November 30

There was a time that a kung-fu movie - any kung-fu movie - would do me good. Whether the background music was a wooden flute, a wah-wah pedal, or a Casio keyboard, a kung-fu fight made everything alright. I don't know if modern times ruined me, or I just grew up, because it doesn't have the same effect.
Anyway, everybody knows about Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, Jackie Chan... the guy I always wanted to see was Gordon Liu. Maybe it was the determination in his eyes, maybe the shaved-head/yellow-monksrobe combination made him look like Charlie Brown... but seeing him in Master Killer II (that's what they called it on Commander USA's Groovy Movies, and I'm sticking with it) convinced me for five minutes that I could look cool bald. I never saw him make the jump across the Pacific, and figured he was lost to the ages...
...until Kill Bill. Tarantino gave him two choice roles: leading the Crazy 88 in Kato gear in Part I, and playing the crazy old kung-fu master in Part II. Meanwhile, he'd never gone away in Hong Kong, segueing into a TV career for the past few decades. But the Tarantino touch put him back on movie screens around the world; this year, he played the bad guy in the Bollywood film "Chandni Chowk to China."
None of my jibber-jabber is going to get across the awesomeness of Gordon Liu like a demo, so here's the Master Killer himself taking out a horde of Manchus, and ruining the door-to-door bamboo pole salesman industry in the process...