These Fists Break Bricks–Nostalgic book looks at how Kung Fu changed the world

Review by C.J. Bunce

In 2019, Writer Grady Hendrix and director Serge Ou brought us the documentary Iron Fists and Kung Fu Kicks (reviewed here), about Hong Kong’s Kung Fu movie industry and its pop culture influences. Now Hendrix returns with an in-depth book on the genre, These Fists Break Bricks: How Kung Fu Movies Swept America and Changed the World, coming this summer in a revised and expanded hardcover edition available for pre-order now here at Amazon from Running Press. The book, co-written by Chris Poggiali, is a must for diehard Kung Fu movie fans, especially anyone who lived in New York City and went to its 42nd Street grindhouse theaters to watch them. The account is a decidedly New York City view of the impact of these movies, picking up lots of genre ephemera, mainly newspaper ads for the influx of low-budget movies that made their way through the 1980s and into the 1990s. Most of the genre amounts to a love for Bruce Lee, and a struggle by film producers from the U.S. to Hong Kong to find the next martial arts movie hero.

As with the documentary, the book includes interviews with surviving insiders who were part of making these movies. Writing with great devotion to the genre, the authors are able to pinpoint many stories of Kung Fu and martial arts as the subject is intertwined with U.S. and China politics. Foremost among the political angle is the impact of World War II and its stymying of the influx of Asian culture, beginning with U.S. Japanese prison camps.

The content is also selective, dismissing players like Chuck Norris and Jean Claude Van Damme, and not giving as much credit to Jackie Chan as he may deserve as genre icon. It also begins with discussions of wuxia, but ultimately does not include discussions of those films, also stopping short of this century’s contributions, like Wu Assassins, Iron Fist, and the King Fu series reboot.

The book looks at how Kung Fu and its progeny made their way to American audiences with Tom Laughlin in Billy Jack, and into millions of homes via David Carradine in the Kung Fu series. Bruce Lee’s short-lived contribution via a handful of movies would stand in contrast to his enormous influence, and that is exhibited in the book by hundreds of pages of commentary about the knock-off movies, Bruce Lee fakes, and other travesties that showered the market after Lee’s death. Called Bruce-sploitation movies, so many were made–many discussed in detail in the book, complete with movie posters and chapters on the actors whose careers stole from his persona and image–even diehard genre fans may be surprised of the scope.

The writers incorporate the inclusion of women stars from the inception of the movies–women were the preferred stars of Hong Kong movies in the 1940s and 1950s as the genre was readying to emerge. Ultimately the fandom would migrate to Black and inner city audiences embracing the culture, starting with martial artist and actor Jim Kelly (who co-starred with Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon), who re-emerged later as an influence on hip hop music.

The book touches less on the genre getting a bigger boost with Jackie Chan’s stunt-heavy comedies, followed by The Matrix and the Academy Awards arrival of the genre with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Chinese co-productions with other nations, and actors of Chinese background in the mainstream outside of Asia would eventually come along, but the book focuses primarily on the impact of the works on U.S. audiences. One great section includes photographs of long-gone movie theaters that focused on the Kung Fu genre. The book is heavy with nostalgia for cultural icons like that that are no longer standing.

The film highlights benchmarks in the genre: One-Armed Swordsman (1967), The Big Boss (1971), Five Fingers of Death (1972), Fist of Fury (1972), and Enter the Dragon (1973). It doesn’t cover later areas Hendrix’s documentary covered, like Police Story (1985), China O’Brien (1990), Rumble in the Bronx (1996), The Matrix (1999), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior (2003), and The Raid (2011). Like the documentary, the book also doesn’t address the great impact on Hollywood of Kung Fu brought forward for a new generation by director Quentin Tarantino. And it misses some low-hanging fruit, like the mega-trend in the 1970s for American kids of the “Kung Fu Grip,” and despite many references to music, the book skips over the popularity of the British-Indian produced song by Jamaican Carl Douglas, “Kung Fu Fighting.” Fans of video games will be happy to see the genre carried to the likes Commodore 64, Atari, and ultimately to Street Fighter.

No doubt it has opinions that will create conversations among diehard Kung Fu movie enthusiasts, but for everyone else it will be an engaging read. The revised and expanded edition of These Fists Break Bricks: How Kung Fu Movies Swept America and Changed the World is slated for publication in July, available for pre-order now here at Amazon from Running Press.