Cool Ass Cinema Book Review: Kung Fu Craze Hits USA, Revised and Expanded Edition!

 

THESE FISTS BREAK BRICKS: HOW KUNG FU MOVIES SWEPT AMERICA AND CHANGED THE WORLD (Revised and Expanded Edition)

 

By Grady Hendrix and Chris Poggiali

 

375 pages; hardcover; color and B/W photos; first edition (For Running Press) 2025

 

When Chinese Kung Fu Fighters and Japanese Ninjas invaded America in the 1970s and 1980s, the Asian martial arts genre was branded into American pop culture like the scars on Lo Lieh's FIVE FINGERS OF DEATH. You'll read all about the many forms the genre took in the 70s, 80s and beyond in this revised and heavily expanded edition.

 

If you've never seen a Kung Fu movie before (or, under their condescending moniker, Chopsocky flicks), and wondered where the martial arts style of action you see in American movies like THE MATRIX series and others like the BOURNE series originated from, this hefty hardcover chronicles that subject. Asian cinema's infiltration of the US and other international territories is even more meticulously detailed the second time around. (insert: US poster for 1973s THE AWAKEN PUNCH)

 

It's been three years since FISTS broke BRICKS on bookstore shelves across the US. Now, the voluminous tome on America's (and the rest of the Occidental world's) fascination with Asian martial arts action cinema of the 70s and 80s has been unleashed once more; only this time, it's expanded by 40 pages (pay no attention to the incorrect page counts on Amazon for both editions) and approximately 100 new images. (insert: US poster for the 1975 South Korean martial arts movie, KILL THE SHOGUN)

 

The number of chapters remains four, but there are additional sub-sections on a variety of topics like paperbacks, 80s video companies, and write ups on selected actors--all of which are new. The layout is different from before and you'll notice the two books have a few things here and there the other doesn't, so it's beneficial to have both versions. Completists, however, will certainly want to own them together.

 

The original book was a coffee table-sized publication. The new version is bigger in terms of pages but slightly smaller in size, making a better fit for your bookcase (see insert pic for size comparison). Other than the difference in size, the glossiness of the pages are the same. As mentioned above, the images have been increased by nearly 100, so for those who love an assortment of imagery and creatively assembled collages, you've got more variety in the number of photographs than you can twirl a pair of nunchuks at.

 

It's worth pointing out that once major American studios gave up licensing Asian martial arts movies, the smaller outfits snatched them up by the dozens. Industry insiders in Hong Kong were frustrated with many Chinese film producers in that they continued making endlessly cheap fighting movies for those quick monetary fixes foreign distributors were giving them. Just as critics and filmmakers outside Hong Kong mocked these films, many within their own markets often pleaded with producers to spend more time making quality pictures for export so that their industry would be taken seriously. Had they done so, we possibly wouldn't have gotten the volumes of entertainment; nor a book like this one documenting these wacky cinema endeavors when they took America by storm, and maintained a strong influence and market share from the cinema, television and on home video. (insert: newspaper ad for 1977s THE 7 GRANDMASTERS paired with 1979s THE MYSTERY OF CHESS BOXING)

 

Even if you're not into these films, the history of the genres impact and influence on American culture will surely fascinate even the most casual of readers. That time will not come again.

 

You can still buy the first book, but for the newer, bigger version, you can purchase it at Amazon HERE. If you want to read our earlier review of THESE FISTS BREAK BRICKS from 2022, which contains an interview with co-author Chris Poggiali, you can read that HERE. Simply put, THESE FISTS is as highly recommended the second time around as it was the first. (Insert pic: 1981s IRON NECK LI released in the US as KUNG FU IS FOREVER)