A summary of Severin Films’ Kung Fu Trailers of Fury compilation can be found in the superimposed titles from the opening coming attraction for 1978’s The Ways of Kung-Fu: “There are fights! There are laughs! There are surprises! … We are not afraid of imitators, because we are the real deal!”
Comprised of a full two hours of trailers, the program presents martial-arts mayhem at its 1970s pop-culture peak, when public fascination with superstar Bruce Lee extended far beyond his untimely death to a flooded market of “chopsocky” imitations. Aside from the same “whoosh” sound effect to indicate appendages and/or limbs in motion, on their way to making contact with an opponent, the 31 clips collected here share another element in common: hyperbole.
Often rendered in broken English, the genre’s peculiar brand of ballyhoo is responsible for half the fun. When you have projects as insignificant as 1978’s Shaolin Iron Claws calling itself “a stunning production in Chinese cinema history” or as transparently money-grubbing as the same year’s Bruce Le’s Greatest Revenge claiming that it “reinvents action cinema,” one thing is undeniable: Embellishment and exaggeration are all over this like snot on a salad bar sneeze guard during flu season.
Think about the Don Draper pitches that resulted in these indelible ad lines:
• “Intrigue! Mystery! Intrigue and mystery!” —Fists of Bruce Lee (1978)
• “He must fight the YIN YANG SHEMALE!” —Kung Fu vs. Yoga (1979)
• “100 minutes of pure, nonstop sensory explosion!” —The Happenings (1980)
• “It has both the fights and the laughs! … It’s hardcore! It’s Ring vs Pole like you’ve never seen before!” —Enter the Fat Dragon (1978)
• “More exciting than the Western! More suspenseful than European films!” —Blacklist (1972)
• “A COMEDY WITH ACTON [sic] … GOLDEN NEEDLE PEERING [sic]” —Chinese Kung Fu (1973)
• “Chinese bumpkin wreaks havoc in Europe!” —Chinese Kung Fu Against Godfather (1974)
So from where does the other half of the fun come? The visuals, coward! Primarily, I speak of the fights that utilize bamboo poles, rice bowls, playground equipment, baby powder, Q-tips, flying logs, legs wrapped behind one’s head, sewing supplies, ramen noodles, human urine, erect nipples, Dutch windmills, firecrackers, yo-yos, slippers with pop-out saw blades, stolen 007 scores, and something called the Golden Turtle Fist — just not all at once.
And “all at once” is not how I recommend taking in Trailers of Fury, however kick-ass (literally and figuratively) it may be. While the promo for Lee’s 1972 film, The Way of the Dragon, may be the only spot the average viewer is likely to have seen before, martial arts pictures are not known for variety. You have to sit through, say, several punched testicles before getting to the novelty of, say, an earlobe getting torn. Or a snake doing battle with a pussycat (from the ’78 Jackie Chan vehicle Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow). Or acupuncture needles stuck into a dude’s eyes — a cringe-inducing feat worth more exclamation points than I’m willing to type! —Rod Lott