Do you enjoy old Kung Fu films?

[Confessional]

The USA Network was a thing of genius!

I've been on an old school kung-fu bender thanks to the non-stop goodness of the El Rey Network… taking it for a wild fist-feast of crazy action for months and months. I'm starting to hear the guttural foley sounds in my sleep just like the old days. :P

[TrekStar]

Can you get these films on DVD, in the Asian languages, with English subtitles?

all my Godzilla dvd's I bought have Japanese language, with English subtitles
so I figured the Kung Fu movies must also now have it.

[Wee67]

I've mentioned it before3, but the El Rey cable network is just chock full of Kung Fu action. They just showed Flying Guillotine Pt. I & II back to back. Thurssdays and Sundays are almost Shaw Bros. marathons!

[EmergencyIan]

Thanks!!!

Very welcome!

- Ian

[Duncan]

Five Deadly Venoms. Love it.

The El Rey Network (341 on DirecTV) shows em quite often.

http://www.elreynetwork.com/

[Mikey]

USA always used to play a biography story about Bruce Lee starring an actor named Bruce Li

I think they had Bruce being murdered by gangsters or something like that.

[HardyGirl]

The only things I remember about Kung-Fu Theatre, (yep they had it in NYC too), was that the English overdubs were really bad on most of them, and that after it was over on Saturday afternoons, the boys would all come outside trying dopey karate moves on the girls. "Waa-TAAA!"

[El Hombre Nuclear]

My picks will be similar to others here: The Flying Guillotine movies, Five Deadly Venoms, etc.

I was a bit past my Kung Fu master phase by the time I noticed that USA was showing them, so my fondest memories lie with the early NYC area local broadcasts. I couldn't find an ad for WPIX's "Fist of Fury Theater" from the same period, but here's the classic WNEW show. That World Northal logo with the analog synth is pure nostalgia...

[palitoy]

Thanks to channel 29 and 47 I've probably forgotten more of these than I remember. Like a lot of people, they inspired me to join a dojo(s) more than a few times, although I never actually studied Kung Fu.

I used to watch a Samurai show that wasn't in English every week as well, any Toronto peeps remember that? It was cheaply made but kind of hypnotic.

[El Hombre Nuclear]

Thanks to channel 29 and 47 I've probably forgotten more of these than I remember. Like a lot of people, they inspired me to join a dojo(s) more than a few times, although I never actually studied Kung Fu.

I used to watch a Samurai show that wasn't in English every week as well, any Toronto peeps remember that? It was cheaply made but kind of hypnotic.

Was it possibly "The Samurai" (Onmitsu Kenshi)? I know that became a big childhood phenomenon in Australia and New Zealand in the 60s and 70s, but I've never heard of it being broadcast in Canada.

The only non-dubbed Japanese language shows I remember being aired in the NYC area were a few of the jidaigeki series (including the Oda Nobunaga one) in the late 80s/early 90s on a local station.

[palitoy]

Nah, it was colour and shot on video, looked late 70s. Seemed to follow a bunch of Ronin around. I never made heads or tails of it but channel choices being what they were I had to watch a lot of MTV.

MTV was "Multicultural Television" here until they changed their name to CFMT in the middle 80s. They played a lot of Chinese and Italian movies including some really dirty ones late at night. I'm pretty sure their main audience were english speaking high school boys....

[Earth 2 Chris]

I remember USA showing good schlock cinema like Commander USA's Groovy Movies and Kung Fu Theater. I recall seeing the Sentai Rangers there before they made it over here as Power Rangers.

I didn't see it on USA, but the Hammer/Shaw team-up sometimes known as Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires is a hoot.

Chris

[El Hombre Nuclear]

Nah, it was colour and shot on video, looked late 70s. Seemed to follow a bunch of Ronin around. I never made heads or tails of it but channel choices being what they were I had to watch a lot of MTV.

MTV was "Multicultural Television" here until they changed their name to CFMT in the middle 80s. They played a lot of Chinese and Italian movies including some really dirty ones late at night. I'm pretty sure their main audience were english speaking high school boys....

Hmm, very interesting. I did a bit of poking around and think I may have found it (the clip is mostly Toyota Canada propaganda, but you can see some of the credits at the beginning and end). Pretty cool that they were showing Lone Wolf and Cub (as "Iron Samurai") with subtitles back then! That was one of the first translated manga brought over to the west, and I used to read it religiously as a teenager in the late '80s, when I was starting to study Japanese. I think Frank Miller did the covers.

[palitoy]

That's one of them. I swear there was another series.

[4NDR01D]

I was never so much into Kung fu or karate flicks. But I was a kid during the early 80's Ninja craze and rented every movie with ninja in the title or a ninja on the vhs box cover.