What Was Your Gateway into Kung Fu Movies? Mine was Kill Bill

[Duel to the Death]

For me Bruce Lee wasn't my Gateway but more of an early introduction. I had seen the Bruce Lee movies, a handful of Bruceploitation films and a few other random lesser films when i was younger but that was it. I had never seen any of the Shaw Brothers or Golden Harvest (minus Bruce) classics. Years and years went by before i seen any more. So for me Kill Bill was my gateway. It was because of it i seen Lady Snowblood, some Zatoichi films, 36th Chamber, 5 Deadly Venoms, and then that led to more and more like Prodigal Son, Knockabout, Master of the Flying Guillotine, Duel to the Death etc etc etc.

I know some people don't like Tarantino, and i have no idea what people think of RZA, but if it wasn't for them i have no idea if i would of seen the movies i did. They told me what to see. 

For a while i said Kill Bill was my favorite movie of all time. For a while anyway. 

"I changed the topic to this thread a few posts in"

Edited July 30, 2020 by Duel to the Death

[YnEoS]

I'm also someone who saw Kill Bill first and then used it as an initial guide to seeing more of the classics.  Its still a favorite, as I enjoy how it blends and remixes elements from a lot of different styles and genres.  I also can't stand a lot of the trends in most modern martial arts stuff, but Kill Bill is one I regularly revisit.

[TibetanWhiteCrane]

I detest QT and his movies, so no.

[paimeifist]

Kill Bill indirectly got me into the genre. I didn’t watch the Kill Bill films til recently, and I think they’re cool films.

 

When the movies came out there was a kung fu resurgence, and I caught Master of the Flying Guillotine on Showtime TV when I was up late one night.

 

The next several days were spent overindulging in Fu on YouTube, and buying all the movies I could afford from Circuit City and Best Buy (yeah, back when you could buy classic fu movies at the store, and Circuit City still existed.)

[TibetanWhiteCrane]

Nothing makes you feel old quite like people talking about getting into the genre from Crouching Tiger, Matrix, Kill Bill or whatever when your introduction was catching the ending of The Sword on TV in 1985 and then renting Young Master at the video store. Of course then some of the old 70's cats talk about watching these movies on their original theatre release and you feel young again.

[Duel to the Death]

29 minutes ago, paimeifist said:

The next several days were spent overindulging in Fu on YouTube, and buying all the movies I could afford from Circuit City and Best Buy (yeah, back when you could buy classic fu movies at the store, and Circuit City still existed.)

Oh ya i remember circuit city, we bought a stereo system from there. I'd say most of the movies i bought either came from Walmart or different sites online. 

 

14 minutes ago, TibetanWhiteCrane said:

Nothing makes you feel old quite like people talking about getting into the genre from Crouching Tiger, Matrix, Kill Bill or whatever when your introduction was catching the ending of The Sword on TV in 1985 and then renting Young Master at the video store. Of course then some of the old 70's cats talk about watching these movies on their original theatre release and you feel young again.

Surprisingly Crouching Tiger didn't get me into it. The movie was great but after i saw it i just moved on. But because of it i seen Hero and House of Flying Daggers. And Matrix i just associated with other blockbuster action movies.

Besides me thanking Kill Bill as my Gateway i have to thank Netflix. I don't think i would of had the money to buy all these movies back then, but i rented just about everything Netflix had. 

And sites like this. It's defunct now. But i had this bookmarked for close to 15 years now. It helped me with what to pick. I'm sure IMDB helped as well. Back then IMDB had a comments section and that was a godsend. People talking about the movies, recommended others. I really miss that. So sad

https://web.archive.org/web/20070911143811/http://www.kfccinema.com/reviews/kungfu/kungfu.html

I think i'm going to change the name of this topic to what was your gateway into Kung Fu movies. 

[sym8]

I’d seen most of the classics before Kill Bill so I got most of the references and I loved the movie itself,thought it was great entertainment and I could see why people would hunt some of the films down after seeing this if they hadn’t already

[danthemandmv]

I'd seen bits & pieces of several films by the early 80's, but the film which made me stand up & take notice was ''THE DELINQUENT/STREET GANGS OF HONG KONG''; believe it or not, I actually caught this Shaw Bros. classic one schoolday afternoon in Spring 1982 on HBO of all channels( about a month later they showed ''MARCO POLO''.)

[thekfc]

8 hours ago, TibetanWhiteCrane said:

Of course then some of the old 70's cats talk about watching these movies on their original theatre release and you feel young again.

I will make you guys feel young again.............

10 hours ago, Duel to the Death said:

So for me Kill Bill was my gateway.

I would have to go way way baccckkk, it was after watching the grandest, the most spectacular, fiercest, awesomeness finger tinkling, steel palmed & iron fisted movie to ever grace the big screen.....on the big screen........... on initial release.

I came prepared for a thrill of a lifetime and I was instantly hooked. 

And that movies was Five Fingers of Death.   

 

[AbeRudder]

My first interest in the movies came from seeing a wing chun documentary that had clips from Warriors Two, which was the first proper kung fu film I watched. After that this forum and the reviews on the kungfucinema.com website helped me get my bearings. 

[Omni Dragon]

My gateway to Jackie Chan at least was the TV animation of Jackie Chan Adventures and Rush Hour. To his classics it was Police Story and Drunken Master. My gateway to stars beyond Chan was Project A and the HKL DVDs, but still very much Golden Harvest at that time. My gateway to Shaw's was Heroes of the East and Dragon Dynasty. My gateway to indies was Shaolin Vs. Ninja (1983).

 

[Duel to the Death]

12 minutes ago, Omni Dragon said:

My gateway to Jackie Chan at least was the TV animation of Jackie Chan Adventures and Rush Hour. To his classics it was Police Story and Drunken Master. My gateway to stars beyond Chan was Project A and the HKL DVDs, but still very much Golden Harvest at that time. My gateway to Shaw's was Heroes of the East and Dragon Dynasty. My gateway to indies was Shaolin Vs. Ninja (1983).

 

My first experience with Jackie Chan was the early 80's with Cannonball Run. But i don't think i had seen another one of his movies until the 90's with Rumble in the Bronx and i had taped Drunken Master 2 off cable in the 90's or 2000's. It wouldn't be until later 2000's that i finally seen more of his movies. 

[Koravec]

Power Rangers and the era of Jackie Chan flicks that you wouldn’t even know that he was a master stuntman and martial artist (I’m really showing my age here aren’t I?). Easy.  
 

Also just feel like ninjas were still trendy at that time. Parents were cool enough to sign us up for karate classes.

[sifu iron perm]

inside kung fu magazines and bruce lee posters..

film wise..it was enter the dragon and snake in the eagle shadow.

[Chu Liu Hsiang]

Unlikely as it seems, my gateway movie was A CHINESE GHOST STORY on late nite free TV. That was in 2007 when Celestial was still releasing "new" Shaw movies regularly, so it was a good time to start collecting. I felt like an archaeologist, discovering a lost world, and actually we all are digging together   

[ukrevrend]

For me, my gateway was watching David Carradine in Kung Fu series on UK tv, back in the 70's! Then my older brothers introduced me to Bruce Lee's Enter The Dragon and the was it, I was hooked!

Bless

[Duel to the Death]

10 hours ago, sifu iron perm said:

inside kung fu magazines and bruce lee posters..

film wise..it was enter the dragon and snake in the eagle shadow.

I think i'm going to edit my original statement and say Bruce Lee & Jackie Chan was my first Gateway and Kill Bill was my second. 

I had a couple Kung Fu magazines back in the 80's but they must of got lost over the years. I remember on one of the order forms i had filled out i wanted a standard Chinese Kung Fu shirt, pants and shoes. It was blue with buttons down the front. They also sold the Bruce Lee Enter The Dragon Gloves and i wanted those too. But sadly i would of never been able to talk my mother into buying them. 

But i do have a Bruce Lee magazine i bought in the 90's. Either in 93 or 94. I took pics of a few pages. Including a George Dillman ad  and an order form i filled out for some unknown reason. 

 

Edited August 1, 2020 by Duel to the Death

[makone]

I saw Enter the dragon at my cousins home when I was 10 years old,

That was 1980 been hooked ever since.

[sifu iron perm]

19 hours ago, Duel to the Death said:

I think i'm going to edit my original statement and say Bruce Lee & Jackie Chan was my first Gateway and Kill Bill was my second. 

I had a couple Kung Fu magazines back in the 80's but they must of got lost over the years. I remember on one of the order forms i had filled out i wanted a standard Chinese Kung Fu shirt, pants and shoes. It was blue with buttons down the front. They also sold the Bruce Lee Enter The Dragon Gloves and i wanted those too. But sadly i would of never been able to talk my mother into buying them. 

But i do have a Bruce Lee magazine i bought in the 90's. Either in 93 or 94. I took pics of a few pages. Including a George Dillman ad  and an order form i filled out for some unknown reason. 

 

man, i am actually after this very magazine..

[HyperDrive]

I was a big TMNT fan as a kid. As a teen, I watched Rush Hour, Legend of Drunken Master and Iron Monkey in theaters and just kept on watching.

[sifu iron perm]

2 hours ago, HyperDrive said:

I was a big TMNT fan as a kid. As a teen, I watched Rush Hour, Legend of Drunken Master and Iron Monkey in theaters and just kept on watching.

hahah that's cool!!! 

[sym8]

My first Kung fu movie was Sun Dragon(hard way to die)back in the early 80s but I can’t remember what got me into them.Ive always liked martial arts for as long as I can remember so I just guess I was just curious what all these Kung fu movies in my video shop were and just decided to check one out.

[Drunken Monk]

My gateway movie was the first Drunken Master. My brother handed it to me one day (on VHS) and simply said, “You have to watch this.” This was probably in 1997. Maybe ‘96.

I watched the movie and immediately got it. I was like, “Yep, I need to see more of this.” I started taping Jackie movies as they played late at night on channel 4. After watching stuff like Project A, Police Story, Wheels on Meals etc. I decided to branch out and buy my first old school VHS. That was Shaolin Red Master. That’s the movie that really opened my eyes to there being more out there than Jackie Chan. Granted, it’s not a great movie but it inspired me to risk buying random movies. That’s really how I found stuff like The Mystery of Chess Boxing and Shaolin vs Lama. Channel 4 continues showing kung fu movies and I kept taping those too. Mostly Sammo stuff.

The Best of Martial Arts (hosted by John Saxon) was a massive gateway too. So many great fights on that VHS.

[Duel to the Death]

I have a fuzzy memory i rented 1 or 2 older Jackie Chan movies from the video store in either the late 90's or early 2000's. But i have forgotten which ones. I'm not sure if i seen a lot of classic kung movies at our video stores back then. I do remember renting Iron Monkey and Black Mask, but they were forgettable to me. Also remember renting Ong Bak and thought it was overrated. I did like the Protector but that was later. My memory is real fuzzy for any martial arts movies i seen in the 80's through 2000's. Mostly american films like No Retreat No Surrender, Bloodsport, Kickboxer. 

I must of rented some movies but they all have erased from my brain. Between the 80's through the early 2000's we rented hundreds of movies. But most of them were probably horror and comedy. 

I do have a funny memory that will always stick with me. One Halloween night they were playing Hammer Dracula movies and i put a tape in the VCR and recorded and went to bed. Next day i decided to watch them. At the very end just before the tape is going to end, Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires starts and i was mesmerized by what i was seeing. A monk looking character climbing a mountain and resurrecting Dracula. Thought it was the coolest shit i ever seen in my life. And right after he rises from his coffin it hit the end of the tape. I was devastated. It would be many years later until i got to see the whole movie. 

[ShaolinMapache]

The first one I saw was Lee Tso Nam's Edge of Fury when I was 13 and it was a DVD that prominently featured Bruce Lee on the cover. I had heard of him and wanted to see what the hype was about. I watched it and thought it was just okay. I learned much later that it was actually Bruce Li and I had been tricked by a Bruceploitation movie. In college I became obsessed with kung fu movies oddly enough through music. I was very into vaporwave music which is a style of music that features samples from 80's and 90's songs. There's an artist called Hong Kong Express who would sample old Chinese movies. I watched some of the movie he sampled soundtracks from and got really into Hong Kong Action and then decided to start collecting kung fu movies around 2015. Now I have over 300 DVDs.