These Fists Break Bricks

How Kung Fu Movies Swept America and Changed the World

By: Chris Poggiali, Grady Hendrix

Narrated by: Grady Hendrix

When a major Hollywood studio released Five Fingers of Death to thrill-seeking Times Square moviegoers on March 21, 1973, only a handful of Black and Asian American audience members knew the difference between an Iron Fist and an Eagle's Claw. That changed overnight as kung fu movies kicked off a craze that would earn millions at the box office, send TV ratings soaring, sell hundreds of thousands of video tapes, influence the birth of hip hop, reshape the style of action we see in movies today, and introduce America to some of the biggest non-White stars to ever hit motion-picture screens.

This book tells the bone-blasting, spine-shattering story of how these films of fury - spawned in anti-colonial protests on the streets of Hong Kong - came to America and raised hell for 15 years before greed, infomercials, and racist fearmongering shut them down. You'll meet Japanese judo coaches battling American wrestlers in backwoods MMA bouts at county fairs, Black teenagers with razor sharp kung fu skills heading to Hong Kong to star in movies shot super fast so they can make it back to the States in time to start 10th grade, and Puerto Rican karate coaches making their way in this world with nothing but their own two fists. It's about an 11-year-old boy who not only created the first fan edit but somehow turned it into a worldwide moneymaker, CIA agents secretly funding a karate movie, the New York Times fabricating a fear campaign about Black "karate gangs" out to kill White people, the history of Black martial arts in America ("Why does judo or karate suddenly get so ominous because Black men study it?," wondered Malcolm X), the death of Bruce Lee and the onslaught of imitators that followed, and how a fight that started in Japanese internment camps during World War II ended in a ninja movie some 40 years later. It's a battle for recognition and respect that started a long, long time ago and continues today in movies like The Matrix, Kill Bill, and Black Panther and here, for the first time, is the full uncensored story.

©2021 Grady Hendrix and Chris Poggiali (P)2021 Recorded Books

Excellent history, excellent narrator

This really makes me wish Grady Hendrix had narrated Paperbacks from Hell. He’s such a good narrator. Even if you’re just a light Kung Fu head, this book will be fun!

Stop what you are doing, and read this book!!!

Wow, what an amazing history of martial art movies, I can’t wait to listen to this a 2nd and 3rd time and plunge in to all the films I missed.

Kung Fu movie history masterpiece.

Poggiali and Hendrix write a whirlwind history of Kung Fu movies in America. It moves quick, is often humorous and sentimental. The history of this book moves around a lot which was very entertaining to me. Grady Hendrix gives a fantastic read of the story. A fantastic book overall. A lot of fun!

awesome

great history of Kung fu film. definitely takes me back to the 70s and '80s

The story of martial arts in popular culture

Horror author Grady Hendrix writes about what is essentially martial art history till the 1970s and the rest is popular culture (movies, tv shows, comics, music) and the various ways martial arts appeared in them. Yes the beginning is really showing how immigration from China and imperialism brought over martial arts into America and basically the world and into the cultural consciousness. Hendrix then chronicles how it affected American policy (foreign & domestic), society, and post-WWII lives. But after a good and long section on Bruce Lee and his struggle to break into Chinese martial arts cinema and his American success, the book starts to just go full pop culture.

After Bruce’s death and the explanation of Bruceploitation and the various followers and intimaters, Hendrix is just basically naming famous and minor movie stars that were either Bruce Lee intimaters or just did some sort of martial art in a movie once. The 1980s-2010s are breezed through because Hendrix just names names and movie titles after several chapters worth of Bruceploitation stories.

The book is easy to follow and this is good since many Bruceploitation actors have variations on Bruce Lee’s name. Hendrix gives emphasis on minority communities that were many times early adaptors and students of martial arts, especially before Bruce Lee made it famous.

But I hate the narrator of the book, which is the author Hendrix. He makes the people he is quoting have voices and every start of a chapter he adds unnecessary special effects and loud volume to his voice. It is super annoying.

Pretty entertaining, but lacks the depth I was hoping for.

While enjoyable, this book mostly focuses on the lunacy around kung fu cinema in the 70s and early 80s. While figures such as Sammo Hung and Gordon Liu get passing mentions, the book seems to be more focused on the history of Bruceploitation after Lee’s death. Would recommend for some of the fun stories, but lacked the deep dive into the genre I was looking for. I suggest picking up the physical version for the visual supplements.