How Did You Get Into Martial Arts Cinema?

[Cognoscente]

Police Story was the one that did it for me, and I can't imagine it happening any other way. For an '80s HK movie, the fighting style is more realistic in its technique (not flashy but not entirely scrappy either) and logic (group fights where everyone attacks all at once).

Another thing that went in its favour was the overall look of the film - gritty film stock to match the natural colours versus the clean film and cartoony colour schemes of most HK movies in that time. Even the ending was more plausible, or at least the HK version shown on Channel 4 that had a freeze frame epilogue stating that Ka Kui was arrested (the English dub VHS lacked this).

Police Story was the Gold Connection of its time.

[DragonClaws]

On 5/8/2021 at 7:29 AM, Cognoscente said:

Police Story was the one that did it for me, and I can't imagine it happening any other way

 

That one must have set the bar pretty high, for anything else you watched shortly after.

[Cognoscente]

Pretty much. The weird thing was that I didn't seem to mind watching American martial arts movies because it was a study of contrasts, and a way to figure out what it was that made the HK style so appealing.

[saltysam]

Getting into the Scala cinema in Liverpool  (long gone now) as a 14 year old to see Game Of Death. Hooked ever since.

[DarthKato]

On 5/8/2021 at 7:29 AM, Cognoscente said:

Police Story was the one that did it for me, and I can't imagine it happening any other way. For an '80s HK movie, the fighting style is more realistic in its technique (not flashy but not entirely scrappy either) and logic (group fights where everyone attacks all at once).

Another thing that went in its favour was the overall look of the film - gritty film stock to match the natural colours versus the clean film and cartoony colour schemes of most HK movies in that time. Even the ending was more plausible, or at least the HK version shown on Channel 4 that had a freeze frame epilogue stating that Ka Kui was arrested (the English dub VHS lacked this).

Police Story was the Gold Connection of its time.

Yeah, Police Story is awesome! They don't come much better than it. 

[Super Ninja]

As strange as it may be, 7 Grandmasters and discovering Taiwanese indies did for me what Drunken Master, Five Deadly Venoms and even 36th Chamber of Shaolin couldn't. That's one magic kung fu movie if ever there was one, it changed my life and eventually made me the martial arts movie addict I am today. 

[drees5761]

Watching Fist of Fury at the cinema in 1974 (yes I am that old...lol) ....then Chinatown cinemas for classic kung fu movies...

[DragonClaws]

9 hours ago, drees5761 said:

Watching Fist of Fury at the cinema in 1974 (yes I am that old...lol) ....then Chinatown cinemas for classic kung fu movies...

 

14 hours ago, Super Ninja said:

As strange as it may be, 7 Grandmasters and discovering Taiwanese indies did for me what Drunken Master, Five Deadly Venoms and even 36th Chamber of Shaolin couldn't. That's one magic kung fu movie if ever there was one, it changed my life and eventually made me the martial arts movie addict I am today. 

 

Thanks for sharing your stories here guy's, we lost a lot of content from this thread when the forum went down a few times.

 

@Super Ninja, the Taiwanese movies got my into the genre just as much as the features made in Hong Kong.

[Super Ninja]

5 hours ago, DragonClaws said:

@Super Ninja, the Taiwanese movies got my into the genre just as much as the features made in Hong Kong.

Don't know if this will make any sense to anyone here but for me Taiwanese indies always felt more authentic, more real. Maybe because they were often cheap and shot on location with shoddy costumes. Instead of complaining about low production values, I found the lack of SB sets and shiny costumes to be the advantage, these were the movies that made me wanna go to the Taiwanese mountains, find a white-haired master and study kung fu for the rest of my life. But that's me romanticizing... 

[Cognoscente]

I feel the same way.

[DragonClaws]

On 5/10/2021 at 11:19 AM, Super Ninja said:

Don't know if this will make any sense to anyone here but for me Taiwanese indies always felt more authentic, more real. Maybe because they were often cheap and shot on location with shoddy costumes. Instead of complaining about low production values, I found the lack of SB sets and shiny costumes to be the advantage, these were the movies that made me wanna go to the Taiwanese mountains, find a white-haired master and study kung fu for the rest of my life. But that's me romanticizing... 

 

On 5/10/2021 at 11:21 AM, Cognoscente said:

I feel the same way.

 

I totally get it @Super Ninja, there was a short documentary on Kung Fu cinema on British T.V in the 90's. It was 15-minutes at the most, as part of a much bigger series on films. It featured a lot of clips from Taiwanese movies, Im guessing Eastern Heroes supplied them with the material?. As they were really big at the time it was aired.

[Duel to the Death]

My story is divided up. Seen some Kung Fu movies as a kid but not many but was always fascinated by Kung Fu and Bruce Lee. So bad i wanted a Kung Fu outfit and a Enter the Dragon glove, even though i was a weakling kid lol. But between then (late 70's/early 80's) and through the year 2000 I had only seen a dozen or 2 movies and most of those were Bruce Lee movies and Brucesploitations. 

My second half was thanks to Kill Bill and Netflix. After i seen Kill Bill, i had just got Netflix and i wanted to see movies that helped inspire it like Lady SnowBlood, the Lone Wolf & Cub movies, Zatoichi. And that somehow led to Master of the Flying Guillotine, 5 Deadly Venoms, 36th Chamber etc. Somewhere around that time i had found a site that had a big list of classic Kung Movies and a review for each one. Netflix had so many of them. (i'll guess that it was around 3 dozen movies i rented). I had thought i seen most of the best ones but i was wrong. I had taken a long hiatus until last year when i found this forum and have seen so many more classics. Surprised i didn't find this forum sooner. 

 

[Duel to the Death]

On 7/27/2015 at 2:29 PM, DragonClaws said:

I spent most of my childhood as a huge wrestling fan

Me too. I think i had seen wrestling for the first time either just before or just after the first Wrestlemania. I was hooked. I remember how excited i was to catch Saturday Nights Main Event for the first time. I was on the edge of my seat. I was a huge fan in the 90's as well. It was around the middle 2000's i started to lose interest. By 2010 i pretty much stopped all together. Except maybe a few clips here and there or finding a Wrestlemania stream. But i could talk about classic Wrestling as much as i talk about Kung Fu movies. 

My favorite wrestler of all time was The Great Muta. Especially his matches in Japan. (That's an expensive set of dvd's i always wanted). In a weird way i put him on the same level as Kung Fu movies in my head. I guess the way we presents himself and the fact he's from the East. If you want to see something really cool, check this out. There is a Dvd set out there and on the first 3 discs they showed parts of this mini movie. I was too cheap to import it so i bought bootlegs

 

 

[Super Ninja]

20 hours ago, Duel to the Death said:

 I had thought i seen most of the best ones but i was wrong.

I know the feeling, at one point no list had any title that I wasn't familiar with. As irritating as it was and still is, those lists of the "best martial arts movies" featured titles such as Kill Bill and Kung Fu Panda, who the hell makes them? Then I found a list of classics that showed me I've just scratched the surface. 

[DragonClaws]

On 5/12/2021 at 9:29 AM, Duel to the Death said:

My favorite wrestler of all time was The Great Muta. Especially his matches in Japan. (That's an expensive set of dvd's i always wanted). In a weird way i put him on the same level as Kung Fu movies in my head. I guess the way we presents himself and the fact he's from the East. If you want to see something really cool, check this out. There is a Dvd set out there and on the first 3 discs they showed parts of this mini movie. I was too cheap to import it so i bought bootlegs

 

He reminds me of a character from The Five Deadly Venoms, or some far out Japanese horror film. He was a name I only saw in WCW in the 90's. My first exposure to Japanese Pro-Wrestling, was when it used to be broadcast on Eurosport in the U.K. The 1995 Super J Cup was the first event I saw. There was no English translation for the shows either. I dont think The Great Muta was apart of the line up that night?. I've seen a lot of his matches with Sting from the 90's, along with some of his Japanese stuff.

[Duel to the Death]

1 hour ago, DragonClaws said:

 

He reminds me of a character from The Five Deadly Venoms, or some far out Japanese horror film. He was a name I only saw in WCW in the 90's. My first exposure to Japanese Pro-Wrestling, was when it used to be broadcast on Eurosport in the U.K. The 1995 Super J Cup was the first event I saw. There was no English translation for the shows either. I dont think The Great Muta was apart of the line up that night?. I've seen a lot of his matches with Sting from the 90's, along with some of his Japanese stuff.

I also first seen him in WCW and was fascinated by him. But it wasn't until the early 2000's i bought a bootleg VHS set off ebay of his Japanese stuff. None of it was translated. It had matches with Ricky Steamboat, Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair etc. My favorite match of his is his second match against Hiroshi Hase. I'm a sucker for a Hot crowd and this was one of the hottest crowds i have ever heard. He bleeds like crazy during it. Probably the bloodiest match up to that point. 

 

[Omni Dragon]

Before I was 8 years old I have some vague memories of seeing martial arts displayed in movies and TV shows. I was born 20 years after Enter the Dragon and by then so many things had references to or displays of martial arts, I mean even Mr. Bean goes to a judo class in an episode. Maybe even Power Rangers counts in a rudimentary way.

When I was 8 years old, I probably saw the TV animation of Jackie Chan Adventures (JCA) for the first time on the 22nd or 26th September 2001. JCA is significant as martial arts was a fundamental part of the show. I also consider it one of my biggest influences for taking up martial arts in (3rd?) August 2003 (I think I might have wanted to learn martial arts even before seeing JCA, though it's difficult to remember now). The show also helped me become very familiar with Chan even before seeing his live action movies.

The first live action Jackie Chan movie I saw was Rush Hour. It might have been a TV showing on the 30th August 2003.

Suffice to say Rush Hour led to me watching other Jackie Chan movies which led to Golden harvest movies often on HKL DVDs which eventually led me to Dragon Dynasty which essentially was my introduction to Shaw Brothers. Later I started watching the independent shapes which might have been a result of reading Kung Fu Fandom/Cinema, finding about 26 DVDs of them in a pound shop helped though.

Perhaps this thread/topic should be merged with:

What do you think? @DragonClaws, @Moderation Team.

[DragonClaws]

17 hours ago, Omni Dragon said:

What do you think? @DragonClaws, @Moderation Team.

 

I thought the original thread was long gone, Im all for merging the two together.

[Omni Dragon]

On 5/8/2021 at 3:29 PM, Cognoscente said:

Even the ending was more plausible, or at least the HK version shown on Channel 4 that had a freeze frame epilogue stating that Ka Kui was arrested (the English dub VHS lacked this).

Interesting, I don't think I've ever heard of or seen that version of Police Story before. Sounds similar to the ending on the Japanese version.

[Cognoscente]

It's a shame that they didn't show the extended ending. As for the epilogue, it had both English and Chinese text. Perhaps someone thought that the freeze frame ending was awkward without text. The question is who was that someone?

[DragonClaws]

9 hours ago, Omni Dragon said:

Interesting, I don't think I've ever heard of or seen that version of Police Story before. Sounds similar to the ending on the Japanese version.

 

8 hours ago, Cognoscente said:

It's a shame that they didn't show the extended ending. As for the epilogue, it had both English and Chinese text. Perhaps someone thought that the freeze frame ending was awkward without text. The question is who was that someone?

 

Missed the U.K T.V screenings of this one, the only version I've owned were the old re-edited 4-Front U.K VHS release. Then I got the Widescreen VHS from Made in Hong Kong, and later picked up the Hong Kong Legends DVD release.

[Cognoscente]

The version that I'm referring to was aired in the Christmas of 1991 where Channel 4 aired Police Story before Armour of God but after Project A and Wheels on Meals.

[DragonClaws]

On 5/13/2021 at 1:16 PM, Duel to the Death said:

I also first seen him in WCW and was fascinated by him. But it wasn't until the early 2000's i bought a bootleg VHS set off ebay of his Japanese stuff. None of it was translated. It had matches with Ricky Steamboat, Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair etc. My favorite match of his is his second match against Hiroshi Hase. I'm a sucker for a Hot crowd and this was one of the hottest crowds i have ever heard. He bleeds like crazy during it. Probably the bloodiest match up to that point. 

 

Before the days of the internet, people used to make a fiar mint from selling bootleg Wrestling tapes. Fuzzy 100th generation copies with terrible sound often rpiced at £20 a pop. The picture and sound quality always seemed better on the Japanese tapes. At least this is the experience I had with them. I'd like to see his Asian matches with Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat. Sounds like a great release you picked up there @Duel to the Death.

[DragonClaws]

8 hours ago, Cognoscente said:

The version that I'm referring to was aired in the Christmas of 1991 where Channel 4 aired Police Story before Armour of God but after Project A and Wheels on Meals.

 

Argh, I wasn't watching any Asian Martial Arts films at that time. FilmFour have been pretty good at screening these movies, they had a Shaw Brothers season not so long ago.

[DragonClaws]

On 5/14/2021 at 4:18 PM, Omni Dragon said:

Perhaps this thread/topic should be merged with:

What do you think? @DragonClaws, @Moderation Team.

 

@Moderation Team, any chance you can merge the two threads that @Omni Dragon has highlighted?. I started a new one, when I thought the old thread had been long deleted.