The passing last week of martial-artist-turned-actor Chuck
Norris (1940-2026) has sent me down Memory Lane. Looking at his long
filmography, which begins in 1968, I’m amused to see that Norris had a cameo as
a karate instructor in The Student Teachers, a Roger Corman New World
Pictures film from 1973. But his roles got bigger over the years, first on film
and then on television. His Walker, Texas Ranger series ran on CBS from
1993 to 2001.In 2010, he and his producer-brother were named Honorary Texas
Ranger Captains by Governor Rick Perry, who said that "together, they
helped elevate our Texas Rangers to truly mythical status."
Martial arts movies, featuring Chinese-style one-on-one
combat, were popular in the 1970s. While at New World Pictures I survived the writing and casting of 1974’s TNT
Jackson, a so-called blaxploitation flick in which the bodacious Jeanne
Bell plays a martial-arts cutie investigating her brother’s disappearance in
Hong Kong. (As frequently happened with New World product, Hong Kong was played
by Manila, and the film was directed—after a fashion—by the unsinkable Cirio
Santiago.)
But it was when I returned to Cormanland in the late 1980s
that the martial-arts-flick craze really kicked into gear. In 1988, Jean-Claude
Van Damme burst onto the scene with Bloodsport. The Cannon film,
budgeted at a mere $1.5 million, made him an international star, and launched
the careers of copycats like Steven Seagal. Needless to say, Roger Corman
wanted to get in on the action by finding a bona fide kickboxing star of his
own.
While Van Damme was riding high with Bloodsport, Don “The Dragon” Wilson got a message on his answering
machine: “Hi, my name is Roger Corman. If
you’re the Don Wilson that’s the kickboxing champ, I’d like you to come in and
read for my film.” Wilson, a longtime world light-heavyweight kickboxing
champion, duly auditioned, and was told by Corman, “You’re going to become a
big motion picture star.” They shook on a deal that gave Wilson $1000 a week
for his first film and a flat $25,000 for his second. Corman’s faith in Wilson was fully justified.
Bloodfist I took in $1.7 million in
limited theatrical release, while also selling 80,000 video cassettes. Bloodfist II, a hastily-made follow-up,
sold 50,000 cassettes. Before long, Wilson was being paid a year-round $4000 a
week to appear in six more Bloodfist films,
and Corman was launching his own video distribution company.
Bloodfist was a
conventional but effective story about a martial artist who seeks revenge in
the ring for his brother’s death. Three years later, I was asked, as Roger’s
story editor, to move the script’s locale from Manila to Los Angeles and change
the inscrutable old Chinese mentor into a black street bum. The project came
together in two weeks, to fill a Christmas-time production gap at Corman’s
studio: Full Contact (starring
martial artist Jerry Trimble) was released on video in early 1993. Three months later, I helped transport the
same script into outer space; this time it was dubbed Dragon Fire. A female variation, Angelfist, with Catya Sassoon in Wilson’s original role, appeared
later in 1993, and at one point we contemplated a Medieval sword-and-sandal
version.
As Wilson told me, Corman “manufactured an action star.” He
appreciates Roger’s shrewdness in seeking out a true kickboxing champion,
because serious fans of martial arts know the difference between a genuine
athlete and a wannabe. But Roger himself was hardly a purist. Before the martial arts craze largely played
itself out, he was promoting sexy Cat Sassoon as a female world champion, until
Wilson advised him to desist.
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