Uncle Jasper reviews: Blind Fury (1989)

Blind Fury (1989)

Starring Rutger Hauer, Terry O’Quinn, Brandon Call, Noble Willingham, Lisa Blount, Nick Cassavetes, Rick Overton, Randall “Tex” Cobb, Meg Foster, Sho Kosugi

Directed By Phillip Noyce

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Sometimes you just have to roll with your intuition. No matter how silly and bizarre your idea initially looks on paper you just gotta go on with that gut feeling, confident that there is something about it that just feels “right”. I would imagine that’s how director Phillip Noyce and writer Charles Robert Carner felt as they sat down gingerly, committing this unique slice of 80s action to celluloid.

Blind Fury is a film that once again proves just how versatile and universal the Japanese samurai film was. After the Italians made Yojimbo into a western, and George Lucas threw a little bit of The Hidden Fortress into Star Wars, I guess it was only a matter of time before we had Rutger Hauer combing American highways as a Vietnam veteran incarnation of Zatoichi, taking on the mob almost single-handedly with his walking cane which housed a razor-sharp samurai sword.

Uncle Jasper reviews: Future Kick (1991)

Future Kick (1991)

Starring Don “The Dragon” Wilson, Meg Foster, Chris Penn, Eb Lottimer, Al Ruscio, Jeff Pomerantz

Directed By Damian Klaus

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Before Hollywood discovered the Hong Kong film industry in the late 90’s we had to settle for the local stuff like Future Kick. Back then martial arts films were pretty much advertised by how many kickboxing championships or karate tournaments the lead actor had won. Most of the time, these titles were completely fabricated or taken totally out of context, but we didn’t care. Remember those trailers for Bloodsport and Kickboxer heralding the coming of Van Damme to the US as if it was like a visit from the pope? They threw out all kinds of bullshit spiel like “…nine time reigning karate champion of the world, Jean Claude Van Damme”. We loved it, but once Jackie Chan’s Rumble in the Bronx got its much belated release stateside, it pretty much opened the floodgates to a world of martial arts that America hadn’t seen since the heyday of Bruce Lee. Van Damme, Steven Seagal, and all of those slow white guys we once thought were awesome gradually disappeared from movie screens across America in favor of the new flavor.

Don “The Dragon” Wilson was one of those guys.