack was dubbed after principle photography was completed. In many cases the studios didn't even allow their stars to dub their own voices. They wanted them on the set of their next film. They hired soundalikes to do the voices. The only advantage of subtitled films was the subtitles usually translated the original dialog while the dubbed versions omitted a lot of the subtext.

"Five Fingers of Death" ( a.k.a. "King Boxer" ) did extremely well in America and was considered a hit when Warner Brothers released it. And yes, it was dubbed. Apparently the follow up was "Seven Blows of the Dragon", a reedited version of "The Water Margin". Roger Corman was hired by Warner Brothers to edit and dub the new version. A two hour epic was edited down to 79 minutes ( one hour, 19 minutes ). The real reason why Shaw Brothers had no North American hits following "Five Fingers of Death" was that so few of their films actually got distributed during the height of the 70s Kung Fu craze. Warner Brothers immediately switched to producing their own martial arts movies, beginning with "Enter the Dragon" and continuing with such films as "Black Belt Jones". As far as I can tell, there was a gap of six years before the next Shaw Brothers film got released in North America. World Northal released "Master Killer" in 1979 to actual critical acclaim. But by this time other distributors had released really crappy low budget martial arts movies that helped kill the popularity of the genre. By the time World Northal began releasing Shaw Brothers films to theaters, they were reduced to the grind house/drive-in circuit. Martial arts films were no longer being shown in mainstream theaters. Even Chuck Norris movies were hard to find. Had their been a constant flow of Shaw Brothers films to theaters during the mid 70s then they could have had a string of hits and built their reputation.

Mainstream whites can't be bothered to root for non-white heroes, because they don't have to. They've had white heroes since the inception of film.

There had been a few non-white heroes in mainstream films. Both Charlie Chan and Mr Moto had popular film series that spanned the 1930s and 1940s. of course, both characters were played by white actors in makeup, but never the less they were presented as Asian characters and were very popular with white audiences. I do not believe that whites did not want to see non-white heroes. It was more the studios deciding not to risk films or television shows with minority heroes because they were afraid that the films would never sell. The studios did not believe a Chinese actor could be a star. Allowing a Chinese actor to play a sidekick was permissible, but whenever a movie called for an Asian lead they would award the part to a white actor. The studios told Bruce Lee he could never be a leading man, that white Americans would never accept a Chinese actor. "Enter the Dragon" proved them wrong. It made Bruce Lee a huge star even though he was already dead. Bruce Lee is still a huge star in America. One of the few actors from the 70s that is still a household name.

Blacks and Latinos have no problem rooting for heroes of different races, because they grew up with the majority of movies lacking black and latino heroes. So believing in a Chinese hero is not a stretch for them, because they'd been rooting for Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson since childhood. When there was a boom in black action movies in the 70s, black liberals did everything they could to shut that industry down and they did. Just ask Fred Williamson or Jim Brown. No coincidence the Shaw films had their most loyal following in black theaters. Those audiences were open-minded to rooting for Fu Sheng and Gordon Liu.

That is one way of putting it. But there was a lot more to the story than minorities being open minded. The movie theaters located in black neighborhoods were often unable to compete with theaters in middle class neighborhoods. Those theaters were often unable to book first run major releases which the studios wanted in theaters that would attract the maximum box office. Put simply, middle class whites were afraid to go into black neighborhoods. The theaters in black neighborhoods did not get mainstream movies until the final week of their run, and often not even then. If a film did exceptionally well, the theaters in the 'good' neighborhoods that had the films first extended the booking until the recall date. If a film did poorly then the distributor would pull it early and replace it with one of the next films in the schedule. There were often weeks where no mainstream Hollywood releases were available for booking. The only alternative was B movies from small independent distributors. This is why so many martial arts movies ended up in black neighborhoods. Because it was easier to book Bruce Li's latest movie for two weeks then it was to book the recent Clint Eastwood flick. The theaters in white middle class neighborhoods were able to book major Hollywood releases, and therefore did not need to book grindhouse films. ( Unless you count the midnight movie circuit made popular by "Rocky Horror Picture Show" ) So basically, martial arts films ended up in neighborhoods that whites were afraid to go to, or in the porn district where teenagers and pre-teens were forbidden to go to. And urban minorities got a lot of martial arts films booked at their local theaters. And one last thing to consider. Theaters in the 'good' neighborhoods charged $2 and up for a ticket while theaters in the minority neighborhoods often went as low as 75¢ a ticket. Most minorities simply could not afford the theaters in good neighborhoods.

[dionbrother]

Okay, lets go over this again. You said that one reason Shaw Brothers will not sell today is that their action is too slow. While I agree that the choreography looks slow compared to the new wave martial arts films from "Young Master" on up, martial arts fans still buy films with slow pace fights. I used Chuck Norris and Steven Seagal as examples because their choreography is far slower than even the 60's Shaw Brothers films. You argued that Norris and Seagal sold because they were white. A completely irrelevant argument. They are still slower than the Shaw Brothers films.

Yeah, that's what American movie fans look for: fast choreography. If that were true, Hsiao Hou should have been the biggest star in the world because he was the fastest. American moviegoers go for two elements: a star they like or a concept that intrigues them. They don't look for higher quality action scenes or some consistent look into a foreign countries' culture or history. They liked Chuck Norris because he was the all-American blue collar redneck doing some sharp karate moves. They liked Seagal because he appeared "real" and invincible. He didn't do anything fancy. Ever talk to white guys in the 80s about Chinese martial arts films? All I ever heard was "why do they do all those acrobatics and flips when they could just punch the guy?" and "Nobody can get hit 30 times and still stand up in a fight." White Americans, for the most part, were just extremely ignorant of martial arts as entertainment. Even legit martial artists hated Chinese kung fu films.

Filled what void? Eastwood was at his peak in the 80s. Bronson was fading by the end of the 70s. His peak was around the time the first "Death Wish" was released. I do not think anyone was clamoring for a Bronson type hero by 1980. The big star was Burt Reynolds, and when his career imploded Harrison Ford easily took his place. The only void was the one left by the deaths of John Wayne and Steve McQueen, and once they were gone no studio tried to replace them.

Eastwood's peak was the 70s. EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE was his biggest hit. Burt didn't do straight up action movies. His best, SHARKY'S MACHINE was a bomb. His hits were car chase comedies that eventually killed his career.

But seriously, Everyone knew Chuck Norris as the guy who fought Bruce Lee. That was his initial claim to fame, not winning the Karate championship. He won that back in 1968 and it got him nothing but bit parts. His fight with Lee in "Way of the Dragon" gave him his reputation. I remember seeing countless magazine articles mentioning Norris was the villain from one of the Bruce Lee movies. Did any of his movie trailers mention that he fought Bruce Lee? That I don't remember. It would make more sense for them not to mention it as "Way of the Dragon" was being re-released as "Return of the Dragon" and the same fight was repurposed for the opening of "Game of Death". Both films would have still been making the rounds in the grindhouse/drive-in circuit, so why would American Cinema mention the competition if they did not have to? But I doubt anyone going to see "Breaker! Breaker!" or "Good Guys Wear Black" were not aware that Norris was the guy who fought Bruce Lee.

Not one single trailer for any Norris movie ever mentioned Norris as the guy who fought Bruce Lee. American Cinema four-walled Norris' movies into mainstream cinemas(white suburbs). They were not debuted on the drive-in/grindhouse circuit. I remember radio ads for THE OCTAGON and A FORCE OF ONE on white radio stations. Norris' movies were pushed hard, did well and he got deals with Columbia and MGM/UA.. I didn't know Norris was in a Bruce Lee movie until my Uncle told me. Back then(1979-1980), you could only see RETURN OF THE DRAGON if Columbia Pictures recirculated it on the grindhouse circuit. We didn't have access to info at the touch of a button back then. Different world. Info traveled slow.

Exactly. The were sleeper hits. At best they made $40 million at the box office. "Under Siege" made $150 million. He was very lucky. He could have made the transition into Schwarzenegger style action films, but decided he was going to write and direct his own movies. It reminds me of my favorite Steven Seagal story. According to Rob Schneider, when Seagal was hosting Saturday Night Live he emerged from his dressing room and said to everyone "I just read the greatest script ever written". "Who wrote it?" asked Rob. "I did!" replied Seagal. I wonder which film it was?

Seagal's ego did him in. If he had continued to make "Good cop has a bad day" low budget theatricals, he wouldn't be stuck in DTV hell. In many ways, UNDER SIEGE being a big hit was bad for him..

No it wasn't. I can not speak for the rest of the country, but "The Protector" was shown in a lot of theaters in New York City. I recall commercials for the film both on television and on the radio. I checked with IMDB and it opened on 89 screens. That is how they did it back then. Open niche films on a few screens, expand the number of screens if the film finds an audience. That is not shelving a film. It got a release in 1985, and did not go to video until 1986. I don't even think there was such a thing as direct to video in the 80s. According to Jackie Chan, Warner Brothers wanted him to continue making films like "The Protector" and it was his decision not to return to Hollywood until they agreed to make films with his HK persona. It was a long wait.

It was dumped on the New York market where it bombed. 89 screens is awful. Didn't play across the country, which is shameful for a Warner Bros. product. It sat on the shelf for a year, and played the Phillipines and Hong Kong at least half a year before 42nd street. Of course, it fucking blew as a movie. Warners knew it was a dog. There was no offer on the table for more Jackie movies, no matter what he says now. Golden Harvest was pushing super hard for the unmade SINGAPORE SLING in 1987, going after Tom Hanks, then Chevy Chase, and then Jim Belushi. Nobody wanted to make it. There was talk of a collaboration with Burt Reynolds in a buddy comedy with them as spies, but also never made.

Clouse did not attempt to remake Chan's screen persona. On the contrary, "The Big Brawl" was some sort of attempt at comedy utilizing the screen persona Chan had built up between "Snake in the Eagles Shadow" and "Young Master". Glickenhause attempted to remake Jackie's screen persona, but after Warner Brothers approval. It was, more or less, the new persona the studio wanted Chan to have after "The Big Brawl" did poorly at the box office. Clouse and Glickenhause refusing to listen to Chan on his ideas for new stunts was not them being dicks. Both directors were basically bitches for the studio that hired them. All stunts, even something as simple as a back flip out of a car, had to be pre-approved by the insurance company. You could not just improvise something new on the set. You would need to call a representatives from the insurance company who would then go over the new stunt to make sure the star could do it without any risk of injury. By then the set would have been shut down anywhere from an hour to perhaps an entire day. The delay would have cost the studio money, something neither director wanted to be blamed for. They did not have the prestige of Steven Spielberg who regularly revised or added stunts on his action films. The studios would never complain about an Indiana Jones film going over budget because they knew it would be a huge box office hit. Clouse of Glickenhause going over budget could result in either director being fired mid production and replaced with a new hack director.

All bullshit. Jackie fought with both directors, and came close to walking off the set many times. THE PROTECTOR was such a troubled production, the crew pushed for Jackie to fire Glickenhaus(who literally didn't know what to do day after day), but supposedly the contract forbade it. Glickenhaus wasn't even aware Jackie re-edited and shot additional footage for Asia until Bey Logan told him 10 years later. The real problem is Golden Harvest. They were notorious cheapskates and never concerned themselves with quality for international productions.

"Five Fingers of Death" ( a.k.a. "King Boxer" ) did extremely well in America and was considered a hit when Warner Brothers released it. And yes, it was dubbed. Apparently the follow up was "Seven Blows of the Dragon", a reedited version of "The Water Margin". Roger Corman was hired by Warner Brothers to edit and dub the new version. A two hour epic was edited down to 79 minutes ( one hour, 19 minutes ). The real reason why Shaw Brothers had no North American hits following "Five Fingers of Death" was that so few of their films actually got distributed during the height of the 70s Kung Fu craze. Warner Brothers immediately switched to producing their own martial arts movies, beginning with "Enter the Dragon" and continuing with such films as "Black Belt Jones". As far as I can tell, there was a gap of six years before the next Shaw Brothers film got released in North America. World Northal released "Master Killer" in 1979 to actual critical acclaim. But by this time other distributors had released really crappy low budget martial arts movies that helped kill the popularity of the genre. By the time World Northal began releasing Shaw Brothers films to theaters, they were reduced to the grind house/drive-in circuit. Martial arts films were no longer being shown in mainstream theaters. Even Chuck Norris movies were hard to find. Had their been a constant flow of Shaw Brothers films to theaters during the mid 70s then they could have had a string of hits and built their reputation.

No. National General released Shaw films in the US, as did Serafilm Karalexis. World Northal had them in grindhouse theaters possibly as far back as 1977. There were other independents that may have released them. MASTER KILLER had no critical acclaim. Critics didn't review these movies stateside. They were considered grindhouse fodder for minorities. When were Chuck Norris movies hard to find? From GOOD GUYS WEAR BLACK to INVASION USA, his flicks got huge releases in white suburban theaters. I saw LONEWOLF MCQUADE on opening night. Packed house. And I lived in a small town in the Bible Belt.

There had been a few non-white heroes in mainstream films. Both Charlie Chan and Mr Moto had popular film series that spanned the 1930s and 1940s. of course, both characters were played by white actors in makeup, but never the less they were presented as Asian characters and were very popular with white audiences. I do not believe that whites did not want to see non-white heroes. It was more the studios deciding not to risk films or television shows with minority heroes because they were afraid that the films would never sell. The studios did not believe a Chinese actor could be a star. Allowing a Chinese actor to play a sidekick was permissible, but whenever a movie called for an Asian lead they would award the part to a white actor. The studios told Bruce Lee he could never be a leading man, that white Americans would never accept a Chinese actor. "Enter the Dragon" proved them wrong. It made Bruce Lee a huge star even though he was already dead. Bruce Lee is still a huge star in America. One of the few actors from the 70s that is still a household name.

But the big studios never took a chance on a Chinese hero for the rest of the decade. Major studios gave up on mainstream martial arts movies around 1974. WB's Jim Kelly movies were made for black cinemas. Never aimed at white audiences. Kung fu movies were considered a passe trend and the genre was written off as chop suey.

That is one way of putting it. But there was a lot more to the story than minorities being open minded. The movie theaters located in black neighborhoods were often unable to compete with theaters in middle class neighborhoods. Those theaters were often unable to book first run major releases which the studios wanted in theaters that would attract the maximum box office. Put simply, middle class whites were afraid to go into black neighborhoods. The theaters in black neighborhoods did not get mainstream movies until the final week of their run, and often not even then. If a film did exceptionally well, the theaters in the 'good' neighborhoods that had the films first extended the booking until the recall date. If a film did poorly then the distributor would pull it early and replace it with one of the next films in the schedule. There were often weeks where no mainstream Hollywood releases were available for booking. The only alternative was B movies from small independent distributors. This is why so many martial arts movies ended up in black neighborhoods. Because it was easier to book Bruce Li's latest movie for two weeks then it was to book the recent Clint Eastwood flick. The theaters in white middle class neighborhoods were able to book major Hollywood releases, and therefore did not need to book grindhouse films. ( Unless you count the midnight movie circuit made popular by "Rocky Horror Picture Show" ) So basically, martial arts films ended up in neighborhoods that whites were afraid to go to, or in the porn district where teenagers and pre-teens were forbidden to go to. And urban minorities got a lot of martial arts films booked at their local theaters. And one last thing to consider. Theaters in the 'good' neighborhoods charged $2 and up for a ticket while theaters in the minority neighborhoods often went as low as 75¢ a ticket. Most minorities simply could not afford the theaters in good neighborhoods.

[bobo]

just to put my 2 cents in-----i love the original shaw english dubs--always have always will. yes --i was around when the kung fu trend started and i saw hundreds of them at theaters and drive ins. much better than the crap they are trying to sell us now.

[shaolinkng7]

Yeah, that's what American movie fans look for: fast choreography. If that were true, Hsiao Hou should have been the biggest star in the world because he was the fastest.

You were the one who made the argument that Shaw Brothers movies are too slow to sell today.

American moviegoers go for two elements: a star they like or a concept that intrigues them. They don't look for higher quality action scenes or some consistent look into a foreign countries' culture or history.

If Americans do not care for quality action scenes then "Rumble in the Bronx" would have never been a box office hit purely on the advertising campaign "He does his own stunts!!!". If they did not care about foreign countries culture or history then "Kung Fu" would have never been a hit television series. It may be easier to market a film with a popular star or the current fad genre, but the right marketing can sell any genre or actor. Take the film "The Artist". Foreign films, especially French films, are not suppose to appeal to Americans. Black and white films are supposedly a turn off to Americans, so much that classics like "High Noon" and "Key Largo" have been colorized. And no one wants to see a silent film anymore, right? Yet here was a French, black and white silent film that made about $30 million at the box office in this country. It did better at the box office than Jennifer Aniston's "Wanderlust" which was suppose to be a film Americans wanted to see.

Eastwood's peak was the 70s. EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE was his biggest hit.

Not at his peak in the 80's? The catch phrase of the decade was "Go ahead, make my day!" He directed his most ambitious and expensive film "Firefox". You really want to be technical about it, his peak began in 1971 and did not end until 1995 with "Bridges of Madison County". But if you are going to say he peaked in the 1970s because his orangutan comedy made the most money, then you may as well say Harrison Ford peaked in the 70s with "Star Wars: A New Hope". At any rate, Clint Eastwood had not dropped off the map in 1979, so there was no void to fill.

Burt didn't do straight up action movies. His best, SHARKY'S MACHINE was a bomb. His hits were car chase comedies that eventually killed his career.

"The Longest Yard"? "Gator"? "Sharky's Machine"? "Malone"? "Stick"? "City Heat"? That Mexican shark movie he thought everyone forgot about but then got re-released after Jaws was a hit? Even if you were to exclude the car chase comedies, most of his output was action films. As for them being "straight up action movies"(?). I am not sure what you mean by that, but American action films prior to "Raiders of the Lost Ark" had always been thin in action since the end of the silent era, and I have already explained why the insurance companies were responsible for that. Burt's films were the standard when it came to Hollywood action in the 70s and 80s.

American Cinema four-walled Norris' movies into mainstream cinemas(white suburbs). They were not debuted on the drive-in/grindhouse circuit. I remember radio ads for THE OCTAGON and A FORCE OF ONE on white radio stations. Norris' movies were pushed hard, did well and he got deals with Columbia and MGM/UA.. I didn't know Norris was in a Bruce Lee movie until my Uncle told me. Back then(1979-1980), you could only see RETURN OF THE DRAGON if Columbia Pictures recirculated it on the grindhouse circuit. We didn't have access to info at the touch of a button back then. Different world. Info traveled slow.

Aside from New World Pictures and Troma Entertainment, I don't think any studio specifically made movies to be released on the drive-in/grindhouse circuit. I recall all the Chuck Norris films up to "Missing in Action" getting very brief runs, if any, at mainstream theaters. By the time Siskle & Ebert got around to reviewing them they were already in the grindhouse theaters. Even the one he did for M.G.M. seemed to be out of the theaters almost overnight. "Missing in Action" was the turning point, doubling the box office of his previous films and keeping it in the mainstream theaters for a month or two. The films that followed all had decent theatrical runs, a string of mini-hits that included "Delta Force", "Firewalker", "Invasion U.S.A." and "Code of Silence". The run ended with "Hero and the Terror" which returned Chuck to obscurity. By that time independents and drive-ins were all but done in by the rise in popularity of the multiplex. With no cheap theaters to fall back on, Chuck's movies seemed to be going directly to video. Making the move to "Walker: Texas Ranger" could not have come at a better time.

Chuck had one early film that was shown in mainstream theaters, "Game of Death". I remember there being an urban legend that Bruce Lee had died as a result of injuries sustained when he fought Chuck Norris on the "Game of Death" set. We did not know that the Chuck Norris fight scene was lifted from "Way of the Dragon", and Lee's final screen fight was with Samo Hung on the "Enter the Dragon" set.

Seagal's ego did him in. If he had continued to make "Good cop has a bad day" low budget theatricals, he wouldn't be stuck in DTV hell. In many ways, UNDER SIEGE being a big hit was bad for him.

I will have to disagree. There is only so many times you could show that same formula, which is why studios stopped using it by the 90s. Seagal needed to move on to something else. Having "Under Siege" gave him the opportunity to move on from martial arts to the more popular "Die Hard" formula films, and from there into general mainstream action/adventure with a few comedies. That is how Arnold Schwarzenegger did it, and later Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Segal had his opportunity to do the same but blew it by making films even his fans could not stomach.

It [ The Protector ] was dumped on the New York market where it bombed. 89 screens is awful. Didn't play across the country, which is shameful for a Warner Bros. product. It sat on the shelf for a year, and played the Phillipines and Hong Kong at least half a year before 42nd street. Of course, it fucking blew as a movie. Warners knew it was a dog.

That was the standard way major studio films were distributed back then. You started in just two cities, usually New York and Los Angeles. You usually showed them on less screens than 89. For a week or two new movies were shown at theaters with names like Zigfield or Majestic and were far more expensive than the regular theaters. After a "two week engagement" the movie was expanded to more screens and advertised as "Now at a theater near you", and from there was distributed to the rest of the country. If, for any reason, the film did poorly during this probationary period then it would be pulled from general distribution. The big studios had several films scheduled for release, so they could afford to shelve a movie that was performing poorly in favor of distributing one of their more successful films to more screens. It was almost standard practice to release a film in foreign countries anywhere up to a year before it got a domestic release. This gave the studio an opportunity to turn an early profit which they could use to finance the American distribution. It also gave them time to retool the film should it perform poorly outside the country. They eventually had to stop doing this. I believe the problem started with "Supergirl". Warner had released it in Japan nearly a year before they had planned to release it in the United States. In Japan it went through it's theatrical run then on to home video. Copies of the video were imported to the United States and made it to video stores that rented the movie months before it was scheduled to hit the theaters. Warner tried to sue, but it turned out a loophole in the law allowed anyone to sell foreign VHS tapes to other countries as long as they were sold as "used", and this could easily be achieved by the distributor removing the factory seal off of each tape. It was not until "Batman" that Warner Brothers began distributing domestic films nationwide on the same date, and that was because "Batman" had such great pre-release buzz that they wanted it in as many theaters as possible before the buzz died down.

There was no offer on the table for more Jackie movies, no matter what he says now. Golden Harvest was pushing super hard for the unmade SINGAPORE SLING in 1987, going after Tom Hanks, then Chevy Chase, and then Jim Belushi. Nobody wanted to make it. There was talk of a collaboration with Burt Reynolds in a buddy comedy with them as spies, but also never made.

No, what Warner Brothers and any other studio were not interested in was financing a movie that Golden Harvest completely produced. Both "The Big Brawl" and "The Protector" were Warner Brothers productions with Golden Harvest getting production credit for basically lending out Jackie Chan and providing little else. Jackie refused to be in any more pictures that he had no creative input in. And I am sure Golden Harvest wanted to protect their studio's biggest star by keeping him out of any more bad movies that could have tanked his popularity in the Asian market. But there would have been interest by Warner Brothers and the other Hollywood studios to continue making films with Chan, provided he was in one of their movies. Chan may not have been a star in the United States yet, but his films made millions overseas. Warner wanted to tap into that revenue and was not thrilled that Golden Harvest were the ones who had the Asian distribution rights. Golden Harvest made about $12 Million on "The Protector", not as much as Chan's other films were making at the time, but a huge profit for a studio that did not have to pay for the production. If Chan wanted to he could have legally gone directly to Warner Brothers and cut Golden Harvest out of the next production. Chan wanted full control of any further film production, so that was out of the question. But if he had been determined to become a Hollywood star at the cost of his Asian popularity, then Warner Brothers would have easily cast him in the same movies that eventually went to Steven Seagal. There was still a chance they could make him a star in the U.S., but even if they could not pull that off they would have made a mint off of the foreign market.

There were many attempts by Hollywood to lure Jackie Chan over to the United States prior to the New Line re-release of "Rumble in the Bronx", the most notable being an open public offer Sylvester Stallone kept making for Chan to co star in a proposed "Rambo IV". Chan never agreed to the project, and that film ultimately was never made.

Burt Reynolds would have never made any movie with Jackie Chan. Jackie stole "Cannonball Run" and Burt never forgot it. Audiences loved Jackie Chan's character, and applauded him when he fought the motorcycle gang at the end of the movie. When the sequel came out Burt had Needham bury Jackie's character. Instead of driving the car Chan was stuck in the back seat behind giant Richard Kiel, and at the movie's end where the entire cast gets into a brawl Jackie is barely shown. Even the orangutan gets more screen time in that scene. Burt Reynolds had become a very arrogant prick by that time and would never want to be part of a picture where his co-star stole the attention from him. ( This is why "City Heat", made the same year, was a bit of a surprise. He agreed to a co-star credit below Clint Eastwood, more proof that Eastwood was at his peak during those years. )

The real problem is Golden Harvest. They were notorious cheapskates and never concerned themselves with quality for international productions.

Golden Harvest "notorious cheapskates"??? The studio that outbid Shaw Brothers for Bruce Lee? The first HK studio to put Star Wars quality special effects in an Asian film? The studio that allowed Jackie Chan to film "Operation Condor", the most expensive HK film ever made at the time? Golden Harvest did not involve themselves in international productions for several reasons. Those films were made as a bid to turn one of their stars into a worldwide box office star. This was something only Hollywood was able to achieve at the time. Bruce Lee had become a worldwide star, but after he was dead. Golden Harvest was hoping that the same could happen for one of their other stars. They yielded to the Hollywood producers because they promised a bigger budget than Golden Harvest could afford, and claimed they knew best what pictures would appeal to American audiences.

National General released Shaw films in the US, as did Serafilm Karalexis. World Northal had them in grindhouse theaters possibly as far back as 1977. There were other independents that may have released them.

I am pretty sure that National General did not release any Shaw Brothers movies beyond 1973. And as for Serafilm Karalexis, that I never heard of and would be very surprised he would have actually spent the extra money for a quality HK film. According to multiple sources, "Master Killer" was the first of the World Northal Shaw Brothers releases. They released older Shaw Brothers films, but years after they had been produced.

MASTER KILLER had no critical acclaim. Critics didn't review these movies stateside. They were considered grindhouse fodder for minorities.

Very funny. We all know that by 79' martial arts films were no longer being reviewed by mainstream critics ( although TV critic Pia Lindstrom continued to review any martial arts film on WNBC well into the mid 80s ). But they were reviewed in most of the martial arts magazines. With exception to Ric Meyers, most of these critics stuck to the dubbed releases. They raved when they saw "Master Killer", which was the first big budget martial arts film they had seen since ETD. These are the same critics who had previously been reviewing crap like "Bruce Lee's Ways of Kung Fu" and Golden Harvest's released version of "Game of Death", so seeing a Shaw Brothers film was a revelation to them.

When were Chuck Norris movies hard to find? From GOOD GUYS WEAR BLACK to INVASION USA, his flicks got huge releases in white suburban theaters. I saw LONEWOLF MCQUADE on opening night. Packed house. And I lived in a small town in the Bible Belt.

Bible Belt? Now your arguments are beginning to make more sense. You do realize that the distribution of movies in the Bible Belt region was akin to a different planet than how films were distributed to the rest of the United States back in those days ( and possibly still is. ) Despite the existence of the MPAA and their ratings system, there were still censorship boards back in the 80s where basically entire counties would yield to a group of prudes, usually the local clergymen, who would preview every film to determine if they would allow them to play at the local theaters. If they did not approve of a film it was banned. According to Warner Brothers "Monty Python's Life of Brian", a major release in 1979, was banned everywhere in the Bible Belt. Because of this distributors would send films to the Bible Belt last, weeks, even months after they played in the rest of the country. The reason for this was they would allow the censorship boards to cut anything they found offensive off of the distribution print. They did not like a film because it had some nudity then they would cut the nude scene out after which the film was approved. I once talked with someone who said they cut most of the beginning of "Jaws" in the town he lived in. Censorship was uneven. One county may have allowed an R film to play unedited provided the local theaters agreed to restrict pre-teens from buying tickets, while the next county over would want the same R film edited down to a G film. Distributors did not want new prints cut. They did not mind as much after a few weeks when those same prints got worn down and were nearing the end of their run. Some studios would re-cut their own movies themselves, making them Bible Belt safe. This would also occur long after the rest of the country got those same movies first.

Because the Bible Belt regions got movies last, they often did not get films distributed to the rest of the country. If a film tanked in New England, the Midwest and The West Coast then theaters in the South would not be interested in booking a dog no one wanted to see. In New York City dozens of films are released every week. Most of the studio releases get pulled long before they reach the Bible Belt. This opens the door for small distributors like American Cinema who had an entire region with less competition from the major studios. You ever remember seeing a major movie star promoting his/her latest film on Johnny Carson, then never hearing of that film again? That film got a major release in most of the country. Chuck Norris films would have been more prominent in the South because most of the competition was gone. As I already said, the early Chuck Norris films went strait to the grindhouse theaters in NYC, or got a brief mainstream run that ended very quickly.

But the big studios never took a chance on a Chinese hero for the rest of the decade. Major studios gave up on mainstream martial arts movies around 1974.....Kung fu movies were considered a passe trend and the genre was written off as chop suey.

Gave up is not exactly what happened. Warner Brothers went after Bruce Lee because he was Asia's #1 box office star. There was no superstar as popular as Bruce Lee until Jackie Chan, and once again Warner Brothers was interested. He could have made a film for Warner Brothers as early as 1979 but he was still contacted to Lo Wei with his Golden Harvest contract still pending. American Asian actors were all character actors, not leading man material. The closest there was back then was George Takei, but his association with Star Trek kept him and the rest of the ST cast from finding much work in the 70s. David Carradine was still passing himself off as Asian well into the 90s and still able to get a few leading roles.

Hollywood did not give up on mainstream martial arts, but for a while toned down the fighting because of the insurance companies!!! "The Ultimate Warrior" had been planned as a martial arts film. It would have been a great idea for that genre. It was filmed using the same exact script, but with no actual martial art fights. The normal bare knuckle fighting style developed by Hollywood stuntmen was considered a lot safer than martial arts. And besides, it became apparent that trying to put actors like Joe Don Baker into martial arts films did not make them look like Bruce Lee, it just made them look stupid. There was little interest in casting a non martial artist as the lead of a martial arts film until the American ninja cycle began in the 80s. Suddenly you could cast an old fart like Lee Van Cleef as a ninja because no one could tell it was really a stunt double beneath the costume.

WB's Jim Kelly movies were made for black cinemas. Never aimed at white audiences.

"Hot Potato" was made for black cinema? Jim Kelly was the only black actor in the cast, and it had none of the cliches of blaxploitation the way the earlier "Blackbelt Jones" had. That is probably why "Tattoo Connection" made two years later has been erroneously released as "Blackbelt Jones II", because no one can believe that "Hot Potato" was suppose to be the sequel. "Hot Potato" ( released in 1976, two years after you say Warner Brothers gave up on martial arts films, ) was Warner Brothers attempt at another mainstream martial arts film. It was not meant to appeal only to African Americans. Warner Brothers was trying to make a film that appealed to everyone the same way "Enter the Dragon" had. That is why it had the same 4th grade slapstick humor you would normally find in an episode of "The Banana Splits" because the studio thought it would give the film wide appeal. The same logic they used 20 years later when they fired Tim Burton and brought in Joel Schumacher to turn the franchise into a comedy.

[bobo]

serenity now--------serenity now.

[odioustrident]

Where have you read that Burt Reynolds had a definite role in playing down Jackie for the sequel?

[Guest Markgway]

Both "The Big Brawl" and "The Protector" were Warner Brothers productions with Golden Harvest getting production credit for basically lending out Jackie Chan and providing little else.

That's not true. Warners only distributed those films. They were both Golden Harvest productions (The Big Brawl, a co-production with Fred Weintraub who used to work for Warners and probably set up that initial deal).

An interesting side note is that Golden Harvest setup UK-based(!) holding companies to copyright those films. I've no idea why??

[shaolinkng7]

Where have you read that Burt Reynolds had a definite role in playing down Jackie for the sequel?

I don't think anyone has yet investigated and published any articles or books that proved Reynolds was responsible for downplaying Chan. But who else? Jackie had two bosses on that film, Raymond Chow and Hal Needham. One of the two decided that Chan would be buried behind "Jaws" instead of up front, and practically edited Chan out of the ending fight. I doubt it would have been Chow as he was trying to promote his studio's biggest star to a worldwide audience at the time. If you look at all of Jackie's guest starring roles in films like the Lucky Star series, and even crap like "Fantasy Mission Force", you always got him at his best, performing stunts and fights those films did not deserve. He was conscious that his fans would be watching these films and deserved him at his best, even when his part was minuscule. That leaves Needham. So why would an action director want to downplay his film's best asset? The only thing I can come up with is to appease Reynolds. He is the only one associated with that film who would have had a reason to downplay Chan.

That's not true. Warners only distributed those films. They were both Golden Harvest productions (The Big Brawl, a co-production with Fred Weintraub who used to work for Warners and probably set up that initial deal).

An interesting side note is that Golden Harvest setup UK-based(!) production companies to make those films. I've no idea why??

The whole thing is a shell game. From what I have read, both films were financed by Warner Brothers who, among other things, had final say on the script and had final cut above the director on domestic distribution. Golden Harvest was credited as the studio, but had nothing to do with production on either film. The first film was Weintraub and Clouse's show. They convinced Warner Brothers that Chan needed to be in a comedy. I have never seen a script for "The Big Brawl", but it appears that a lot of scenes are missing, particularly ones that would have wrapped up the kidnapped fiance subplot. It is very possible they were never filmed to cut down on production costs. Warner Brothers was not happy with the box office. They had been promised that Chan was as big a star as Bruce Lee, and were expecting it to do as well as "Enter the Dragon". The second movie, "The Protector" was entirely Warner Brothers idea. They wanted a specific formula film, and gave full financing when they approved Glickenhause's script. Once again Golden Harvest got studio and production credits without doing anything on the American version. The whole point of giving Golden Harvest screen credits they did not really deserve and the UK based production companies had to be a tax dodge. Both movies would be legally foreign productions, not Hollywood productions. But you can tell that both movies are 100% Hollywood product. I am guessing that the UK film industry was in such bad shape during the 80s that the taxes were non existent.

[Sandpalm79]

Happy i found this thread. Incredible information in here! thanks OP and everyone who contributed. It is sooo hard to find people that share a passion for Shaw Brothers let alone the minute details about different bootlegs from back in the day!

[reason108]

You were the one who made the argument that Shaw Brothers movies are too slow to sell today.

If Americans do not care for quality action scenes then "Rumble in the Bronx" would have never been a box office hit purely on the advertising campaign "He does his own stunts!!!". If they did not care about foreign countries culture or history then "Kung Fu" would have never been a hit television series. It may be easier to market a film with a popular star or the current fad genre, but the right marketing can sell any genre or actor. Take the film "The Artist". Foreign films, especially French films, are not suppose to appeal to Americans. Black and white films are supposedly a turn off to Americans, so much that classics like "High Noon" and "Key Largo" have been colorized. And no one wants to see a silent film anymore, right? Yet here was a French, black and white silent film that made about $30 million at the box office in this country. It did better at the box office than Jennifer Aniston's "Wanderlust" which was suppose to be a film Americans wanted to see.

Not at his peak in the 80's? The catch phrase of the decade was "Go ahead, make my day!" He directed his most ambitious and expensive film "Firefox". You really want to be technical about it, his peak began in 1971 and did not end until 1995 with "Bridges of Madison County". But if you are going to say he peaked in the 1970s because his orangutan comedy made the most money, then you may as well say Harrison Ford peaked in the 70s with "Star Wars: A New Hope". At any rate, Clint Eastwood had not dropped off the map in 1979, so there was no void to fill.

"The Longest Yard"? "Gator"? "Sharky's Machine"? "Malone"? "Stick"? "City Heat"? That Mexican shark movie he thought everyone forgot about but then got re-released after Jaws was a hit? Even if you were to exclude the car chase comedies, most of his output was action films. As for them being "straight up action movies"(?). I am not sure what you mean by that, but American action films prior to "Raiders of the Lost Ark" had always been thin in action since the end of the silent era, and I have already explained why the insurance companies were responsible for that. Burt's films were the standard when it came to Hollywood action in the 70s and 80s.

Aside from New World Pictures and Troma Entertainment, I don't think any studio specifically made movies to be released on the drive-in/grindhouse circuit. I recall all the Chuck Norris films up to "Missing in Action" getting very brief runs, if any, at mainstream theaters. By the time Siskle & Ebert got around to reviewing them they were already in the grindhouse theaters. Even the one he did for M.G.M. seemed to be out of the theaters almost overnight. "Missing in Action" was the turning point, doubling the box office of his previous films and keeping it in the mainstream theaters for a month or two. The films that followed all had decent theatrical runs, a string of mini-hits that included "Delta Force", "Firewalker", "Invasion U.S.A." and "Code of Silence". The run ended with "Hero and the Terror" which returned Chuck to obscurity. By that time independents and drive-ins were all but done in by the rise in popularity of the multiplex. With no cheap theaters to fall back on, Chuck's movies seemed to be going directly to video. Making the move to "Walker: Texas Ranger" could not have come at a better time.

Chuck had one early film that was shown in mainstream theaters, "Game of Death". I remember there being an urban legend that Bruce Lee had died as a result of injuries sustained when he fought Chuck Norris on the "Game of Death" set. We did not know that the Chuck Norris fight scene was lifted from "Way of the Dragon", and Lee's final screen fight was with Samo Hung on the "Enter the Dragon" set.

I will have to disagree. There is only so many times you could show that same formula, which is why studios stopped using it by the 90s. Seagal needed to move on to something else. Having "Under Siege" gave him the opportunity to move on from martial arts to the more popular "Die Hard" formula films, and from there into general mainstream action/adventure with a few comedies. That is how Arnold Schwarzenegger did it, and later Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. Segal had his opportunity to do the same but blew it by making films even his fans could not stomach.

That was the standard way major studio films were distributed back then. You started in just two cities, usually New York and Los Angeles. You usually showed them on less screens than 89. For a week or two new movies were shown at theaters with names like Zigfield or Majestic and were far more expensive than the regular theaters. After a "two week engagement" the movie was expanded to more screens and advertised as "Now at a theater near you", and from there was distributed to the rest of the country. If, for any reason, the film did poorly during this probationary period then it would be pulled from general distribution. The big studios had several films scheduled for release, so they could afford to shelve a movie that was performing poorly in favor of distributing one of their more successful films to more screens. It was almost standard practice to release a film in foreign countries anywhere up to a year before it got a domestic release. This gave the studio an opportunity to turn an early profit which they could use to finance the American distribution. It also gave them time to retool the film should it perform poorly outside the country. They eventually had to stop doing this. I believe the problem started with "Supergirl". Warner had released it in Japan nearly a year before they had planned to release it in the United States. In Japan it went through it's theatrical run then on to home video. Copies of the video were imported to the United States and made it to video stores that rented the movie months before it was scheduled to hit the theaters. Warner tried to sue, but it turned out a loophole in the law allowed anyone to sell foreign VHS tapes to other countries as long as they were sold as "used", and this could easily be achieved by the distributor removing the factory seal off of each tape. It was not until "Batman" that Warner Brothers began distributing domestic films nationwide on the same date, and that was because "Batman" had such great pre-release buzz that they wanted it in as many theaters as possible before the buzz died down.

No, what Warner Brothers and any other studio were not interested in was financing a movie that Golden Harvest completely produced. Both "The Big Brawl" and "The Protector" were Warner Brothers productions with Golden Harvest getting production credit for basically lending out Jackie Chan and providing little else. Jackie refused to be in any more pictures that he had no creative input in. And I am sure Golden Harvest wanted to protect their studio's biggest star by keeping him out of any more bad movies that could have tanked his popularity in the Asian market. But there would have been interest by Warner Brothers and the other Hollywood studios to continue making films with Chan, provided he was in one of their movies. Chan may not have been a star in the United States yet, but his films made millions overseas. Warner wanted to tap into that revenue and was not thrilled that Golden Harvest were the ones who had the Asian distribution rights. Golden Harvest made about $12 Million on "The Protector", not as much as Chan's other films were making at the time, but a huge profit for a studio that did not have to pay for the production. If Chan wanted to he could have legally gone directly to Warner Brothers and cut Golden Harvest out of the next production. Chan wanted full control of any further film production, so that was out of the question. But if he had been determined to become a Hollywood star at the cost of his Asian popularity, then Warner Brothers would have easily cast him in the same movies that eventually went to Steven Seagal. There was still a chance they could make him a star in the U.S., but even if they could not pull that off they would have made a mint off of the foreign market.

There were many attempts by Hollywood to lure Jackie Chan over to the United States prior to the New Line re-release of "Rumble in the Bronx", the most notable being an open public offer Sylvester Stallone kept making for Chan to co star in a proposed "Rambo IV". Chan never agreed to the project, and that film ultimately was never made.

Burt Reynolds would have never made any movie with Jackie Chan. Jackie stole "Cannonball Run" and Burt never forgot it. Audiences loved Jackie Chan's character, and applauded him when he fought the motorcycle gang at the end of the movie. When the sequel came out Burt had Needham bury Jackie's character. Instead of driving the car Chan was stuck in the back seat behind giant Richard Kiel, and at the movie's end where the entire cast gets into a brawl Jackie is barely shown. Even the orangutan gets more screen time in that scene. Burt Reynolds had become a very arrogant prick by that time and would never want to be part of a picture where his co-star stole the attention from him. ( This is why "City Heat", made the same year, was a bit of a surprise. He agreed to a co-star credit below Clint Eastwood, more proof that Eastwood was at his peak during those years. )

Golden Harvest "notorious cheapskates"??? The studio that outbid Shaw Brothers for Bruce Lee? The first HK studio to put Star Wars quality special effects in an Asian film? The studio that allowed Jackie Chan to film "Operation Condor", the most expensive HK film ever made at the time? Golden Harvest did not involve themselves in international productions for several reasons. Those films were made as a bid to turn one of their stars into a worldwide box office star. This was something only Hollywood was able to achieve at the time. Bruce Lee had become a worldwide star, but after he was dead. Golden Harvest was hoping that the same could happen for one of their other stars. They yielded to the Hollywood producers because they promised a bigger budget than Golden Harvest could afford, and claimed they knew best what pictures would appeal to American audiences.

I am pretty sure that National General did not release any Shaw Brothers movies beyond 1973. And as for Serafilm Karalexis, that I never heard of and would be very surprised he would have actually spent the extra money for a quality HK film. According to multiple sources, "Master Killer" was the first of the World Northal Shaw Brothers releases. They released older Shaw Brothers films, but years after they had been produced.

Very funny. We all know that by 79' martial arts films were no longer being reviewed by mainstream critics ( although TV critic Pia Lindstrom continued to review any martial arts film on WNBC well into the mid 80s ). But they were reviewed in most of the martial arts magazines. With exception to Ric Meyers, most of these critics stuck to the dubbed releases. They raved when they saw "Master Killer", which was the first big budget martial arts film they had seen since ETD. These are the same critics who had previously been reviewing crap like "Bruce Lee's Ways of Kung Fu" and Golden Harvest's released version of "Game of Death", so seeing a Shaw Brothers film was a revelation to them.

Bible Belt? Now your arguments are beginning to make more sense. You do realize that the distribution of movies in the Bible Belt region was akin to a different planet than how films were distributed to the rest of the United States back in those days ( and possibly still is. ) Despite the existence of the MPAA and their ratings system, there were still censorship boards back in the 80s where basically entire counties would yield to a group of prudes, usually the local clergymen, who would preview every film to determine if they would allow them to play at the local theaters. If they did not approve of a film it was banned. According to Warner Brothers "Monty Python's Life of Brian", a major release in 1979, was banned everywhere in the Bible Belt. Because of this distributors would send films to the Bible Belt last, weeks, even months after they played in the rest of the country. The reason for this was they would allow the censorship boards to cut anything they found offensive off of the distribution print. They did not like a film because it had some nudity then they would cut the nude scene out after which the film was approved. I once talked with someone who said they cut most of the beginning of "Jaws" in the town he lived in. Censorship was uneven. One county may have allowed an R film to play unedited provided the local theaters agreed to restrict pre-teens from buying tickets, while the next county over would want the same R film edited down to a G film. Distributors did not want new prints cut. They did not mind as much after a few weeks when those same prints got worn down and were nearing the end of their run. Some studios would re-cut their own movies themselves, making them Bible Belt safe. This would also occur long after the rest of the country got those same movies first.

Because the Bible Belt regions got movies last, they often did not get films distributed to the rest of the country. If a film tanked in New England, the Midwest and The West Coast then theaters in the South would not be interested in booking a dog no one wanted to see. In New York City dozens of films are released every week. Most of the studio releases get pulled long before they reach the Bible Belt. This opens the door for small distributors like American Cinema who had an entire region with less competition from the major studios. You ever remember seeing a major movie star promoting his/her latest film on Johnny Carson, then never hearing of that film again? That film got a major release in most of the country. Chuck Norris films would have been more prominent in the South because most of the competition was gone. As I already said, the early Chuck Norris films went strait to the grindhouse theaters in NYC, or got a brief mainstream run that ended very quickly.

Gave up is not exactly what happened. Warner Brothers went after Bruce Lee because he was Asia's #1 box office star. There was no superstar as popular as Bruce Lee until Jackie Chan, and once again Warner Brothers was interested. He could have made a film for Warner Brothers as early as 1979 but he was still contacted to Lo Wei with his Golden Harvest contract still pending. American Asian actors were all character actors, not leading man material. The closest there was back then was George Takei, but his association with Star Trek kept him and the rest of the ST cast from finding much work in the 70s. David Carradine was still passing himself off as Asian well into the 90s and still able to get a few leading roles.

Hollywood did not give up on mainstream martial arts, but for a while toned down the fighting because of the insurance companies!!! "The Ultimate Warrior" had been planned as a martial arts film. It would have been a great idea for that genre. It was filmed using the same exact script, but with no actual martial art fights. The normal bare knuckle fighting style developed by Hollywood stuntmen was considered a lot safer than martial arts. And besides, it became apparent that trying to put actors like Joe Don Baker into martial arts films did not make them look like Bruce Lee, it just made them look stupid. There was little interest in casting a non martial artist as the lead of a martial arts film until the American ninja cycle began in the 80s. Suddenly you could cast an old fart like Lee Van Cleef as a ninja because no one could tell it was really a stunt double beneath the costume.

"Hot Potato" was made for black cinema? Jim Kelly was the only black actor in the cast, and it had none of the cliches of blaxploitation the way the earlier "Blackbelt Jones" had. That is probably why "Tattoo Connection" made two years later has been erroneously released as "Blackbelt Jones II", because no one can believe that "Hot Potato" was suppose to be the sequel. "Hot Potato" ( released in 1976, two years after you say Warner Brothers gave up on martial arts films, ) was Warner Brothers attempt at another mainstream martial arts film. It was not meant to appeal only to African Americans. Warner Brothers was trying to make a film that appealed to everyone the same way "Enter the Dragon" had. That is why it had the same 4th grade slapstick humor you would normally find in an episode of "The Banana Splits" because the studio thought it would give the film wide appeal. The same logic they used 20 years later when they fired Tim Burton and brought in Joel Schumacher to turn the franchise into a comedy.

Some of what you say rings true regarding "The Bible Belt". We never got the new Hollywood releases when they first came out. Normally it would take anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 months before they would play in my area. Sometimes, we had to drive anywhere from 30 to 60 miles (in one direction) just to watch a movie. For instance: we had to go 60 miles to watch Superman. Alien I saw in my home town and Star Wars in a nearby town that was 30 miles away. It took Star Wars over 1-1/2 years to finally play in my home town; yet, I had already seen it 8 times. You never knew where a movie would be playing unless you drove to that town.

However, I have never heard of a movie studio editing their films for specific counties across the Bible Belt. Each state may have hundreds of counties. That would seem to be a nightmare to figure out and not financially worth it. Perhaps it was regarding certain movie chains that refused to exhibit certain movies because of content. But, it would make more sense not to show the film then to edit it for a specific county or town. I know that I never once encountered an edited movie at the theater the way you describe. However, I have heard of individual theater owners and video store owners who took it upon themselves to edit the films that they showed and rented. Of course, they were sued by the big studios when they found out.

[shaolinkng7]

I have never heard of a movie studio editing their films for specific counties across the Bible Belt. Each state may have hundreds of counties. That would seem to be a nightmare to figure out and not financially worth it. Perhaps it was regarding certain movie chains that refused to exhibit certain movies because of content. But, it would make more sense not to show the film then to edit it for a specific county or town. I know that I never once encountered an edited movie at the theater the way you describe. However, I have heard of individual theater owners and video store owners who took it upon themselves to edit the films that they showed and rented. Of course, they were sued by the big studios when they found out.

The movie studios were not the ones who made the edits. Distribution from the 1940s through the early 1990s was different then what we have now. The late 1930s saw the institution of a strict film code ( a list of dos and don'ts that dictated what could be shown in a movie ) that was suppose to act as a national censorship. That code went as far as demanding all criminals ( monsters included ) are shown receiving proper punishment by the final reel, and that even a married couple be shown in separate beds ( although it was acceptable to show the same sex sharing the same bed, which is why Laurel & Hardy often slept in the same bed. ) But many counties still had their own censorship boards with stricter standards, and found plenty of innocent stuff they imagined was inappropriate. This was not so much a problem in the 40s and 50s, but with the abandonment of the film code in the 1960s to be replaced with the standard rating system, Bible Belt censorship boards began finding a lot they did not like.

Domestic film releases went like this: The studio made very few copies of a major release which went directly to a handful of theaters in each major city. These were called the road show prints. After a couple of weeks the road show prints were pulled, and replaced with prints that were edited down to about 90 minutes. This was the general release print. The road show prints were promoted as an "exclusive engagement" and often the theaters that screened them charged far more for tickets. The studios use the road show to drum up interest in the movie through word of mouth, and to allow the studios to figure out what scenes could be cut based on audience response to scenes in the longer prints. The practice of road show releases died out in the 1970s. Part of the reason was the rise of blockbusters and the studios desire to give major films the widest possible release on opening day rather than limiting the money the next "Star Wars" made by opening it in fewer theaters for two weeks.

When it came to the general release, making copies of each film was expensive. Vary rarely did distributors bother to make fresh prints to replace the films as they wore out from constant screenings. Distributors knew that there were counties that demanded further edits for content. If they refused to allow the prints to be edited then the film would not be allowed to screen in that county, and would be a loss of revenue to the distributor. The answer was to distribute those films to areas like the Bible Belt last. Since by that time the distributed prints were already worn out, it did not matter if individual counties were allowed to cut the prints. After the Bible Belt those prints were usually tossed into an incinerator and burned. Any further releases would need to be copied from the master print. But often distributors would send the worn out prints to television stations, or further distribute them to the grindhouse/drive in circuit where they continued to generate money until one of the reels finally broke beyond repair.

Some of those Bible Belt edited prints actually made it back to New York City. There was a grindhouse theater about a mile away from my house called The Haven that we would all frequently patronize for a single reason, they never enforced the R rating. We always got in without a parent. I doubt any of our parents would have brought us in to see "Porky's". Fortunately The Haven let us in without any accompanying adult. The day we went the theater was jam packed with 8 - 15 year olds and probably only two people above the age of 17. Films at The Haven were almost always double features, and the ticket price never exceeded $1.50. It was a grindhouse alright, but specialized in films that had recently ended their regular theatrical runs. On weeks The Haven could not book any major films it would instead book martial arts or something ridiculous like "Dr Butcher MD" Anyway, the prints shown at The Haven were almost always good and worn out, but we did not mind because we were getting to see naked women, graphic violence, and non stop use of the "F" word. But sometimes we would watch a film and notice there were a lot of jumps that we assumed were due to that particular print breaking several times. Later seeing the same films on WHT or home video we would realize that entire scenes were cut, almost always involving two characters having sex. Robert Rodriguez talked about this while being interviewed for his and Tarantino's film "Grindhouse". He also noticed that grindhouse theaters showed prints that were missing scenes, but attributed the missing footage to some theater owners clipping it out themselves and bringing the clips home for their own private porn collection.

You say you never noticed any edited movies where you lived. You were lucky. Someone once described to me a Bible Belt edited version of "Star Wars" he had seen. Whoever censored the film took out every reference to the Force. The censorship board saw it as some sort of weird non Christian religion and removed it. No Luke Skywalker training to be a Jedi, no Obi Wan telling the Storm Troopers that these were 'not the drones they were looking for', no ghost of Obi Wan telling Luke to use the Force to blow up the Death Star. At least you got to see "Star Wars" intact, but had to travel 30 miles to do so. A lot of counties banned "Star Wars" because they feared it promoted a false religion, others edited the crap out of the film, while others saw no harm. "Star Wars" was very successful, and 20th Century Fox actually wound up making several prints of the film to replace what was worn out. Some theaters in New York had that film booked for more than a year, and were still doing brisk business when Fox finally pulled it from distribution. Part of the success was people like you who saw the movie 8 times. Many kids went to see it 50 or more times during it's initial run. I can imagine how frustrating it was for your local theater owner not to be able to book the film for a year and a half, or possible was told that the film was banned in his county.

[dionbrother]

Chuck had one early film that was shown in mainstream theaters, "Game of Death". I remember there being an urban legend that Bruce Lee had died as a result of injuries sustained when he fought Chuck Norris on the "Game of Death" set. We did not know that the Chuck Norris fight scene was lifted from "Way of the Dragon", and Lee's final screen fight was with Samo Hung on the "Enter the Dragon" set.

Are you being serious or is this a joke? All Bruce fans knew GAME OF DEATH lifted WAY OF THE DRAGON's footage. Anybody that didn't was a retard. Chuck sued Columbia Pictures and Golden Harvest for using his name in GOD's ads.

That was the standard way major studio films were distributed back then. You started in just two cities, usually New York and Los Angeles. You usually showed them on less screens than 89. For a week or two new movies were shown at theaters with names like Zigfield or Majestic and were far more expensive than the regular theaters

Wrong. Warners Bros. gave wide releases to movies they believed in. This was mid-80s, not mid-70s. Movies they were iffy about like BLOODSPORT, SHOWDOWN IN LITTLE TOKYO and ABOVE THE LAW were given regional releases to try them out. ABOVE THE LAW and BLOODSPORT were sleeper hits. SHOWDOWN tanked.

No, what Warner Brothers and any other studio were not interested in was financing a movie that Golden Harvest completely produced. Both "The Big Brawl" and "The Protector" were Warner Brothers productions with Golden Harvest getting production credit for basically lending out Jackie Chan and providing little else

You are 100% wrong. Notice THE BIG BRAWL was released on dvd by Fox and not Warners. Golden Harvest owned it. They produced it. The End.

Burt Reynolds would have never made any movie with Jackie Chan. Jackie stole "Cannonball Run" and Burt never forgot it. Audiences loved Jackie Chan's character, and applauded him when he fought the motorcycle gang at the end of the movie. When the sequel came out Burt had Needham bury Jackie's character. Instead of driving the car Chan was stuck in the back seat behind giant Richard Kiel, and at the movie's end where the entire cast gets into a brawl Jackie is barely shown. Even the orangutan gets more screen time in that scene. Burt Reynolds had become a very arrogant prick by that time and would never want to be part of a picture where his co-star stole the attention from him. ( This is why "City Heat", made the same year, was a bit of a surprise. He agreed to a co-star credit below Clint Eastwood, more proof that Eastwood was at his peak during those years. )

You should be a fantasy writer. The Burt project was mentioned by Jackie's GH producer David Chan in 1988. Jackie and Burt were friends, whether you realize it or not. THE CANNONBALL RUN was a Raymond Chow clusterfuck, meant to prove to Hollywood that GH could make big budget, all star Hollywood movies. It was one of the biggest hits that year.

Golden Harvest "notorious cheapskates"??? The studio that outbid Shaw Brothers for Bruce Lee? The first HK studio to put Star Wars quality special effects in an Asian film? The studio that allowed Jackie Chan to film "Operation Condor", the most expensive HK film ever made at the time? Golden Harvest did not involve themselves in international productions for several reasons. Those films were made as a bid to turn one of their stars into a worldwide box office star. This was something only Hollywood was able to achieve at the time. Bruce Lee had become a worldwide star, but after he was dead. Golden Harvest was hoping that the same could happen for one of their other stars. They yielded to the Hollywood producers because they promised a bigger budget than Golden Harvest could afford, and claimed they knew best what pictures would appeal to American audiences.

They didn't "outbid" for Bruce Lee, Run Run Shaw offered Lee a contract that Lee thought was too cheap so he turned him down. Run Run was quoted "He was just another actor. Who knew?" So in your world, Golden Harvest never produced THE BOYS IN COMPANY C, NIGHT GAMES, THE CANNONBALL RUN, SPEED ZONE, DREAM TO BELIEVE, MEGAFORCE, THE BIG BET, etc.

Very funny. We all know that by 79' martial arts films were no longer being reviewed by mainstream critics ( although TV critic Pia Lindstrom continued to review any martial arts film on WNBC well into the mid 80s ).

Which was my point. Fanzine reviews were meaningless. The only game in town was The Jade Screen(which unlikely had more than 200 subscribers, but only Karen Shaub could tell us). Mainstream criticism was what changed the game for any movie in those days.

Gave up is not exactly what happened. Warner Brothers went after Bruce Lee because he was Asia's #1 box office star. There was no superstar as popular as Bruce Lee until Jackie Chan, and once again Warner Brothers was interested. He could have made a film for Warner Brothers as early as 1979 but he was still contacted to Lo Wei with his Golden Harvest contract still pending. American Asian actors were all character actors, not leading man material. The closest there was back then was George Takei, but his association with Star Trek kept him and the rest of the ST cast from finding much work in the 70s. David Carradine was still passing himself off as Asian well into the 90s and still able to get a few leading roles.

Carradine never passed himself off as Asian. Just the KUNG FU series had him playing a half-Chinese character. There were plenty of huge stars after Bruce Lee in Asia, but the WB wanted a chop sockey star after the Norris movies made good money for American Cinema. Because that's how Hollywood thinks of Asians: martial arts and character roles. Notice there is no Asian-American equivalent to Denzel Washington. The actors are out there, but Hollywood is too racist and ignorant to notice.

"Hot Potato" was made for black cinema? Jim Kelly was the only black actor in the cast, and it had none of the cliches of blaxploitation the way the earlier "Blackbelt Jones" had. That is probably why "Tattoo Connection" made two years later has been erroneously released as "Blackbelt Jones II", because no one can believe that "Hot Potato" was suppose to be the sequel. "Hot Potato" ( released in 1976, two years after you say Warner Brothers gave up on martial arts films, ) was Warner Brothers attempt at another mainstream martial arts film. It was not meant to appeal only to African Americans. Warner Brothers was trying to make a film that appealed to everyone the same way "Enter the Dragon" had. That is why it had the same 4th grade slapstick humor you would normally find in an episode of "The Banana Splits" because the studio thought it would give the film wide appeal. The same logic they used 20 years later when they fired Tim Burton and brought in Joel Schumacher to turn the franchise into a comedy.

HOT POTATO was released on a double bill with the re-release of ENTER THE DRAGON according to magazines of the time, because WB knew it was a dog. TATTOO CONNECTION was intentionally retitled BLACK BELT JONES 2 for the dvd release. It played in cinemas , on tv and was released by Embassy Video as TATTOO CONNECTION. The BB 2 retitling was a recent gimmick. At least they finally released the uncut version.

[dionbrother]

In an interview with Impact Magazine some 20 years ago, James Glickenhaus said Golden Harvest hired him to direct THE PROTECTOR, not Warner Bros. If Warner Bros. really made the film, Glickenhaus would have been fired after a week. I've heard reports from that set. It was a mess. And major studios don't tolerate that sort of incompetence.

[dionbrother]

The market in 1981: there was thought to be a comeback for martial arts movies. The Norris films did well, KILL AND KILL AGAIN was a decent hit for Film Ventures, a re-release of ENTER THE DRAGON outgrossed everything else in the New York area in a 2 week booking, ENTER THE NINJA did decent numbers but unfortunately, that was the peak of the comeback. In 1982, it was pretty much dead until the Seagal/ Van Damme boom. I suppose you could count Sho Kosugi, but he was a victim of his own success.

[dionbrother]

That Burt Reynolds story is so goddamn funny, I am now convinced you are just trolling. "Burt never forgot it." You got us, dude. You really got us. Is Wanchai Transit back? Burt and his toupee never forgive a Hong Kong actor for stealing his hit movie.

[dionbrother]

I heard Burt gut-punched Jackie on the set of CANNONBALL RUN II. And he said "That's for stealing my movie, mop-top!" Then he gave his famous cackle "Bwa-ha-ha-ha!"

[dionbrother]

Also, everybody knows Jackie stole Burt's gum-chewing routine for ARMOUR OF GOD. He originally wanted to cast Eric Tsang in the Dom DeLuise sidekick role, but realized that was pushing the Burt plagiarism "too far." Jackie was quoted as saying "I stole the two Cannonball Run movies from Burt, so I just steal the gum chewing, and Burt might forgive me. It's the rhythm: ba-dada-da-da. Bruce Lee kick high, I kick low!"

[dionbrother]

Richard Kiel followed Jackie to Hong Kong and figured he'd steal ACES GO PLACES 3: OUR MAN FROM BOND STREET from Jackie as well. Only Richard didn't realize he was actually working with Sam Hui. Ah-ha! Fate burned you, Richard Kiel! Bring the monkey next time!

WE ALL KNOW THIS TO BE TRUE!

[dionbrother]

Why would anybody see Chuck Norris' movies? He's sooooo slow. You look at Jackie Chan, now there's a star THAT NEVER, EVER SPEEDS UP HIS FIGHT SCENES. NONE OF THAT UNDERCRANKING FOR JACKIE. It is well known that Brett Ratner and New Line Cinema told Jackie to fight slower in RUSH HOUR, even slower than Chuck Norris so Americans could see what he's doing.

You know who's fast? Hong Kong Phooey! He should have starred in THE OCTAGON. Men, women and children of all ages would have seen it! That dog was faster than a human eye!

[dionbrother]

Do not contest my knowledge, Chop Sockey Buffs! In the 1980s, I read every issue of Fangoria, Chas Balun's Deep Red, Shock Xpress and Femmes Fatales(before my mom threw them out). When I saw Brandon Lee in the brilliant RAPID FIRE(which Jackie plagiarized for POLICE STORY), I knew I discovered an unknown genre. DO NOT QUESTION MY KNOWLEDGE!!!

[Guest Markgway]

The whole thing is a shell game. From what I have read, both films were financed by Warner Brothers who, among other things, had final say on the script and had final cut above the director on domestic distribution. Golden Harvest was credited as the studio, but had nothing to do with production on either film. The first film was Weintraub and Clouse's show. They convinced Warner Brothers that Chan needed to be in a comedy. I have never seen a script for "The Big Brawl", but it appears that a lot of scenes are missing, particularly ones that would have wrapped up the kidnapped fiance subplot. It is very possible they were never filmed to cut down on production costs. Warner Brothers was not happy with the box office. They had been promised that Chan was as big a star as Bruce Lee, and were expecting it to do as well as "Enter the Dragon". The second movie, "The Protector" was entirely Warner Brothers idea. They wanted a specific formula film, and gave full financing when they approved Glickenhause's script. Once again Golden Harvest got studio and production credits without doing anything on the American version. The whole point of giving Golden Harvest screen credits they did not really deserve and the UK based production companies had to be a tax dodge. Both movies would be legally foreign productions, not Hollywood productions. But you can tell that both movies are 100% Hollywood product. I am guessing that the UK film industry was in such bad shape during the 80s that the taxes were non existent.

Sorry, but most of that is nonsense.

My previous post mistakenly used the term production companies when what I meant was holding companies (for copyright). I've amended the text.

[Killer Meteor]

Sorry, but most of that is nonsense.

My previous post mistakenly used the term production companies when what I meant was holding companies (for copyright). I've amended the text.

Warners doesn't even own Big Brawl, its distributed worldwide by whoever has the GH back catalogue.

[Killer Meteor]

I am pretty sure that National General did not release any Shaw Brothers movies beyond 1973. And as for Serafilm Karalexis, that I never heard of and would be very surprised he would have actually spent the extra money for a quality HK film. According to multiple sources, "Master Killer" was the first of the World Northal Shaw Brothers releases. They released older Shaw Brothers films, but years after they had been produced.

I think National General was gone by '74, or became part of Bryanaston (distribtuor of Return Of The Dragon and Texas Chain Saw Massacre), which went under itself under shady mob connections.

Serafilm Karalexis did distribute Duel Of The Iron Fist, but made it shorter by removing the entire last reel! He later brought Snake In The Eagle's Shadow to the States.

Warners distributed Five Fingers Of Death (King Boxer) and and Sacred Knives Of Vengeance (The Killer) in the states, and surprisingly, I think that was it. Even more oddly, they never seemed to distribute any Golden Havest flicks.

In the UK, Warners did handle some more Shaw flicks, including Five Fingers Of Death, which was actually Shaolin Martial Arts.

I wonder if the reason for the lack of Shaw and Golden Harvest US releases was that they were too expensive, asking for more money. A lot of the US releases in the kung fu boom (73-75) were very low budget flicks from fly-by-night companies. From memory, the 1974 book Cinema Of Vengeance suggests that the demand was dropping in terms of price very quickly - in 1974, Shaws could only get from US/UK companies half of what they got in 1973.

Other Shaw and Golden Harvest flicks that seemed to get a US release in 73-75

Street Gangs Of Hong Kong (The Delinquent/Shaw Brothers) - Cinerama

Lady Kung Fu (Hapkido/Golden Harvest) - National General

Sting of the Dragon Masters (When Taekwondo Strikes/Golden Harvest)

7 Blows Of The Dragon (The Water Margin/Shaw Brothers) - New World (not Warners)

Chinese Professionals (One Armed Boxer/Golden Harvest) - National General

Slash! The Blade Of Death (The Chase/Golden Harvest) - Hallmark

Deep Thrust (Lady Whirlwind/Golden Harvest) - AIP/Hallmark

Triple Irons (New One Armed Swordsman/Shaw Brothers) - National General

Shanghai Lil And The Sun Luck Kid (The Champion/Shaw Brothers)

Super Man-chu (Golden Harvest)