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Post by sadako on Sept 26, 2023 22:10:24 GMT
Thanks for the link. I was thinking about Target recently. I do believe there was an article on the Leone Dollars trilogy. I cut out some of the pictures, glued them to thin pieces of cardboard and then glued them to my school exercise books. I seem to recall getting into a bit of minor trouble for doing that. There was also a magazine that folded out into a poster that was published monthly(?) around the time of the kung fu craze. I don't recall what it was called but it was martial arts related and most posters were of Bruce Lee. Now at the time we were encouraged to cover our school exercise books with wallpaper to keep them from becoming too dog-eared. My classmate and I had the idea of using part of the posters to cover our books, so we had Bruce Lee's face covering our maths, history, science etc books. Better than the garish 70s wallpaper that most kids used, we thought. The only Leone article I know in Target is this one about Fistful of Dynamite...  |
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Post by sadako on Sept 26, 2023 22:11:19 GMT
New English Library also published this Bruce Lee special  |
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Post by sadako on Sept 26, 2023 22:12:54 GMT
Kung Fu magazine - in the same tabloid format as NELās popular Science Fiction Monthly.  |
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Post by ripper on Sept 27, 2023 9:24:00 GMT
There was also a magazine that folded out into a poster that was published monthly(?) around the time of the kung fu craze. I don't recall what it was called but it was martial arts related and most posters were of Bruce Lee. Those were everywhere, right? Even if I can't remember much about it and I assume it was edited for violence, Kung Fu with Carradine was a must see. There were glossy martial arts magazines and some comics, which of course also were toned down. A bit like Marvel's Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, only drawn by Spanish artists. A couple of different strips, articles about martial arts. Another even more blatant rip-off was Kung Fu Western, also very soft, a bi-weekly Heftroman, which I think had even the same basic plot as the tv-series. Recently I managed to get the first of Michel Parry's Kung Fu western, still haven't read it. I guess it also followed the formula.
As a youth I never managed to see a Bruce Lee movie which had an R rating. When I finally caught up in the video age, I couldn't understand how such low budget productions could be responsible for such a hype. I guess it must have been the charisma of their star.
There seemed to be a fair few martial arts related mags imported from the US. Unfortunately, where I live, availability was haphazard, and even Deadly Hands was often hard to get. I had to hop on a bus to the next town if I wanted to have a more than even chance of a copy. The poster mag I was talking about was, I believe, a UK publication, as it seemed to be available quite readily. |
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Post by ripper on Sept 27, 2023 9:33:35 GMT
Martial arts were popular in black US culture in the 1970s, there were black martial arts stars like Jim Kelly, and various groups trained there members in them. I saw Jim Kelly in features about Enter the Dragon when it was in cinemas. I was so excited when there was an ad for Black Belt Jones several years later, but there was no way I would have gotten in to see it. Actually, I am unsure if our modest little cinema even showed it. |
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Post by ripper on Sept 27, 2023 10:06:47 GMT
Thanks for the link. I was thinking about Target recently. I do believe there was an article on the Leone Dollars trilogy. I cut out some of the pictures, glued them to thin pieces of cardboard and then glued them to my school exercise books. I seem to recall getting into a bit of minor trouble for doing that. There was also a magazine that folded out into a poster that was published monthly(?) around the time of the kung fu craze. I don't recall what it was called but it was martial arts related and most posters were of Bruce Lee. Now at the time we were encouraged to cover our school exercise books with wallpaper to keep them from becoming too dog-eared. My classmate and I had the idea of using part of the posters to cover our books, so we had Bruce Lee's face covering our maths, history, science etc books. Better than the garish 70s wallpaper that most kids used, we thought. The only Leone article I know in Target is this one about Fistful of Dynamite... Mmmmmmm...it was definitely an article on The Man with No Name, and I was sure it had been in Target. I can't think of any other such mags I bought back then, but after 50 years I just can't be certain now. |
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Sept 27, 2023 10:23:48 GMT
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Sept 27, 2023 11:39:17 GMT
There was also a magazine that folded out into a poster that was published monthly(?) around the time of the kung fu craze. I don't recall what it was called but it was martial arts related and most posters were of Bruce Lee. Those were everywhere, right? Even if I can't remember much about it and I assume it was edited for violence, Kung Fu with Carradine was a must see. There were glossy martial arts magazines and some comics, which of course also were toned down. A bit like Marvel's Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, only drawn by Spanish artists. A couple of different strips, articles about martial arts. Another even more blatant rip-off was Kung Fu Western, also very soft, a bi-weekly Heftroman, which I think had even the same basic plot as the tv-series. Recently I managed to get the first of Michel Parry's Kung Fu western, still haven't read it. I guess it also followed the formula.
As a youth I never managed to see a Bruce Lee movie which had an R rating. When I finally caught up in the video age, I couldn't understand how such low budget productions could be responsible for such a hype. I guess it must have been the charisma of their star.
Kung Fu the series has been drawn into the Bruce Lee myth when his wife claimed the idea was Bruce Lee's. His wife however is an untrustworthy source, having claimed he beat Wong Jack-man in three minutes in a real fight despite not being in the room, when he at the most drew as his opponent only fought defensively. The films, with the exception of Enter the Dragon, are terrible, I assume he was just around at the right time and did have a certain screen presence. I wonder how many male teenagers went out and bought nunchucks after watching Lee and then hit themselves with them by accident, like Lee did with his rubber nunchuks in Game of Death? The fights in most of the films are stupid, but they are in most martial arts films. In real life Lee seems to have been a theorist of martial arts, constantly wanting to learn and explore, he wasn't a competition fighter. He did a service by showing that Asians could take lead roles in film. He died young and that always adds to the mythology, like with James Dean, or various writers and rock stars. |
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Post by ripper on Sept 27, 2023 13:26:40 GMT
Thank you so much, Princess. That must have been what I remember buying all those decades ago. I would have been ten years old when that issue came out, though I don't think I mutilated it until a few years later. I think I had recently seen the Dollars trilogy for the first time and was on something of a Man with No Name kick. Oddly enough, it must have been the Summer of 1972 when my parents took me on hols to the Isle of Wight...Shanklin, I think, well, it had a pier. We went to see Zulu on the pier cinema, there was a terrible thunderstorm and the power went out just as the Zulus were making their first attack. The screening was cancelled and we were given tickets to see it again. We came back a couple of days later but they had changed films and it was A Fistful of Dollars. Sadly it was certificate AA so I wasn't allowed to see it. |
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Post by ripper on Sept 27, 2023 13:44:43 GMT
Those were everywhere, right? Even if I can't remember much about it and I assume it was edited for violence, Kung Fu with Carradine was a must see. There were glossy martial arts magazines and some comics, which of course also were toned down. A bit like Marvel's Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, only drawn by Spanish artists. A couple of different strips, articles about martial arts. Another even more blatant rip-off was Kung Fu Western, also very soft, a bi-weekly Heftroman, which I think had even the same basic plot as the tv-series. Recently I managed to get the first of Michel Parry's Kung Fu western, still haven't read it. I guess it also followed the formula.
As a youth I never managed to see a Bruce Lee movie which had an R rating. When I finally caught up in the video age, I couldn't understand how such low budget productions could be responsible for such a hype. I guess it must have been the charisma of their star.
Kung Fu the series has been drawn into the Bruce Lee myth when his wife claimed the idea was Bruce Lee's. His wife however is an untrustworthy source, having claimed he beat Wong Jack-man in three minutes in a real fight despite not being in the room, when he at the most drew as his opponent only fought defensively. The films, with the exception of Enter the Dragon, are terrible, I assume he was just around at the right time and did have a certain screen presence. I wonder how many male teenagers went out and bought nunchucks after watching Lee and then hit themselves with them by accident, like Lee did with his rubber nunchuks in Game of Death? The fights in most of the films are stupid, but they are in most martial arts films. In real life Lee seems to have been a theorist of martial arts, constantly wanting to learn and explore, he wasn't a competition fighter. He did a service by showing that Asians could take lead roles in film. He died young and that always adds to the mythology, like with James Dean, or various writers and rock stars. I agree that Lee had a screen presence. He certainly wasn't the best of actors, but screen presence and acting ability don't always coincide. His death added to his mystique, especially given the nature of his demise and all those conspiracy theories that still swirl around. He was 32 when he died, so would still have been relatively young during the action movie boom of the 80s. His co-star from Way of the Dragon, Chuck Norris, became a major action star in the 80s for Cannon, and surely had he lived, Bruce Lee would have been making similar fare. The tragic nature of his son's death, also at 32 I think, just added to the mix, and fed rumours of a Lee 'curse'. |
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Post by andydecker on Sept 27, 2023 14:30:13 GMT
This is a copy of one of the German comics magazines. 1976
The artwork was pretty basic, the short stories even more so. But there also were articles and fotos. Basically this was the same package as Marvel's Deadly Hands of Kung Fu, only in full colour and less violent. 1976
You can't beat a Norem cover, the story art inside is so-so. And here is one of those novels, in this case written by Michel Parry, editor of many great horror anthologies. 1974 |
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Post by sadako on Sept 28, 2023 19:05:06 GMT
Ah, yes, maybe. One of the few issues I havenāt got! |
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Post by sadako on Oct 6, 2023 14:55:13 GMT
Thanks for the link to the site, looks interesting. I've been trying to recall how many issues of Target I bought. Don't think it was too many, and all have long since been mislaid. The only article that I remember for sure was the one about Diamonds are Forever, and possibly one on Leone's 'Dollars' films. I was only 10 when I bought Target, so DLT's fashion articles were of little interest to me. I used to like Christopher Lee's column and it was probably the highlight for me, though I was way too young to see any of the films he wrote about. Target had to compete with the likes of Whizzer & Chips, Cor!!, Mighty World of Marvel, US imports, sweets and chocolate, and the occasional Airfix model kit for my modest pocket money--and often lost out. Arrived today, the Target mag with the Clint Eastwood cover I was missing. Yes, thereās this āDollarsā spread insideā¦  |
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