How Did You Get Into Martial Arts Cinema?

[Cognoscente]

I remember Film Four airing 36th Chamber of Shaolin, King Boxer, Come Drink with Me and The One-Armed Swordsman in 2016. It was a fight night for four Fridays. Then a couple of months later, they aired The Boxer from Shantung, Return of the One-Armed Swordsman, Five Deadly Venoms and Eight Diagram Pole Fighter on four Friday nights.

[DragonClaws]

8 hours ago, Cognoscente said:

I remember Film Four airing 36th Chamber of Shaolin, King Boxer, Come Drink with Me and The One-Armed Swordsman in 2016. It was a fight night for four Fridays. Then a couple of months later, they aired The Boxer from Shantung, Return of the One-Armed Swordsman, Five Deadly Venoms and Eight Diagram Pole Fighter on four Friday nights.

 

It was about time these movies got some exposure in the U.K. Shaws titles were hard to find on VHS, and it wasnt much better when Celestial released these films on DVD here. With so many of their releases simply not turning up on our shores. One of the reasons I need to see so many of there movies.

[Cognoscente]

The only Shaw DVD that I saw in a store was The Spiritual Boxer.

[Omni Dragon]

1 hour 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?

I'm wondering if it was an edit for TV.

When I saw Fist of Legend on BBC One (15 November 2008) it was the Dimension edit (English dub) though it had subtitles at the beginning adding context that I've not seen on the DVD versions.

 

[Cognoscente]

It's possible. Channel 4 should probably have done that for the freeze frame ending of Fist of Fury. That way, they could have used the epilogue to introduce Jackie Chan's sequel.

[Duel to the Death]

2 hours ago, DragonClaws said:

 

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.

They were still doing that up until the early 2000's before Ebay cracked down. I remember also buying a Best of Starcade on VHS. Also when i didn't want to buy a PPV i would buy a copy on Ebay, and that person would record it off the tv and make copies and sell them and i would get to watch 2 or 3 days after the event for a fraction of the cost. Then they cracked down. They got around the first crackdown by saying, Up for sale is a #2 pencil and as an added bonus is this wrestling PPV. But Ebay got wise to that too. lol

[Drunken Monk]

I grew up with a heroin addict brother. Every weekend he and his friends would come over to my mum’s house (she was always working), smoke a bunch of dope and watch a bunch of movies. They never really gave a fuck what they watched since nine times out of ten they would pass out.

I typically went upstairs, locked myself in my bedroom and listened to music all day. I was about 14 years old. Me and brother simply did not get along.

Well, one afternoon, while his friends were k eat getting high, I got a knock on my door. My brother stood there. He simply handed me a VHS of Drunken Master (Made in Hong Kong release) and said, “You need to watch this.” It’s one of the oddest moments I’ve had with my brother: him all strung out force feeding me a Jackie Chan movie. Well, I did watch it and I fell in love. Fell in love HARD.

From then on, I started taping Jackie Chan movies off Channel 4 (Police Story, Project A etc.) and the rest, as they say, is history.

[DragonClaws]

On 5/17/2021 at 1:34 PM, Duel to the Death said:

They were still doing that up until the early 2000's before Ebay cracked down. I remember also buying a Best of Starcade on VHS. Also when i didn't want to buy a PPV i would buy a copy on Ebay, and that person would record it off the tv and make copies and sell them and i would get to watch 2 or 3 days after the event for a fraction of the cost. Then they cracked down. They got around the first crackdown by saying, Up for sale is a #2 pencil and as an added bonus is this wrestling PPV. But Ebay got wise to that too. lol

 

I never bought any tapes of Ebay as Id stopped collecting by the time it was operating.  I either got them through now defunct VHS tape sellers and friends I traded with at the time. Before shipping prices to different countries wen through the roof. It used to be so cheap trade tapes in the late 90's, even with people from around the world.

 

23 hours ago, Drunken Monk said:

Well, one afternoon, while his friends were k eat getting high, I got a knock on my door. My brother stood there. He simply handed me a VHS of Drunken Master (Made in Hong Kong release) and said, “You need to watch this.” It’s one of the oddest moments I’ve had with my brother: him all strung out force feeding me a Jackie Chan movie. Well, I did watch it and I fell in love. Fell in love HARD.

 

Thanks for sharing your story here @Drunken Monk.

[Duel to the Death]

1 hour ago, DragonClaws said:

Before shipping prices to different countries wen through the roof. It used to be so cheap trade tapes in the late 90's, even with people from around the world.

Prices went up again just a few years ago. I live on the east coast of the United States and there was a time (maybe 5-6 years ago) i could ship to Canada cheaper than shipping to California (up to a certain package weight), i didn't make sense but i was okay with it. It probably doesn't compare with 90's prices though. Then out of nowhere prices on international skyrocketed. I stopped shipping international except on rare occasions. And more recently prices within the United States skyrocketed as well. It's terrible. 

[JackieRome]

nice thread. I think I'll say something trivial. everyone got to know these movies with bruce lee and jackie chan. I think I saw Dragon in the cinema in 1993, and I remember finding it hard to understand at my age that there were two Bruce Lee. when in the following years I learned that there were many clones I was amazed. I remember that in Italy on a small broadcaster, old kung fu movies were broadcast and there was a theme created specifically with the scenes of jimmy wang yu. they were so absurd that I still didn't understand the genius. then came drunken master and everything changed.

to be honest, I wasn't from that generation that had seen 70s movies in theaters. my generation was only about horror, so I never met anyone my age who talked or knew about these movies. people are not used to old martial choreography and the best they can understand and tolerate is jackie chan and maybe bruce lee .

I read the books of a writer who talked about martial arts cinema, I took a few films in a Chinese video store in Rome's chinatown, I recorded VHS, then the internet opened up a hidden world. but many titles were never released here, perhaps only on DVD many years later. police story for example, we only knew about it in a few, and it was only released in 2003. We didn't have the same luck as you to have these titles right away. now everything has changed, you can have anything, but the fans here where I live are very few and often very advanced in age. the younger ones know some jackie movies but nothing more.

or intellectuals who conceive oriental cinema with films like those of Kim ki duk, or hou hsiao hsien, but who do not appreciate martial arts cinema. I, on the other hand, love oriental cinema in all its types.

the only people i met talked about jackie chan american movies and tried parkour. this is the highest cultural level with which I was able to compare with regard to this type of film. jesus... I hope you understand something of what I wrote, sorry guys

 

Edited May 19, 2021 by JackieRome

[DragonClaws]

On 5/18/2021 at 10:49 AM, Duel to the Death said:

Prices went up again just a few years ago. I live on the east coast of the United States and there was a time (maybe 5-6 years ago) i could ship to Canada cheaper than shipping to California (up to a certain package weight), i didn't make sense but i was okay with it. It probably doesn't compare with 90's prices though. Then out of nowhere prices on international skyrocketed. I stopped shipping international except on rare occasions. And more recently prices within the United States skyrocketed as well. It's terrible. 

 

Yeah, the high prices have practically stopped me from buying a lot of new releases/movies and trading with fellow fans. Often paying four times more for the shipping, than I am for the actual product itself.

[DragonClaws]

 

@SMK & @Moderation Team, is there any chance you could merge the below thread, with this one please?. A good idea originally suggested by @Omni Dragon.

 

 

[DragonClaws]

 

Any chance we could merge the above threads, mentioned in my previous post?.

[starschwar]

Without giving the whole life story...

 

• Introduced to martial arts fiction at an early age thanks to Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers.  Secret of the Ooze would count as the first MA film I ever saw - and Golden Harvest was partially behind it!  It was my destiny to get into this stuff, I suppose.
• Accidentally discovered Rush Hour on cable, and was incredibly entertained.  Who was this guy and how did he do those things?!
• Following up on that, my mother rented Twin Dragons, the first proper HK movie I ever saw, and was even more blown away...
• And she fed my addiction further.  Had to do a book report on a biography.  I let her pick for me, lacking for inspiration.  She got me I Am Jackie Chan.  I was so engrossed, so fascinated.  That filmography in the back was quite the gateway...
• My very first Internet order:  Snake in the Eagle's Shadow, Drunken Master, Half a Loaf of Kung Fu.  The third never arrived.  Drunken Master - I was instead sent Drunken Fist Boxing, a Chansploitation hack job of a different Simon Yuen film.  But SITES -  SITES was right.  And I must have watched that tape a dozen times in less than a week.  It was unlike anything I'd ever seen.  And I needed more.
• I was locked into "Jackie only" mode for a little while.  I hadn't even considered how much else there was that I might be enjoying.  That changed when I wanted to watch New Fist of Fury and decided I should see the original to understand it.  My first Bruce Lee movie - I treated it like homework!  Oh, but then my eyes opened...  Once Upon A Time in China.  The Killer.  Duel to the Death.  Shaw Brothers!  It wasn't too long that I broadened my horizons further.  DVD so I could get uncut versions from Hong Kong.  Later, a region-free player so I could get HKL's higher quality versions...
• And here I am, at it again.  The news of Drunken Master II's Blu-Ray clued me in to the work 88 and Eureka had been doing.  For... maybe a decade, I was mostly out of the loop.  At long last - these movies are getting really good English-friendly releases!  I have a lot to revisit, and even more that I've never known before.  Such a great time to be a fan!