This is a lavishly illustrated and well written book by Dr. Craig D. Reid. His story itself would make a pretty good movie, since he's a martial artist as well, and did voice dubbing in the late 70s and early 80s over in Hong Kong. He also was a writer/stuntman/actor/choreographer. So he knows his stuff. The best reviews are the ones when he talks about the history of Shaolin, as that's so intriguing to me. I think almost every picture in the book comes from a Shaw Brothers movies, which is pretty cool as well. Even in still pictures you can see why they were the undisputed masters of the era. His martialogies include the percentage of fights in the movie, such as INFRAMAN being 25.14% fight scenes. He even includes the cartoon "STORY OF THE CHINESE GODS". I'd love to see an uncut version of that, sometime.
It's fascinating to see how the style of movies evolved from 1970- little to no "real" martial arts moves in the movies- to using authentic styles, aka wing chun, hung gar, choy li fut. It's quite easy to pinpoint exactly what changed it all- Bruce Lee. Suddenly real martial artists were wanted.
It really is nearly the ultimate guide to the martial arts movies of the 70s, but since there were SO many movies made back then he could only include about 500. He picked most of the good ones, and then the Chuck Norris movies as well. I don't know if he's made a guide to the 1980s yet, here's hoping it shows up. Amazon has this book for a great price. Order yours today!
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