![]() ![]() Period pieces were nothing new to Hong Kong cinema, but The 36th Chamber of Shaolin proved to be a groundbreaking production on many levels. When I saw The 36th Chamber, I felt like I was living it.” “I felt like I was watching a piece of history in a period of time that kind of was shielded from us in America.” In his memoir he wrote, “I had knowledge of self, had mastered the 120 faster than anyone my age, and was teaching Mathematics to others. “The 36 Chambers movie was the one that-after seeing the Bruce Lee genre and all the spinoffs, and The Mystery of Chess Boxing, all the amazing fantastical ones-this movie for some reason resonated as a reality story to me,” he recalls. Thankfully, Channel Five redeemed themselves a few weeks later on June 6th, when they showed Master Killer, originally titled The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1977), which, Fanon Che Wilkins says, “ranks as one of the all-time classics of Asian martial arts films and was at the forefront of a new form of martial arts moviemaking that showcased the skill and practice of Shaolin kung fu.” Somehow this movie had managed to evade Bobby at the Deuce, but when he saw it for the first time on TV that day, he was blown away. But the film definitely qualified as exploitation because anything with Bruce Lee’s name in the title was guaranteed viewers. ![]() Instead, Betty Ting Pei, the last person to see him alive, talked about what kind of person he was while actors dramatized fight scenes from his movies. For a program promising the best in B-movies, that particular selection was a strange choice, since Bruce Lee was not even in it. On May 2, 1981, WNEW Channel Five in New York inaugurated its Drive-In Movie series, which aired on Saturday afternoons at three o’clock, with Bruce Lee: His Last Days, His Last Nights (1976). ![]()
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