by Meyers, Ric
When that flick also died at the box office, Weintraub and Clouse decided to shoot the works. Taking the plots from Enter the Dragon and Hot Potato, they hired three of America’s best real-life martial artists, then threw in a burly black, a beautiful blonde, and a heinous Asian villain. They called it Force Five (1981), and it was not good. Their hearts were in the right place, but their filmmaking skills were not. This painful waste squanders the abilities of World Heavyweight Karate Champion Joe Lewis, World Kickboxing Champion Benny “the Jet” Urquidez (who looked great fighting Jackie in Wheels on Meals and Dragons Forever), and Richard Norton (who looked great fighting Sammo in Twinkle Twinkle Lucky Stars and Jackie in City Hunter), not to mention Bong Soo Han, who played Reverend Rhee(!), an evil minister who lived on an island with his own “Maze of Death.”
Sound familiar? Despite its obvious origins, had the script been half as clever and the fights half as good as in Enter the Dragon, the movie might have had a chance. It wasn’t, they weren’t, and it didn’t. Weintraub and Clouse never gave up, bless them. They tried Jackie Chan in The Big Brawl and Cynthia Rothrock in the China O’Brian series (1990-1991), but the two stars, unlike Bruce, would not force superior kung fu on them. It seemed that without Lee, Weintraub, Clouse, and the American kung fu movie was in a maze of death without a map.
Things seemed about to change with the publication of The Ninja (1980), Eric von Lustbader’s evocative espionage novel which introduced mainstream fiction readers to the ancient sects of Japanese assassin-spies thirteen years after 007 had showcased them in You Only Live Twice (1967). It took Lustbader’s novel to inspire Richard Zanuck and David Brown, producers of Jaws (1975), to mount a multi-million-dollar, grade-A adaptation. And if that happened, maybe top producers would smile on Chinese kung fu as well. But it was not to be.
Instead of the exotic, long-suffering, tragic, anti-heroic spies with “no place on earth and none in heaven (which they historically were),” ninja were doomed to toil in cheap American exploitation films and lousy television shows as ludicrous superheroes and supervillains in black hooded pajamas who threw metal star-shaped darts like Frisbees. It was all because Cannon Films’ Monachem Golan and Yoram Globus rushed out Enter the Ninja (1981), dooming the American martial arts movie to more years of schlocky, derisive, but profitable abuse.
“It was originally a script I wrote called Dance of Death,” undefeated karate champion Mike Stone told me. Golan promised Stone the leading role, collected a crew, and sent everyone to the Philippines to start shooting. Three weeks later, according to Stone, he fired them all. “Golan brought in a completely new crew from Israel, save for the sound man. He brought in Franco Nero to star and then rehired me, for more money, to stay on as action choreographer and stunt double.”
Golan’s rationale may have been that he didn’t like the way the film was coming out, but Stone had another point of view. “Apparently it’s just the way they are,” he explained, referring to Golan, who served as Enter the Ninja’s new director, and Yoram Globus, the producer. “From what I hear that’s just their standard operating procedure.”
The procedure continued through patently absurd sequel after patently absurd sequel, cementing ninja in the minds of non-Asian audiences as ludicrous, self-reverential tools. In fact, the concept of the ninja was such a joke by the end of the twentieth century, that the only major movies featuring them was a truncated series of bad kids films, 3 Ninjas (1992-1998) and Beverly Hills Ninja (1997), one of the last movies starring Saturday Night Live alum Chris Farley.
Supposedly, that was all going to change (again) with Ninja Assassin (2009), a big budget, major studio release produced by the Wachowskis, who created The Matrix (1999) — which, itself, did much for the American kung fu genre. But the Wachowskis also created the disappointing Matrix sequels, as well as the honorable but ultimately ineffective V for Vendetta (2006) and Speed Racer (2008). Sadly Ninja Assassin fell in the latter category. Rather than illuminate the fascinating true character of the self-tormenting specialists, they were made veritable super-zombies in the special effects-burdened fantasia.
Ironically, the ninja movie as a viable genre disappeared almost as effectively and completely as the ancient assassin-spies themselves. But the insidious effect of Cannon Films on the development of American martial arts films was far from over. Just ask Chuck Norris. When producers couldn’t get Bruce post-Enter the Dragon, some would take anything associated with him. And since Lee gave Norris such a great showcase in Way of the Dragon (and the two had reportedly worked together on The Wrecking Crew), Lo Wei (the prolific Chinese filmmaker who proclaimed to all who would listen that he launched Bruce as well as Jackie) cast Norris as the beating, raping, robbing, and laughing villain of Yellow Faced Tiger (aka Slaughter in San Francisco, 1973) — the film designed to introduce Don Wong Tao as yet another “New Bruce Lee.”
The film did little for Don, but served to inspire Chuck not to take the Hong Kong road. If he was going to be a movie star, he vowed to do it in his own country. Born in 1940 Oklahoma, he escaped a tough childhood by joining the Air Force. Once stationed in Korea, he discovered the joys of Tang Soo Do, another Korean martial art with roots in the Japanese occupation of the country, but also with a touch of Chinese flavor (the “tang” of the name supposedly referring to the Tang Dynasty). Once returning to the states, however, he excelled in karate tournaments and opened a chain of popular karate schools.
Leaving the San Fran slaughter behind, he worked diligently to create his own movie path. He got his next shot at stardom thanks to the short-lived mini-craze for truckers and the rustic “language” on their in-cab citizen’s band (CB) radios — born of 1975’s best-selling Convoy song (and subsequent 1978 film of the same name directed by Sam Peckinpah). He managed to get the lead role in Breaker Breaker (1977), an exploitation film written by a man best known as an editor (Terry Chambers) and directed by a man best known for composing soundtracks (Don Hulette). It was a mediocre movie, but was enough to get Chuck’s spinning back kick in the door. In this movie, as in almost all of its successors, many stuntmen would wait around just to get his cowboy boot in their faces.
Although his first movie came and went like a passing truck, Good Guys Wear Black (1978) got more attention. Director Ted Post, who had helmed Clint Eastwood’s Hang ‘Em High (1968) and Magnum Force (1973), wisely decided to make Chuck the “poor man’s Clint.” The tale of a political science professor (a role that fit Norris like a sleeping bag) who is revealed to be the leader of the elite Black Tiger Unit, benefited from an exceptional marketing campaign, anchored by the moment when Chuck does a flying kick through the windshield of a moving car.
That film did well enough to ensure Chuck’s next film, A Force of One (1979), which he also got to choreograph. It was a grateful flashback to his karate days, as he battles in a martial arts competition that serves as a front for drug pushers. In it, he fights Bill “Superfoot” Wallace, to much the same tepid response as when Jackie Chan fought Superfoot in The Protector. Although not as exciting as his previous film, A Force of One was superior to anything else that could have been termed an American martial arts movie at the time. Although limited as an actor, Norris cared about the movies he made, and he was intent on creating a breakthrough film — something that would bring him to the attention of the major studios.
The Octagon (1981) did it. With his wooden delivery and stolid screen presence, Norris seemed born to play a ninja (whose job was not to be noticed). Here, he plays a nearly somnambulistic fighter who resists taking on a present-day ninja camp despite the fact that all his loved ones are dropping like flies. The climatic assault on the octagon-shaped ninja camp is a good one, reminiscent of the opening Vietnam War sequence in Good Guys Wear Black. And, despite the fact that several protagonists die because Norris’ character refuses to take action through most of the film’s first half, The Octagon became his best-looking, and one of his best-loved, movies.
Following that, he reporte
dly wanted to do The Destroyer, the satiric, male-action, paperback book series about Remo Williams and Chiun, two masters of Sinanju — the Korean source of all the martial arts. But the authors, Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir, weren’t selling to Norris. No, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins began and ended in 1985, when Fred Ward and Joel Grey played the roles in the uninspired first film in an aborted series.
“You could have made Rambo, instead you made Dumbo,” author Murphy told me he said to the film’s producer after leaving a screening.
Chuck Norris made The Destroyer-esque An Eye for an Eye (1981), with Mako as Chan, an Asian mentor to a martial artist taking revenge for the killing of his policewoman girlfriend. Even with fights choreographed by Chuck and his brother Aaron, the result was tired. But, as uninspired as it was, the “Eyes” finally brought Norris to the attention of a major studio.
Columbia Pictures wanted him to star in seemingly the worst script they could find: Silent Rage (1982). Here Chuck plays a stiff but honorable small-town sheriff whose justifiable killing of an insane ax murderer is complicated when some scientists inexplicably bring the nutcase back to life as an unkillable monster.
While Chuck is breaking up a barroom brawl with his patented spin kick, the monster is running around town killing people in gruesome and gratuitous ways. Finally, Norris kicks the guy down a well and the film ends with a freeze frame of the monster struggling in the water, where he apparently is to this very day. Words cannot describe the pandering, moronic nature of this production. The only item of interest was that Chuck was playing a live man like a zombie while Brian Libby, who portrayed the killer, was playing a zombie like a live man.
So much for Columbia. Next on Chuck’s studio tour was MGM/UA, which released Forced Vengeance in 1983. Originally titled The Jade Jungle, it was “Clint-lite” by any name, directed by James Fargo, whose main claim to fame was helming the third Dirty Harry movie, The Enforcer (1976). Chuck then moved on to Orion, who secured Norris’ future with Lone Wolf McQuade (1984), which proclaimed to all the world that Norris actually wanted to be “Clint Lite.” The plot, ostensibly based on the real-life exploits of Texas Ranger “Lone Wolf” Gonzales, was really a patchwork of Eastwood’s Dirty Harry and “Man With No Name” spaghetti Westerns. Even the soundtrack was reminiscent of Ennio Morricone’s brilliant music for Sergio Leone’s trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars, A Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly).
The final affront to martial arts movie fans was that David Carradine played the villain. However, Carradine, who had been given Bruce Lee’s role in both the Kung Fu television series and the awful film version of The Silent Flute (1974), would only sign on if he was not seen beaten on-screen (so he was blown up off-screen instead). Norris was quoted as saying that Carradine was about as good a martial artist as he, Norris, was an actor. It was that self-deprecation/insecurity that would shape Norris’ showbiz life. Still, he always tried his best and was a conscientious worker and an honorable professional.
It was his inherent promise that attracted producer Raymond Wagner. Wagner was working with a remarkable young man named Andy Davis, whose only directing credit up until that time was a minor movie called Stony Island (1977). But they had a workable script called Code of Silence (1985), which Davis knew he could make great if it was filmed in his favorite city, Chicago. Surrounding Norris with veteran “Windy City” actors (and playing to his star’s monosyllabic strengths) Davis made Norris’ best movie — a crackling good, emotionally involving cop thriller; low on martial arts but high on stunts and solid dialogue (probably the most memorable of which had Chuck growling, “If I need any advice from you, I’ll beat it out of ya”).
Finally, after more than a decade, Chuck Norris had made a good movie — one that he could have used as a foundation for a career that could’ve placed him alongside the action film greats. Ah, but there’s the rub. In the annals of action-film history, there have been some notable turning points. George Lazenby quitting 007. Burt Reynolds deciding to concentrate on increasingly stupid car-chase movies despite great reviews in serious dramas and romantic comedies. And then there was Chuck Norris deciding to turn his back on Code of Silence to make down-and-dirty movies for Cannon Films.
Coming from an impoverished childhood and still insecure about his acting, Norris chose to take money in the hand rather than pie in the sky. Golan/Globus apparently paid him one million dollars just for signing, and promised one million dollars for each of seven films. Besides, would major studios allow his brother, Aaron, to continue choreographing and directing his pictures?
Whatever the reason, it was a shame. While Andy Davis and Norris’ action peers went on to bigger and/or better things, Chuck toiled in the slums of filmdom for the next ten years. The first few were okay. Missing in Action (1984), released prior to Code of Silence, but made afterward, was effective enough, as was its sequel, Missing in Action 2: The Beginning (1985) — both establishing Chuck now as “Rambo-lite.” Now forty-five years old, Norris went the way of so many martial arts stars by downplaying karate for gunplay. He co-wrote his next Cannon loss leader, Invasion U.S.A. (1985), which had him taking on foreign terrorists in Florida.
The Delta Force (1986) was, arguably, his best Cannon Film, as well as one of Cannon’s best. Monachem Golan returned to the director’s chair for this combination of The Dirty Dozen and Airport, filling the cast with familiar but talented actors, ranging from The Dirty Dozen’s Lee Marvin to Airport’s George Kennedy to The Poseidon Adventure’s Shelley Winters. In the mix was also the great Martin Balsam, Robert Forster, and even Joey Bishop. At two hours and ten minutes long, Golan was able to make two movies: one a fairly credible docudrama about the real skyjacking that the film was based on, and the other a patriotic revenge fantasy that had Lee and Chuck saving the day.
From there it was a slippery downhill slope. Firewalker (1986) had the right idea — teaming Chuck with Oscar-winning actor Louis Gossett Jr. to play wisecracking treasure hunters — but it had a script that did no one justice. Norris wrapped up his initial Cannon contract in 1988 with Braddock: Missing in Action III and Hero and the Terror, both which showed a creeping indifference on the part of cast and crew alike.
It only got worse. Delta Force 2 arrived in 1990 after an on-location helicopter accident that killed a stuntman. The Hitman (1991) was an embarrassment, combining a greater violence and profanity quotient with the “heartfelt” tale of a boy looking for a father figure. But even it wasn’t as bad as Sidekicks (1993) with Chuck training a kid to be a responsible martial artist. But neither of those efforts could compare to the nearly unknown U.S./Canada/Israel co-production Hellbound, which went directly to video in 1993 and had Chuck fighting a demonic spirit. Finally, there was Top Dog (1995) and Forest Warrior (1996), two sad attempts to sustain Chuck’s career.
Thankfully, Chuck’s saga has a happy ending. Walker, Texas Ranger went on the air in 1993, and was immediately decried as the most mindlessly violent show on television. Its millions of watchers didn’t care. Recycling Lone Wolf McQuade into a teen-friendly action hour, the nearly sixty year-old karate champion found the success he had longed for in a medium that didn’t intimidate him. Few expected greatness of Norris on television — his fans wanted good times and his bosses wanted good rating, and that’s what he gave them for a full eight seasons. With a spinning back kick, of course.
Meanwhile, back in 1984, when Chuck was starring in Missing in Action, another film appeared that would have a lasting effect on American martial art movies. Ironically, it was one that Chuck was supposedly asked to co-star in, but turned down because of the script’s negative view of American martial arts (a report Norris denies). In any case, the film’s point of view might have been negative, but it was an accurate snapshot of American martial arts mentality.
The movie was, of course, The Karate Kid (1984), the canny original written by Robert Mark Kamen, directed by John Avildsen, and starring Ralph Macchio and Pat Noriyuki Morita as the ven
erable Mister Miyagi. Now this was a flick that made perfect sense to a short-cut-loving, anything-worth-having-can-be-paid-for society. Even so, it took a misshapen crane-style kung fu move to save the day during the finale. Nevertheless, it holds a deserved place in the hearts of many fans (including me).
The difficult reality of kung fu is that, while the pay-off is impressive, the set-up is strange to western eyes. Americans seem far more comfortable with angry emotion and muscular motion than calm, smooth defense. As I’ve said to my students, Japanese martial arts is like ice. Chinese kung fu is like water. Rarely was the difference more conspicuous than two years after The Karate Kid, when Big Trouble in Little China (1986) showed up. Original scripters Gary Goldman and David Weinstein wanted to create an American-friendly version of “manhua” (Chinese comic books) movies like Chu Yuan’s Heaven Sword and Dragon Saber, Tsui Hark’s Zu Warriors of the Magic Mountain and Lu Chin-ku’s Bastard Swordsman, but set in the old west. Screenwriter W.D. Richter reportedly modernized it, then director John Carpenter further amended it to his liking.
The result was a major box office disappointment at the time, and remains an egregious missed opportunity. It’s a classic example of what happens when an American film crew portrays an ethos they know little about. It didn’t help matters when star Kurt Russell was inspired to play his leading role by doing an impersonation of John Wayne. It might have been interesting to see how Wayne’s patented round-house punches stacked up against authentic kung fu, but Big Trouble had precious little of that.
