Chuck, Rothrock and Jimmy Wang Yu

 Recently I've been plugging a few gaps in my Kung Fu films, which I missed at the time. 

There are a lot but I thought I'd see what was online.

The oldest by far is one I recall so well as a bloody still on the cover of my Dragon poster magazine - I collected them! -  back in the heady days of the early Seventies Kung Fu craze. The film was fantastically titled The Beach of the War Gods.

Rather gruesome when I look at that poster cover now, amazingly I found the film on Prime, a film I would have had no chance of seeing as a kid in the early 70's. 

Essentially the Beach of the War Gods, 1973, is about a Chinese rebellion in the face of aggressive Japanese invaders, a staple of Chinese Kung Fu movies, in this case, the invaders being Samurai warriors. 

I'm halfway through this flick and really enjoying it. The star, writer and director is Jimmy Wang Yu, the first real Kung Fu superstar in China before one Bruce Lee took over the world. 

Wang Yu, as he's called on the film's credits, led a very colourful off-screen life, involving triads, controversies and courts. His most famous film, Chinese Boxer, kicked off the kung Fu craze in the late Sixties Chinese cinema, another film I've yet to see, along with King Boxer and Ten Fingers of Steel.

Moving forward to the late Seventies, a second wave of martial arts film stars, this time non-Chinese, we're punching the screens. World karate champ Chuck Norris was leading the pack  - he'd wowed us already in the Way of the Dragon's incredible Colosseum scrap with Bruce - and so, after the King's untimely death there was room at the top for Chuck. 

I've not seen any Norris kung fu flicks, so I started last week with A Force of One. From 1979. I enjoyed it - a sort of extended episode of Hawaii Five-O or similar American cop show,  with lots of big Cadillacs parking up and tough guys beating each other to a pulp.

Chuck's nemesis was acted by real kickboxing champ Bill Wallace, who was also the unfortunate chap who found his pal John Belushi dead in a hotel room years later. 

Wallace was and is known as Superfoot. Sadly and prophetically, Chuck's on-screen son, played by Ray Vitte, died young in the film at the hands of villains and a few years later Ray died in real life at the hands of the police.

I'll try another Norris actioner like Good Guys wear Black later in the summer.

A decade later and a new high-kicking star chewed up the screen, one China O'Brian played by Cynthia Rothrock. A real-life Karate champion, China O'Brian, 1990, was Rothrock's breakthrough and I remember seeing the cover of the VHS in Blockbuster in the early 90's, the new way to watch movies. 

The film itself, a small-town sheriff - hoodlums showdown - reminded me of similar good guy versus gangs fayre like Roadhouse with Patrick Swayze and I suppose all of Clint's nameless hero spaghetti westerns. 

I enjoyed seeing a new leading woman in a kung fu flick. Up till then I guess Angela Mao Ying wore that crown, famously playing Bruce's sister in Enter the Dragon. She was known as Lady Kung Fu after one of her films. Rothrock herself eventually came to be called The Queen of Martial Arts.

I'll leave China O'Brian II for a while until I've caught up properly with the first proper superstar of the genre, Jimmy Wang Yu and finish his Beach of the War Gods. 

Have you seen any of these flicks readers?