In Love With… Martial Arts Movies: From Bruce Lee to the Ninjas

Discovering Asian cinema (Hong Kong in particular) in the early 90s was exciting. It meant learning a new cinematic language and piecing together its history in your own mind (for reasons that will become apparent). I watched Sammo Hung in one film, crossed paths with him again in ‘Wheels on Meals’ with my all-time favourite, Jackie Chan, then discovered Yuen Biao who sent me down a Tsui Hark rabbit hole. The trouble was that in the UK in the early 90s, there weren’t many films available to fill-in the noticeable holes in my knowledge; there were the Jackie Chan films, a few Sammo ones, a handful of Shaw Brothers offerings and plenty of dubbed kung fu flicks (which, by then, were out of print and nearly impossible to find on VHS), but whole areas that were blank. And the same went for writings on Hong Kong cinema. I would find the occasional article in old issues of ‘Combat’ magazine, and there were rumours that a group called Eastern Heroes were emerging from the Jackie Chan Fan Club. Yet not much else to quench my thirst for knowledge.

I then heard about a book written by Ric Meyers et al, someone I was familiar with after seeing him on the Jackie Chan segment of ‘The Incredibly Strange Film Show’. But surely this fabled book, ‘Martial Arts Movies: From Bruce Lee to the Ninjas’, wouldn’t appear in the bookshop of a small UK town…

To my surprise and delight, there on the crowded shelf of the local bookshop, yellow lettering on black spine, was ‘Martial Arts Movies: From Bruce Lee to the Ninjas’. I bought the book and spent the whole of December devouring the information therein, finding myself drawn into a universe I could barely comprehend. Chang Cheh, Liu Chia-Liang, Zatoichi films, Jet Li, Sonny Chiba, Hiroyuki Sanada, Sun Chong, Angela Mao, all of these names fired my imagination, expanding my knowledge from Jackie Chan to the wider martial arts cinema cosmos.

There have been many fine books since ‘Martial Arts Movies: From Bruce Lee to the Ninjas’; it finishes its examination of the genre at the end of 1983, so there were many glorious years to follow. Some have suggested that there are errors, that opinions in the book are incorrect (I was never happy with Shaw Brothers ‘The Water Margin’ named as one of the worst martial arts films of all time), but that’s never dulled my love for this book. It never pretended to be comprehensive but it was a vital part of my cinematic education – I thumbed through it until the spine fell off again and again. Even now, it sits on my bookshelf, faded lettering reminding me that my copy is over thirty years old. I would have eventually discovered the Venoms and ‘Sleepy Eyes of Death’ without it (probably) but the journey might not have been as enjoyable. ‘Martial Arts Movies: From Bruce Lee to the Ninjas’ was packed with information, insights and images of productions that would pepper my formative years; some of those stills and the captions underneath are still burned into my memory.

The Water Margin (1972)

Eventually, the healthy bootleg VHS market would enable me to see many of the films mentioned in the book. Then came a mid-’90s boom when the UK was flooded with great releases from Hong Kong and Japan. And I never forgot how one book had fired up this interest in me. In the internet era, where so many people write about Asian cinema (and write very well), it can be easy to ignore these early publications. I truly hope that this never becomes the case for me though.

‘Martial Arts Movies: From Bruce Lee to the Ninjas’ is now out of print, but you can often pick up second-hand copies from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.