Kung Fu: The Complete First Season (DVD)

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Product Description Kung Fu: The Complete First Season (DVD)He is a man of peace in a violent land. David Carradine stars as Kwai Chang Caine, schooled in the spirit-mind-body ways of the Shaolin priesthood by the blind, avuncular Master Po and the stern yet loving Master Kan. Caine speaks softly, but hits hard. He lives humbly, yet knows great contentment. He is the Old West's most unusual hero. But hero is not a word Caine would use. He would simply say, "I am a man." He has no gun, no horse… and no equal. Many miles stretch before him. And many lives will be touched by him. Don’t miss all the excitement of Caine’s adventures in this Emmy®-winning mystical series that became a global phenomenon and brought martial arts to the masses, popularizing the genre that’s alive and kicking in today’s hit films and video games.]]> desertcart.com Everybody was kung-fu fighting after the 1972 premiere of this mystic western starring David Carradine (snatching the role from Bruce Lee) in his signature, Emmy-nominated role as Caine, a stoic Shaolin monk forced to flee China after killing the royal family member who slew his Master. Our wandering hero roams the west in search of his long-lost brother, while eluding American and Imperial bounty hunters, and imparting his ancient wisdom on those he encounters and is compelled to aid. Kung-Fu was never a ratings force, but its cult status was assured long before Samuel L. Jackson referenced it in Pulp Fiction. Along with the inaugural 15 episodes, this three-disc set contains the feature-length pilot that establishes the series' iconography: the inscrutable aphorisms ("When you cease to strive to understand, then you will know without understanding"); the flashbacks to Caine's youth, where the orphaned half-American and half-Chinese boy served as disciple ("Grasshopper") to the Old Man; and, of course, the anticipated moments when the peaceful Caine, like Billy Jack, is reluctantly compelled by some frontier bigot to use his fighting skills. Look for appearances by father John Carradine and brothers Keith and Robert in the episode, "Dark Angel." That's 11-year-old future Oscar-winner Jodie Foster in "Althea." Other notable episodes include the Emmy-winning "An Eye for an Eye" and "Chains," featuring an Emmy-nominated turn by Michael Greene as a not-so-gentle giant to whom an imprisoned Caine is chained. "With each ending," Caine observes in the episode, "The Third Man," comes a new beginning." Kung Fu's new beginning comes on DVD. Thanks to the timeless frontier setting and the uniqueness of its genre-bending concept, Kung Fu dates better than other '70s series. As these episodes demonstrate, the show still has plenty of kick. --Donald Liebenson Review: Pt. 1: Yes, It's a Great Show, But... - What good things can I say about the television series "Kung Fu" (1972-75) that haven't already been said? More than 30 years after the original TV show left the airwaves, it remains my favorite American network series. Not only were "Kung Fu's" writing and acting all superlative, but its highly unusual, Zen-like take on the all-American genre of the Western -- in case you don't know, the show is about a Buddhist monk roaming the Wild West -- still resonates. For my money, the first-season episode titled "An Eye for an Eye" remains the finest thing that American episodic TV has ever created. Here is the best way for me to sum up how much I love "Kung Fu": of all the decorations in my home, only one is a photo of a celebrity -- an autographed picture of David Carradine as Kwai-Chang Caine. Now that you know how highly I regard "Kung Fu," I would still like to make a few comments about it. As much as I respect the series for popularizing the Asian presence in U.S. history at a time when hardly anyone else was doing so, the series did cut a few corners, and this bugs me a bit. ACTING: "Kung Fu's" weakest link is Radames Pera as the young Kwai-Chang (a.k.a. "Grasshopper") in the famous flashbacks. While the performances by the cast and guest stars are usually excellent, Pera's recitation of his lines totally lacks any convincing emotional undercurrent. Also, he doesn't look very much like Carradine, who plays the character that he's supposed to grow up to be. I have a hard time believing that Pera was the best choice for this part. ETHNIC ISSUES: The country of China, the setting for the show's flashbacks, is a patchwork quilt of various ethnicities. However, the country's dominant ethnic group is the Han people, the first folks we Westerners tend to think of as "Chinese," while the others, such as the Uygurs and the Tibetans, are considered "minorities." In "Kung Fu's" pilot, when Master Kan (Philip Ahn) tells young half-white Caine that the Shaolin monastery has never accepted anyone other than of "full-Chinese birth," I take him to mean anything other than full-Han ancestry. My response to this is: "Why, then, does Master Kan have a Mongolian name?" It's a small point, to be sure, but one that could have been avoided. (For my thoughts on Carradine, a Caucasian actor, playing the half-Chinese Caine, see my desertcart review of "Kung Fu's" second season.) ACTION: The element of "Kung Fu" that dates the poorest is its fight scenes. Prior to the series, Western popular culture was not greatly exposed to Asian martial arts. One of the few exceptions was Bruce Lee's high-kicking acrobatics on another TV show, "The Green Hornet" (1966-67), but this did not have an immediate impact upon large American audiences. So, "Kung Fu's" slow-motion fight scenes were quite innovative for their time, and I remember being thrilled by them when the show first aired. To speculate, it may have been because of "Kung Fu's" popularity that American movie screens soon made room for martial-arts films from Asia, especially those from Hong Kong, such as "Five Fingers of Death" and Bruce Lee's starring vehicles. Once American audiences got a taste of them, however, their dynamism made "Kung Fu's" heavily stylized fighting less satisfying. In fact, compared to the unarmed-combat movies from Hong Kong, "Kung Fu's" slow-motion fights come off primarily as a means to cover up Carradine's lack of mastery in the martial arts. Still, this isn't enough to wreck the series for me. HAIR: This is the show's flaw that really bothers me the most: the hairstyles of the Chinese men. From 1644 to 1912 (which includes the years when "Kung Fu" is set), the Qing Dynasty required men (but not women) in China to wear their hair in queues. This meant not only wearing a ponytail, but shaving the area around the crown and temples of one's head as well. The Qing Dynasty, which had conquered China from Manchuria, compelled the Han men to adopt this Manchurian hairstyle as a symbol of native-Chinese subservience to their new rulers. Those men that refused to wear the queue were summarily executed, giving rise to the saying, "Lose your hair and keep your head; otherwise, keep your hair and lose your head." The only adult Chinese males who did not wear queues were Buddhist monks, who, as "Kung Fu" more accurately depicts, shaved their heads entirely. Chinese men in America were not exempt from this decree. Until 1952, racist laws in the U.S. prohibited Asian-born immigrants (most of whom were men) from becoming naturalized citizens. Therefore, even on American soil, 19th-century Chinese men, who theoretically could be deported back to their native country at any time, were obliged to follow this Qing Dynasty law. Unfortunately, "Kung Fu" does not deal accurately with Chinese men's tonsorial traditions in the 19th century: most of the series' Chinese men wear contemporary 20th-century hairstyles. If a queue is present at all, it's usually just a braided ponytail attached to a contemporary coif. The one time the subject of queues comes up on "Kung Fu" (the third season's "This Valley of Fear"), Caine says that wearing one is only "a personal choice." Regrettably, the moment is a missed opportunity to educate the audience about the significance of Qing-era hairstyles. So, every Chinese man in "Kung Fu" not wearing a queue, and who is not a Shaolin monk, does not have an authentic period hairstyle. However, I'm not saying that Carradine ought to have worn a queue. In fact, knowing about 19th-century Chinese hairstyles makes me appreciate his shoulder-length mane all the more: it instantly marks Caine as an outlaw. Still, the unusualness of his hairstyle on a Chinese man of the Qing era should have immediately signaled something amiss to the show's other characters. For example, the Chinese railroad crew in the pilot would have remarked about his grown-out shaved head before they noticed the Shaolin marks on his arms. The crew cut on the Chinese dissident Wong Ti Lu (Mako) in the first season's "The Tide" also makes sense as a political statement of someone opposed to the Qing emperor. Otherwise, the 20th-century hairstyles on the show's other Chinese men are a nagging reminder not only of a historical inaccuracy, but also of a thematically rich element ignored by the series. Would it have been so uneconomical for "Kung Fu" to have put its non-Shaolin Chinese male characters in bald wigs with queues attached to them? Still, I hope that none of my comments about "Kung Fu" discourages anyone interested in the show from checking out the DVD. After all, the reason I know as much about Chinese history as I do is because "Kung Fu" made such an enormous impact on me. I'm glad that the series continues to move audiences today. (Note: I have also written reviews for the second and third seasons of "Kung Fu.") Review: Fortune Cookie Westerns - This box set has everything you need to get started: The pilot,15 episodes (first aired in 1972-3) and two brief documentaries on the conception and making of this beloved series (all on three two-sided discs). Transplant a Shaolin monk to the old west: a fugitive (due to unfair circumstances, of course) who wanders barefoot into and out of difficult situations à la Forrest Gump. Complete with flashback scenes of his rigorous training growing up in the Shaolin Temple as the young "Grasshopper", not only to reveal the source of his martial art skills, but his philosophy as well. Is this "Kurosawa Lite" or is it something else? The sets and scenery are more than anyone could ask for in a 70s TV series. All of the supporting cast is excellent and some of them play very intense characters. Guest stars include the likes of John Saxon, Will Geer and Jodie Foster ... how could one ask for more? Our protagonist, Kwai Chang Caine (played to perfection by David Carradine) will endear himself into your heart. A character almost too good to be true, in rare moments you can almost see Mr. Carradine breaking character, smiling, trying not to laugh at the absurdity of it all, as he delivers his little fortune cookie nuggets of wisdom à la Chauncey the gardener. (Vis-à-vis Peter Sellers in the "Being There" end credits bloopers.) How authentic are the martial arts scenes? For early 70s televison, they are done as well as can be expected. How authentic is the Asian philosophy? Well, I didn't always like the stories or the outcomes and I wasn't always convinced that the wisdom was the deepest truth of the universe. But it doesn't matter ... each episode is thought provoking and profound in its own way, which was the point of it all, I think. As Caine said, "I seek not to know the answers, but to understand the questions." PS There was only one episode that stalled in the DVD player. PPS In the first doc, Tom Kuhn (former Warner Bros VP of television) recounts Bruce Lee coming into his office to request the role, and the reason for not choosing him.