KFMG Podcast S02 Episode 16: Steve Kerridge

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KFMG Podcast S02 Episode 16: Steve Kerridge

“It’s like police work; real, detective work. I enjoy that.”

Bruce Lee historian and author Steve Kerridge is my guest on this special episode of the show, which is very much a celebration of Bruce Lee’s life and work. Steve is the author of the fabulously detailed book, Bruce Lee: Legends of the Dragon, which outlines the making of the film The Way of the Dragon (1972), in which Bruce Lee acted as director, writer, star, and producer. Along with fellow Bruce Lee expert David Tadman, Steve also produces the regular Bruce Lee Forever poster magazines (which are available to buy from …

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Blackbelt (1992)

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Blackbelt (1992)

Another solid effort from Don Wilson‘s Roger Corman years. It is clearly hampered by a quick filming schedule and some poor dialogue, but it’s not altogether terrible, and has some memorable moments. Wilson is strong in the lead role, playing an honourable ex-cop who teaches karate to kids and still dabbles in a spot of pro bono crime fighting. “I don’t get charged to take out the garbage,” he says. A sassy singer asks him to be her personal bodyguard when she starts getting creepy gifts of severed fingers from psycho-fan Matthias Hues. He’s a high-kicking serial killer with some …

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Bounty Tracker (1993)

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Bounty Tracker (1993)

Solid, made-for-TV crime-fighting with Lorenzo Lamas, who plays an honourable Boston-based bounty hunter called Johnathan Damone. He lands in LA to check in with his federal agent brother who is in a spot of bother with a crime syndicate and their hired goons. The baddies kill his brother, so Johnathan goes on a quest for revenge, kicking people around and looking damn good in the process. The mercenaries are led by charismatic double act Matthias Hues and Cyndi Pass, who play an ice-cold pair of leather-strapped killers. The duo lend a unique spark to a routine action movie. Lamas’ competency …

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Ip Man: The Final Fight (2013)

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Ip Man: The Final Fight (2013)

This Ip Man film – Herman Yau’s follow-up to The Legend is Born: Ip Man – is a polite, reverential, misty-eyed nostalgia trip. It charts the latter-half of the Wing Chun master’s life following his relocation to Hong Kong, and features a diligent and authoritative central performance from Anthony Wong. Wong famously said he was drunk when he accepted the role; an extensive kung fu training programme was required to turn the award-winning actor into a believable on-screen fighter, or at least someone as equalling convincing as Donnie Yen, who has now embodied the role with his Wilson Yip-directed Ip Man films. …

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Enter the Warriors Gate (2016)

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Enter the Warriors Gate (2016)

An English-language Chinese-French co-production filmed in Canada and China from Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen. It’s a film of quite contrasting visions. The tone is generally light and played for younger audiences, but the mix of fantasy and realism doesn’t quite work together. The story follows an American teenager from a single parent household who gets transported to ancient China via a giant mystical urn. The boy has to rescue a kidnapped princess and defeat an evil tyrant – played by another American, Dave Bautista. The boy is a keen gamer, and you’re half-expecting him to be sucked into …

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Profile: Zara Phythian

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Profile: Zara Phythian

Date of birth: May 10, 1984 (Nottingham, UK)

Married name: Zara Marke

Occupation: Former martial arts instructor, actor, stunt performer, fight choreographer, producer.

Nickname: The Lady Dragon

Style: Shotokan Karate, wushu, Taekwondo, kickboxing.

Biography: Zara Phythian is a former actor, martial arts instructor and convicted sex offender. She is the oldest of four sisters, born in Nottingham, UK. She trained in the martial arts from the age of seven, learning the discipline of Shotokan Karate and achieving a second dan black belt before becoming a teenager. At the age of 13, she enrolled at Nottingham’s School of Champions martial arts centre where she took up taekwondo, …

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Lady Bloodfight (2016)

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Lady Bloodfight (2016)

Exciting starring-role debut from Scarlett Johansson’s stunt double, Amy Johnston, who is served well in an all-female fight tournament premise with thematic links to the 1988 cult Van Damme hit Bloodsport. Amy plays Jane Jones, a “blue eyed bullet from the west”, who gets sacked from her Pittsburgh waiter job after beating up the customers. She leaves her bereft single mother for a flight to Hong Kong to discover the truth about what happened to her dead karate dad who was killed at the Kumite; a fabled, underground, full-contact martial arts competition, here remodelled as an oestrogen-fuelled, women-only fight club, …

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TC 2000 (1993)

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TC 2000 (1993)

First-time director T.J. Scott admirably fashions a high-concept sci-fi yarn on a shoestring budget, with clear allusions to films like Blade Runner and The Terminator. It’s all moody synthesisers, dry ice and blue lasers – some of it almost convincing – filmed predominantly in large basements full of pipework. In addition to its dystopian themes, the film is also a non-stop martial arts flick with a great B-movie cast of bare-chested strongmen like Bolo Yeung, Matthias Hues and Billy Blanks. This is a particular good vehicle for Blanks, who stars as a vengeful future-cop called Jason Storm operating in an …

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Kickboxer 2: The Road Back (1991)

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Kickboxer 2: The Road Back (1991)

Tiresome sequel which lacks the charm of the first film, not to mention its star attraction: Jean-Claude Van Damme. Instead, Dallas actor Sasha Mitchell steps into the lead role, but he never comes close to matching his predecessor during the physical scenes, which is quite important for a film with the word ‘kickboxer’ in the title. He plays a third Sloane brother: the good natured pretty-boy David, who inherits his brother’s LA gym after it is revealed that both Kurt and Eric have been killed by the Muay Thai monster Tong Po (Michel Qissi). David is initially lured back into …

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The Spiritual Boxer (1975)

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The Spiritual Boxer (1975)

Lau Kar-leung‘s influential directorial debut is often credited for being a precursor to both the slapstick kung fu comedies of Ng See-yuen at Seasonal Films (Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow, Drunken Master), and the supernatural shenanigans of Sammo Hung. There are certainly signs of Jackie Chan in Wong Yu’s comedic central performance, playing a juvenile, opportunistic orphaned street rat whose sifu is a cipher for the alcoholic Beggar So. And Sammo clearly lifted the haunted mansions, Taoist priests and black magic routines for his extraordinary Encounters of the Spooky Kind. The film centres around Lau Kar-leung’s general distrust of the …

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