Still when most people think of the Asian contribution to the era of the Drive-In, one man, and one type of movie, springs to their minds. That man is Bruce Lee, and the style of movie he popularized is the Hong Kong-produced “Kung Fu” movie. Beginning with Tang Shan da Xiong (The Big Boss), released in 1971, Lee was the face of Asian film in the US. Lee’s Jeet Kun Do style of Gung Fu was perfectly suited for the fast-paced, realistically choreographed fight scenes he favored for his films, and his mastery of it was unmatched.

    Hong Kong, as the one part of Mainland China not under Communist control after 1949, was the center of the Chinese motion picture industry—at least as far as the west was concerned. In fact, most American moviegoers tend to lump all Asian film under one umbrella, sometimes referring to it as “Chop-Sockey,” a derogatory term that undervalues the genre’s contribution to popular culture. Following Lee’s unexpected death, mere days before the premiere of Enter the Dragon, the interest in martial arts exploded throughout the US. Music, comic books, television—in the words of Carl Douglas’ hit song, “… everybody was Kung Fu Fighting.” Popular culture was permeated with Chinese motifs. Even the Saturday morning cartoons were ripe for their own Asian Invasion, with shows such as Hong Kong Phooey entertaining children with juvenile versions of what their older brothers and sisters were enjoying the night before at the local ozoner.

    In recent years, “Hong Kong Cinema” has become a definable brand, one that American producers are anxious to co-opt . Following the success of the Wűshů-inspired Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2000, which won three Oscars and was nominated for several more (including Best Picture, and Best Director for Ang Lee), Hollywood became enamored of Asian themes and subjects.

    Wűshů (literally translated, the word is a combination of wű, meaning “martial” and xiáyě, “chivalrous” ) or “martial arts” films are what most American moviegoers think of as the typical Hong Kong Kung-fu movies of the Asian Invasion era. Little different in style from the typical American Western of the 1950s or ‘60s, Wűshů was a traditional form of literature that stressed honor and chivalry in equal portion to the skill of the martial artist, and was easily adapted into the Chinese cinema. These tales were often compared to the mythically idealized knights popularized in the Victorian era, or to the lone gunfighter of the American west, in that the yóuxiá (literally, wandering force), or martial artist, similarly wanders the countryside righting wrongs and fighting injustice. 1978’s Drunken Master was a typical Wűshů movie, as was Mad Monkey Kung Fu (1979). Both dealt with disgraced or wronged figures who come back to avenge the wrong and redeem themselves in the end. In Drunken Master, Jackie Chan plays Wong Fei Hung, a Qing dynasty yóuxiá who became a folk hero after his death in 1924. Though most films about Wong examine his later life as a venerable and revered Zhěfú, or teacher, Chan takes an entirely different approach, playing him in his youth as a cocky, mischievous braggart.

    Though Wűshů movies comprised the bulk of the Hong Kong-produced films that found their way to the US, not every Hong Kong production was Wűshů, of course. Interestingly, most of Bruce Lee’s films don’t conform to the classical model of Wűshů, instead following a more modern style. Only one of Lee’s films was a period film, and even that (Fist of Fury) was set in the recent past of the 1900s. The films of Bruce Lee were truly groundbreaking in comparison to the average product coming from Hong Kong in the late 1960s. In fact, they bear a striking similarity to Blaxploitation Films, especially films like Shaft or Coffy. Lee’s own innate sense of ethnic pride was incorporated into his characters, which were more realistically drawn than was the norm. Prior to Lee, and indeed, after his untimely death, most of the ‘martial artists’ in Hong Kong cinema began as dancers, and the fight scenes in the films were highly stylized, choreographed routines, as complex as Swan Lake and almost as realistic.

    Bruce Lee, however, was a true martial artist, perhaps the greatest ever. His on-screen fights have a realism that was lacking in other movies. As film historian and critic Brian Thomas states, “[Fist of Fury] had a huge influence on martial arts films, far beyond any of Lee’s other movies.” He credits this to the film’s emphasis on action over plot, stating that, “The setting provided a forum for pure fighting ...” While this is true, it is also worth noting that both the plot and the characters are very well-developed, more so than was usual for Hong Kong-produced martial arts films up to that point.

    Hong Kong, however, wasn’t the only place in Asia with a thriving film industry. Other Asian nations had their own cinema, and their own styles of storytelling. Japan’s cinematic culture was as vibrant as that of their neighbor to the west, and far more diverse. Japanese film could boast of one of the industry’s greatest directors, in the person of Akira Kurosawa, whose movies inspired a generation of western filmmakers. His 1954 masterpiece, Seven Samurai (Shichinin no Samurai), arguably the greatest film to come from Japan, became The Magnificent Seven six years later. Yojimbo was transformed into A Fistful of Dollars. Kurosawa’s ability to create a brilliant motion picture crossed boundaries of language and culture, and for the first time an Asian filmmaker became internationally known and respected.

    But if Kurosawa was at one end of the scale of Japanese cinema, then perhaps the productions of Tomoyuki Tanaka were somewhere closer to the other end. Tanaka produced, the same year (and for the same studio) that saw Seven Samurai debut, the most iconic, if not the best, example of the cinema of Japan—Gojira. An allegorical tale of post-atomic Japan, menaced by a 200-foot tall monster with radioactive breath, it debuted in the US two years later, after some rather drastic edits, retitled as Godzilla, King of the Monsters. Gone was the film’s original anti-war message, a bit too strident for 1950s American audiences, and added were scenes featuring Raymond Burr as American newsman Steve Martin.

    The dominant form of American genre film at that time was the Sci-Fi / Horrors, of which Godzilla was a perfect example. The movie was tremendously successful here, as it was in Japan, leading to a string of sequels that continued for the next fifty years. The first was Godzilla’s Counter-Attack (Gojira no Gyakushű), released here as Gigantis, the Fire Monster in May of 1959. There would be many more in the 1960s and ‘70s. One of the best was the last film to feature all of Godzilla’s fathers—Tanaka, director Ishirô Honda, special effects master Eiji Tsuburaya, and composer Akira Ifukube. Destroy all Monsters (Kaijű Sôshingeki) featured virtually every Kaijű Toho had created to that point, as well as every familiar plot device that devoted fans of the giant monsters had come to expect.

    Of course giant monsters weren’t all that Japan’s filmmakers were capable of turning out during this period, but most of their product failed to find an audience on this side of the Pacific. One genre that was popular, in both Japan and the US, was the Tokusatsu Eiga, or Special Effects film. Titles such as The Mysterians (Chikyu Boeigun), Atragon (Kaitei Gunkan), or Battle in Outer Space (Uchu Daisenso) were quickly dubbed by English speaking actors, and when fed into the Drive-In distribution chain worked as well as any AIP-produced, Corman-directed Sci-Fi thriller.

    For generations of American moviegoers, these films symbolized the Japanese cinema, reduced to a lowest common denominator of men in rubber suits repeatedly stomping miniature versions of Tokyo into rubble. The incredible diversity of Japanese film wouldn’t be recognized and appreciated among American audiences until the late 1990s saw the sudden influx of high-quality, well-made Horror Films from Japan, beginning with 1998’s The Ring (Ringu). These films, commonly referred to as “J-Horror,” were often remade for American consumption, with American casts and changes to the plotlines in order to make them more conducive to our audiences. Still, it opened up the world of Japanese movies to Americans, who would continue to explore it’s diverse offerings.

    While studios in Japan were busy churning out Kaijű epics for fans around the world, the third great Asian film industry was just beginning to make its mark in the US. Though the Philippines had a thriving cinema prior to World War II, the Japanese invasion and occupation brought it to a standstill. Many studios preferred closing down to making films sympathetic to the occupiers. Of those that were able to resume operations after the war, until the mid to late 1960s their output was intended almost exclusively for the domestic market, and most of it was produced in the Tagalog language.

    By 1968 however, some of it began to make its way to these shores. Though he’s now regarded as one of the Philippines greatest filmmakers, fifty-odd years ago Eddie Romero was directing b-grade Horror Films for export to the US. With financing from the US production company Hemisphere Pictures, and with co-director Gerardo de Leon, Romero produced the Blood Island trilogy.

    These three films—Brides of Blood, Mad Doctor of Blood Island, and Beast of Blood—were intended from the outset for the American market, specifically the Drive-Ins and grindhouses always looking for inexpensive product. Using largely American casts, and with enough sex and gore to keep Drive-In patrons from honking their horns, these movies were moderately successful at the box-office, though generally ignored by critics.

    Other countries—South Korea, Thailand, India—had film industries that contributed to the flow of Asian movies that crossed the Pacific to American theaters; however, their output was not yet at the level of the more established exporters to the US. There were occasionally movies that reached the Drive-In screens from these countries, especially South Korea—A*P*E and The Mighty Peking Man, to name two—but the impact their film industries would eventually have was still years, if not decades, away.