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Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon (1973). The kung fu icon was a trailblazer for Hong Kong martial arts movies in the US. Photo: Golden Harvest

How kung fu icons like Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan became a hit in America explored in Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks

  • Netflix documentary looks at the first Hong Kong kung fu films to make their mark in America and how they were adapted, promoted and received
  • Director Serge Ou and writer Grady Hendrix also explore the huge influence films had on African-American and hip-hop culture

Martial arts are an integral part of Chinese culture, but in the US, their spiritual and cultural elements have often been divorced from their practical applications.

In their energetic and entertaining documentary Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks, which will start streaming on Netflix in December, director Serge Ou and writer Grady Hendrix relate the history of Hong Kong kung fu films, with a strong focus on how they were adapted, promoted and received in the US. The result makes for fascinating viewing.

The documentary takes in everything from the first kung fu films to make their mark in America, the phenomenal success of Bruce Lee, and the appeal of Jackie Chan. It looks at the effect the movies had on foreign action films and martial artists such as Don “The Dragon” Wilson, and their influence on African-American culture and hip-hop culture.

Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks also shows how opportunistic US distributors promoted martial arts films as salacious and exotic, dubbed them nonsensically, and shoddily recut them to milk the movies for every last buck possible.

In the days before streaming and video, the only place to see films apart from on broadcast television was at the cinema.

In the 1960s, although Hong Kong films were popular all over Asia, little was known about them in the US. Martial arts films made their way into America by screening in theatres in Chinatowns, says Hendrix, a long-time commentator on Hong Kong films, and a founder of the New York Asian Film Festival.

“In the 1960s and 1970s, there were around 50 Chinatown cinemas in the US, dating back to the 1930s and 1940s. There was a Chinatown circuit in New York, with cinemas like Pagoda Theatre and Music Palace, where people in the know would go to see martial arts films. There were also theatres in Chinatowns in Chicago, San Francisco and Boston,” Hendrix says.

“Aficionados who had heard about kung fu films would actively seek them out,” Hendrix adds. “Some of these guys were martial arts guys, and some of them were hip-hop guys.”

Jackie Chan (left) and Richard Norton in a still from Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks.

Martial arts films took off in the US in 1973, Hendrix says, when Shaw Brothers’ Five Fingers of Death [also known as King Boxer] was released, followed by movies starring Angela Mao, and these all found an audience.

Five Fingers of Death was a revelation to US audiences,” Ou says. “They weren’t familiar with the rich legacy of wuxia and kung fu films, and they were dazzled by what they saw.”

Bruce Lee’s first two martial arts films, The Big Boss (1971) and Fist of Fury (1972), were released in the US in April 1973 and September 1972, respectively, and the American audience “went bananas for him”, Hendrix says.

[US] martial artists would sometimes watch [kung fu films] in pairs, with one noting the arm work of the martial arts actors, and the other noting the leg work – they wanted to work out how Hongkongers did kung fu
Grady Hendrix writer of Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks

Lee was already known to US audiences due to his long-running appearance as Kato in The Green Hornet television series in the mid-1960s, but the two Hong Kong films turned him into an icon.

Lee’s Enter the Dragon – a US/Hong Kong co-production between Warner Brothers and Concord Productions – was released in the US in August 1973, a month after Lee’s death. Lee had worked hard to make the film a success in the US, Hendrix says.

“He had star power, and he was a great self-promoter. He had real charisma and could do publicity in the US because he spoke English.”

Things moved fast in 1973. “By the end of May, so many martial arts movies were coming out that even The New York Times was writing about them. By the time Enter the Dragon was released later that year, people were already complaining that there were too many martial arts films in cinemas,” Hendrix says.

Cheng Pei-pei shows off her fighting skills in Come Drink With Me (1966).

Along with immigrant Chinese viewers, the core US audiences for kung fu films in the US back then was a mix of martial arts enthusiasts who had studied karate, and African-American moviegoers, Hendrix says.

“There was already an awareness of martial arts in the US,” Hendrix says. “In 1945, American servicemen started to return to the States from overseas. Some had got into martial arts when they were stationed in Japan, in places like Okinawa.

“They started teaching karate when they came back, and it became a huge craze – even Elvis did it! There were people combining judo and other styles for exhibition matches, and even using a little bit of kung fu.”

Martial arts had become very popular with African-Americans, Hendrix notes. “African-Americans saw it as a means to both self-defence and self-improvement.”

Lo Lieh in a scene from the 1972 film Five Fingers of Death, aka King Boxer.

Fortuitous timing increased the appeal of kung fu films to African-American audiences, he adds. Blaxploitation films – genre movies aimed at African-American audiences – had started to appear around 1971, and distributors were quick to notice an unlikely crossover with martial arts films.

“Blaxploitation film producers realised that there was a whole new audience to tap, and by 1973, you had black people going out to see black films,” says Hendrix. “There was a great hunger to see non-white people on screen kicking ass, and that helped martial arts films.

“What’s more, Blaxploitation films were criticised by the Black community for their negative depiction of African-Americans, and some of the films were described as being racist towards whites. Kung fu movies had none of that baggage in the US. Black viewers could completely leave their world behind.”

Distributors of martial arts films were thrilled, Hendrix notes. “They realised there was a lot of money to be made by taking this approach.”

A still from The Black Dragon’s Revenge.

As Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks points out, martial arts movies were badly dubbed, and most voice actors did not even have scripts – they would just make up words to fit the shapes the actors’ mouths were making. This frequently resulted in gobbledegook.

“The dubbing was just pickup work for the actors, and they did it fast and on the fly,” Hendrix says. “At that time, everyone in the US thought that if something came out of Asia, it was cheap, it was shoddy, it was poorly made, and it was probably a rip-off of something American.

“Distributors did not care about these movies at all. Most people involved looked at them as a sleazy and quick way to make a buck – they regarded them as gutter cinema.”

White racism towards blacks and Asians in America also played a part, Hendrix says.

“It was a racist time in the US, and because these films were mainly aimed at a non-white audience, no one cared about them. You got a pay cheque, and that was it. It was a fly-by-night business on every level.”

Hong Kong martial arts legend Sammo Hung in a still from Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks.

The audiences did not regard the films in that way, Hendrix says, noting the films used to play in cinemas in places like New York’s Times Square, which was then a seedy area home to sex shops and porn cinemas.

“Some people did go in just to get off the streets, but a lot of the audience went because they were interested in martial arts and they wanted to find out more about them. They were trying to get glimpses of the culture and philosophy. B-boys [breakdancers] were watching them to get the moves, which they started to incorporate into their dance routines,” he says.

“Martial artists would sometimes watch them in pairs, with one noting the arm work of the martial arts actors, and the other noting the leg work – they wanted to work out how Hongkongers did kung fu.”

Serge Ou, director of Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks.

The US fascination with martial arts films faded in the late 1970s, and Hendrix says it did not return until the 1990s.

“Jackie Chan’s Rumble in the Bronx gave it a boost when it was released in the US in 1996,” he says, adding that The Matrix films, which featured martial arts choreography by Hong Kong’s Yuen Woo-ping, and Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon made the genre cool again around the turn of the millennium.

But US interest in Hong Kong films evaporated towards the end of the last decade. “Now it’s dead,” says Hendrix.

“Hollywood, for instance, is looking to the martial arts styles of places like Indonesia for inspiration, rather than to Hong Kong. But every 20 years or so, people rediscover Hong Kong martial arts films and styles again. They look back and realise just how vital and powerful they are.”

Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks will start streaming on Netflix on December 1.

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This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: First to the punch
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