Uncensored U.K Kung Fu Movie Cinema Screening's - 1970's

[DragonClaws]

 

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Any old school fans who got into Kung Fu flick's during the 1970's. Were lucky enough to see many classics on the big screen. Only if you lived in the U.K, getting to see your favoirte movies UNCUT was a whole other challenge. You could pop to the your local Chinatown cinema's. Where these films had been screened for month's, pre to the big craze that sparked of in 1973. That's if you were lucky enough to have one nearby. If you were really lucky you might catch these films un-edited, outside of the Chinatown picture house's. The Astra cinema at Stoke-Newington, in London. Was one such place, if the following article is true?.

 

Kung Fu ruled at the Stoke Newington Astra (Article)

Link- https://thedukemitchell.uk/2014/02/19/kung-fu-ruled-at-the-stoke-newington-astra/

 

Edited May 13, 2022 by DragonClaws

[ShawAngela]

What a beautiful cinema ! It reminds me of a church !

We had one beautiful cinema in Paris where we went to see martial arts movies, or westerns or peplums or action movies or musicals in the Bastille Place. The inside was wonderful, with beautiful red sits and there was a balcony and...they destroyed it to build the Opera Bastille !! I was absolutely furious and sad when I learnt that they had destroyed it and when I saw this awful Opera house !

[ShawAngela]

And I guess that we also had uncensored movies in these cinemas in the Bastille Place or near by it (there were a lot of cinemas in this part of Paris at that time, all screening martial arts/action, or martial arts/peplums, or martial arts/westerns as double features), since I remember that I saw for instance the almost rape scene at the beginning of Dragon blows, while it isn't in the original chinese language I recently got, nor in the English version dvdr I got, if I'm not mistaken...

[DragonClaws]

13 hours ago, ShawAngela said:

What a beautiful cinema ! It reminds me of a church !

 

Hi @ShawAngela,The buildng still stands, its now a Mosque, all these lovely old cinemsa are either long gone or now beng used for retail spaces. My dad often points to the place where he saw Zulu(1969), a beautiful gothic castle inspired movie palace. Which is now a huge carpet warehouse. The big multiplex's took care of most of them, that said a few indiependent one's have managed to survive across the country. Many of these older venues doubled as gig spaces too, the cinema screen would roll up and the likes of AC/DC would get onstage. This was back in the late 70's/early 80's. Now you have to pay silly amounts, to sit and see them in a huge arena.

Dont get me wrong, not all the old cinemas looked great. Many of the Odean/ABC chain, had really ugly looking 1960's building's. Some of which are still in use today.

 

Edited July 18, 2019 by DragonClaws

[DragonClaws]

 

Edited July 22, 2019 by DragonClaws

[DragonClaws]

 

I would love to know what became of these UNCUT/Scoped/Subtitled print's. In particular the one for Taiwanese movie Thirty-Six Swordguard's.

[gskmeva]

On 7/26/2019 at 4:59 AM, DragonClaws said:

 

I would love to know what became of these UNCUT/Scoped/Subtitled print's. In particular the one for Taiwanese movie Thirty-Six Swordguard's.

I actually met someone on Facebook and asked him this question.

He was from South Africa and his father owned a movie theater in the 70s and played a bunch of kung-fu films. I asked him whatever happened to the prints and he said most of them were returned to the distributor because legally, the movie theater only had the rights to screen the films and cannot keep them.

However, his father did have a few prints in his collection but sold them in the 90s when the kung-fu craze died down and his movie theater closed. What a pity.

Michael

[DragonClaws]

On 7/27/2019 at 1:46 AM, gskmeva said:

I actually met someone on Facebook and asked him this question.

He was from South Africa and his father owned a movie theater in the 70s and played a bunch of kung-fu films. I asked him whatever happened to the prints and he said most of them were returned to the distributor because legally, the movie theater only had the rights to screen the films and cannot keep them.

However, his father did have a few prints in his collection but sold them in the 90s when the kung-fu craze died down and his movie theater closed. What a pity.

Michael

 

Hi @gskmeva, thanks for sharing that story here. There were some trailer found under an old cinema/theatra stage here in Britian. Those formed the basis of the Kung Fu Trailer of Fury DVD/Blu-Ray release by Severin. Makes you wonder how many ended up lost during demolition or refurbishment of these older cinema building's.

 

 

Edited September 14, 2019 by DragonClaws

[DragonClaws]

 

[DragonClaws]

 

I'm guessing that The Great Heroc was just a typo on the above vintage advertisement poster?.

[DragonClaws]

 

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A minority of Monthly Film Bulletin reviews show that a few films played in their original language
with English subtitles, as may have been the case in club screenings not recorded by the magazine,
however this appears to be much rarer than the films playing dubbed for nationwide releases.
Furthermore, until the mid-1970s following the influence of Bruce Lee and other local films
associated with the Hong Kong New Wave, most of these martial arts productions would have been
originally filmed in Mandarin, the official language of Mainland China, which would similarly have
abstracted the Hong Kong character of the films

Source- https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/files/66045867/FULL_TEXT.PDF