The Assassin

This episode marks the first appearance of Cain’s bamboo flute! It opens with him playing it.

“The Assassin” is about violence and love, and the Shaolin approach to both. Cain wanders into the middle of two feuding families. On one side is Alan Swan (William Glover), an Englishman with a Japanese wife and daughter that runs a trading post. On the other is Noah Jones (Dana Elcar), who, with his son Abe (James Keach), runs a transportation convoy. What began as some kind of business dispute has become an ongoing war between the two that’s threatening to pass on to the next generation, Abe and Swan’s daughter “Aggie” (Akiko, Beverly Kushida).

A ninja (Robert Ito) is involved, and it soon becomes clear to Cain that he must discover who he is and confront him. It also becomes clear to Cain that he loves Akiko. The flashbacks in this episode focus on these two poles – martial arts and the fighting ways on the one, love of women on the other.

Po instructs Cain in fighting, in how to balance the Shaolin’s destructive ability with its respect for human life. “Learn first how to live. Learn second how not to kill. Learn third how to live with death. Learn fourth how to die.” That’d be an apt epigraph for the philosophical views of the series! For love, Po tells him to risk it – make himself vulnerable and it’ll all come back to you. “Empty yourself and yet be filled.”

There’s a great flashback of Master Kan also instructing Cain. Kan demonstrates to the disciples how to maim or kill someone with a blow to the neck. When Cain is troubled, Kan demonstrates how the ability to perform evil acts while still retaining a good moral compass is necessary in life – as the sun uses shadow on a sun dial to tell time. “Choose between goods. Choose between evils.” In this episode, Kan’s instruction ties Po’s together and it’s the adult Cain that must realize it.



Sex and violence, the “Kung Fu” way. Great episode, although I found the Akiko sub plot distracting. Three out of four yin yangs. IMDB here. Very notable for its use of a ninja, ten years at least before the ninja fad in martial arts movies of the 1980s.

Check Out Kung Fu Culture.net!

Guys, great site I found through a commenter: Kung Fu Culture.net, a site with news, info and tidbits on Chinese martial arts and culture, including movies, TV, comics, athletics, and anything in between. If it's kung fu related, Ethereal Kung Fu web master Kenn is on it. Add this one to your kung fu resources, friends!

And thanks, Kenn, for your friendly comments on I Am Caine.

Holy Facebook!

When I started this blog three years ago it was out of passion for a show and an era I loved as a kid, was re-experiencing on DVD as an adult, and the desire to talk about it with someone. And also, of course, with the aim of creating an online episode guide of sorts. In that time, I've never given enough attention to this blog, something I'm trying to rectify, and the few readers that do stumble here seem to appreciate what I'm doing and have encouraged me greatly, for which I thank you.

But another thing I did three years ago, which I'd like to bring to your attention, is make a Facebook fan page for Kung Fu. I did hardly anything for that page, but thanks to the fame of the show, it grew all by itself - to nearly 4,000 people today!

I need to be more appreciative and involved in that community of 4,000. So, henceforth, not only am I going to be more attentive to this blog, but I'm going to share it with the community at Facebook. If you're a Facebooker, please consider joining us and letting us know what we can do to improve the page. Thanks for your continued interest and support.

The Well

Season Two starts off with a great episode, this one tackling the heavy subject of blacks in the Old West. In “The Well,” Cain is passing through an area affected by drought when he gets hold of some bad water and becomes ill. He’s rescued by Daniel Brown (George Spell) and taken to the Brown family homestead, where he is sheltered and nursed. There he meets Caleb Brown (Hal Williams), the head of the house, a former slave who has become bitter and isolated as a result of his upbringing in captivity.

While he heals, Cain befriends Daniel, who is hopeful where his father is mistrustful, eager to extend himself into the lives of the nearby townsfolk where Caleb is walled off. It’s a difference between two generations; the son has not known the pain of the father. Daniel wants to contribute to the humanity around him, Caleb is reluctant.

So the story is of Cain, as usual more catalyst than protagonist, showing the Shaolin way to the Brown family. Naturally, there are some nasty characters around to complicate things, especially the town deputy, Mitch (Tim McIntire).

What’s wonderful about this episode is its use of symbolism and structure. It uses as its visual theme seeing and clarity. Cain is on the outside, looking into the Browns’ situation and trying to understand. The Browns are on the inside, looking out and refusing to get involved. Deputy Mitch sees a black man that needs to keep his place and a “Chinaman” guilty of a crime he did not commit (a sub plot I pass over here). What results is avoidance, pursuit, deceit, violence – until Cain can liberate everyone from their visual inability.

Reinforcing the theme are great visual film cues (I tried to find some on YouTube and have not yet succeeded). In the episode’s beginning, when Cain takes in the bad water, the camera shows us his warped, hallucinatory landscape. When he befriends Daniel, one of the gifts he proffers is a magnifying glass. The flashback is of young Cain in the temple trying to figure out why, when he dips a stick into the water, it appears to bend. It takes a blind master, Po, to point him to the right direction. “What you see are reflections. Look closer.” Another flashback finds Cain puzzled at a fly caught in a spider web – he does not know who to feel sympathy for, spider or fly, the latter a doomed prisoner, the former a prisoner of his own web spinning. In the present, Cain wonders – which is Caleb Brown, spider or fly? He wonders, am I seeing the Browns for what they are, or some kind of reflection they give off?

“Kung Fu” was quite capable of being literary at times, as this episode demonstrates. Look also for Jim Davis as Sheriff Grogan, Mitch’s boss, a great western lawman character. Hal Williams is a veteran actor you might recognize as, among other things, Officer Smitty from "Sanford and Son!" (Image courtesy of Hal Williams' web site.) IMDB is here. Four out of four yin yangs.

The Ancient Warrior

Season One of “Kung Fu” ends with what is simply one of its best episodes. In “The Ancient Warrior,” Caine befriends and elderly Native American (Chief Dan George) trying to return to his ancestral home so he can die peacefully and be buried there. Only one problem: on the ground of his forefathers now stands a town called Purgatory, and they don’t like Indians.

Caine befriends the Ancient Warrior and stands beside the man, even at one point protecting him from some village ruffians (one of whom is played by Gary Busey), but as has so often been the case, Caine is slightly off center from the real action, the struggle of the townspeople to do what is right by the Ancient Warrior and allow him his last request. Among the Purgatory town folk that have to hash this out is the righteous Judge Marcus (Will Geer) and the hateful Sheriff Poole (Victor French), who does a good job of protecting the town but is “a bigot and a tyrant.”

The Ancient Warrior, having staked his claim and pressed his legal right to the burial, basically sits in the dirt in the street and waits for justice. Caine waits with him, and as they do so they watch the town behave. They learn that there are good men like the judge and men like the sheriff who wear the mantle of goodness but, inside, are ethically compromised. An incident with a gunslinger named Lucas Bass (G.D. Spradlin), who confronts the sheriff over a past ill, is revealing – Bass gets shot in the back.

In the end it becomes quite clear to the Ancient Warrior that whatever hallowed ground there was at Purgatory has become spiritually polluted by the white man’s civilization. The Ancient wins his legal right to be buried there but after what he’s witnessed he spurns it. Better, he decides, to be buried in the wilderness where there is still purity than in the hypocrisy and contradictions of Purgatory. As Caine puts it, “It’s better to cover the land with love than let it cover you with hate.”

What a terrific story, consistent with the storytelling hallmarks I’ve been pointing out all along. Caine is a catalyst but not the only protagonist. The supporting characters are all as interesting and contribute to the plot. The episode takes a story and setting typical of the genre and subverts it, produces something new. Emblematic of the entire series and its mission.

IMDB is here. I gotta give this four out of four yin yangs. Some great reading on Chief Dan George at the link indicated.

So I’m finally, after, what, three years, wrapping up my review of Season One (something Kung Fu Cinema managed to do quite gracefully in one post). On to Season Two! I started this blog watching this show with my second child asleep on my chest every night and now, of course, that child sleeps on his own. But my love of this show goes on and I intend to stick with it. Along the way, it’s become a place for me to sound off not only on the show but on a wide genre that I love and the zeitgeist that goes with it, both of which “Kung Fu” were very much a part of. Thanks for sticking with me so far! I’ll try to be more consistent.

A Couple of Great Overlooked Martial Arts Scenes

Hey, guys. I've been a crap blogger lately, and I hope you forgive me - all three of you! I've got a write up on the last couple episodes of Season One to hammer out and a good idea for a post on some great martial arts reading. Meanwhile I was clicking around in search of some little known fight scenes from past movies and I found a couple of gems I wanted to share. It's always interesting to see the scenes of martial arts that started appearing in western movies. If you haven't seen Jimmy Cagney whopping ass with judo in Blood on the Sun, please do say, and cross reference it with Spencer Tracy chopping down bad guys in Bad Day at Black Rock. But let's not forget how Frank Sinatra chopped and kicked his way through The Manchurian Candidate.

Nor this great scene from a little known movie with Robert Ryan and Harry Belafonte called Odds Against Tomorrow. Recognize anyone else in this clip? I'll give you a hint... you might want to "mash" your brain a bit.

The Third Man

"The Third Man" is another excellent example of the formula and characteristics that make this show work. It concerns a gambler that Caine befriends, Jim Gallagher, another terrific western stereotype played excellently by veteran TV actor Fred Beir (check out this guy's resume at IMDB; like so many actores on this show, he's got lengthy experience on great TV shows).

Gallagher is country smooth, saloon charming, a damn fine card player - and quite hopelessly addicted to gambling. Caine temporarily joins Gallagher's household, which includes his caring but frustrated wife Noreen (Sheree North), and tries in his gentle, Chan Buddhism way to encourage Gallagher to change his life. (Great scene where Caine meets Fay and tells her, "I work... eat... learn.") Unfortunately before Caine can succeed Gallagher is robber one night after a hot run at the table, and accidentally killed by the noble but all too human town sheriff, Sheriff Raha (Ed Nelson).

Caine is the only one that sees who really killed Gallagher, and here's where the plot gets, to me, interesting. Sheriff Raha witholds his guilt from the incident because he is secretly in love with Gallagher's widow. It's clearly eating Raha alive to hide his involvement in the accidental death, but he won't step forward - he thinks this will allow he and Fay to finally be free of Gallagher and be together. Instead of doing the detective work necessary to expose Raha, Caine simply waits. He recognizes that Raha wants to do the right thing and, as is characteristic with this show and Caine's solution to its conflicts, Caine enables, through inaction and dialogue, Raha to do the right thing.

Of course, Caine also has to contend with the thugs that robbed Gallagher, still at large, which he does with much appreciated ass whuppery. There's also a terrific flashback involving Master Kan that helps explain Caine's method in this case, an incident involving the theft of some gold plates from a Shaolin altar; Kan lets the crime go, teaching Caine that sometimes good people do bad things, and charity and understanding are required in response. (You can see part of it in this nice edited version from YouTube vid below.) This sounds like a pretty convoluted plot and it's one that might have sunk the episode in its execution, but writer Robert Lewin and director Charles D. Dubin keep "The Third Man" on track so that it is exemplary. Four out of four yin yangs. IMDB for this episode is here.

By the way, Sheree North, who plays Noreen, was an interesting Hollywood figure that I never knew much about until I looked into this episode. You might recognize her as Lou Grant's girlfriend from "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," Kramer's mom from "Seinfeld," or several other roles. Apparently she was rumored to have been hired as a countermeasure against the unreliable Marilyn Monroe, with whom she shared exact measurements! More interesting reading is here.

Last Stop on the Endless Highway

For months, I've been meaning to post my review of David Carradine's autobiography, Endless Highway. Now I find the task bittersweet, since the final chapter is being written in Thailand and Hollywood as we speak. It's horrible irony, as my colleague Michael pointed out when he picked up my copy of the book this morning and perused the first chapter, that Carradine wrote:

"When I was five I tried to hang myself in the garage by jumping off the bumper of the Duesenberg. My father saved me, and then confiscated my comic book collection and burned it - which was scarcely the point."

Endless Highway is a thoroughly entertaining read because Carradine's entertaining way of telling stories drips through every page. He's got thousands of anecdotes like that and he tells them in a way that's both arresting and matter-of-fact, open-ended like the comment above - I mean these are on every page, leave you going, "What?" and "Man, I'd like to have coffee with this guy."

Endless Highway tells the story of Carradine, the son of an accomplished Hollywood leading man and character actor who grew up constantly shuffled between homes and reform schools. Carradine was an original member of the post war counterculture(s), first as a painter, musician and actor/dancer beatnik-type in New York, then as a California hippy. That's when he did "Kung Fu" and made his stamp on the 20th century American experience. His career post "Kung Fu" was checkered and interesting - I think a lot of us overlook the fact that he made a number of great movies as well as a long list of cult films and stinkers: think Roger Corman's Death Race 2000, Circle of Iron, Bound for Glory and Lone Wolf McQuade. Kill Bill was a natural fit, pointing out yet again that Tarantino has had an instinct for ferreting out people like Carradine, Harvey Keitel, John Travolta and Robert Forrester and putting them to great use.

David Carradine was, in the last equation, a working actor, a seeker, someone who struggled with substances, part new ager and part redneck, all American and, in my mind, one of those people that's just a part of things, so germane to them that they are simply invisible. He wrote:

My story isn't a personal saga. It's a chronicle of a time, a period in history when everything came up for grabs. We all had to make choices. I made mine sometimes. Sometimes shit just happened... After all the triumphs and failures, the lovers, the detractors, I still am not finished, not hardly started really. There's a whole slew of things still undone, dreams not yet realized. I'd better get on with it; get back out there on that endless highway and give them more hell. I don't have forever, as far as I know.

How right he was.

DAMMIT, Mr. Han Died, Too!

Boolshit, Mr. Han-man!

You came straight out of a comic book. And touched out hearts. Rest in peace, Han, as great warriors sail you to your final island.

Kung Fu Cinema has the story. Image taken from HERE.

Martial arts actor Shek Kin dead at 96

By Mark Pollard on June 4, 2009

Hong Kong has lost one of its greatest and longest living film treasures. Veteran martial arts actor Shek Kin (aka Shih Kien, Sek Kin), best known internationally for his role in ENTER THE DRAGON as "Mr. Han," died this morning at the venerable age of 96.

Gregory So, Hong Kong's Secretary for Commerce and Economic Development expressed regret at the loss.

"Mr. Shek's brilliant career in the performing arts industry started in the 1940s. Since then he devoted lifelong commitment to the industry. He played a villain role in the Wong Fei-hung film series and had become one of the most recognizable faces of Hong Kong cinema," said So.

"With his death, Hong Kong has lost an outstanding performing arts talent. On behalf of the Commerce and Economic Development Bureau, I offer our deepest condolences to Mr. Shek's family."

Shek was one of the territory's most recognizable actors thanks to a prolific career that spanned over 50 years. Born in 1913, Shek was among Hong Kong's first generation of martial arts stars, including Walter Cho, Kwan Tak-hing and Yu So-chow, who flourished during the initial genre boom of the 1950s and '60s. Trained in several northern kung fu disciplines rather than Chinese opera like so many of his peers, Shek began appearing in Cantonese-language martial arts films in the late 1940s. Up until he was cast as the lead villain in ENTER THE DRAGON, Shek was best known as the lead villain in the long-running WONG FEI HUNG film series where he frequently crossed fists and wits with series star Kwan Tak-hing.

In the 1970s and '80s, Shek continued to appear in a variety of films, most notably in ENTER THE DRAGON but also in a comedic supporting role opposite Jackie Chan in THE YOUNG MASTER. He also frequently appeared in local television series. Shek Kin retired from the entertainment industry in the mid-1990s. His final film role was in Bosco Lam's comedy HONG KONG ADAM'S FAMILY (1994).