Kung Fu - The Complete First Season
by Alex Beaton, Allen Reisner, Barry Crane, Charles S. Dubin, Gordon Hessler
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: David Carradine, Don Knight, Norman Alden, Wendell Burton, William SchallertDirector: Alex Beaton, Allen Reisner, Barry Crane, Charles S. Dubin, Gordon Hessler
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: Anamorphic, Box set, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Original recording remastered, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.77:1
Running Time: 780 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-03-16
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Warner Home Video
Movie Reviews of Kung Fu - The Complete First Season
Movie Review: The Price of Bigotry
Summary: 4 Stars
Bruce Lee, the original choice for this series star, would have been so much better. Not only was Lee first pick, he was the mind behind the series! But in 1972, an Asian star on television? Unthinkable. And so we get this all too clearly American actor who fakes his Chinese-American origins with painfully slow speech, though he spouts genuine Buddhist philosophy. Granted, Carradine did later become a grand master, but his moves for the television had to be slowed, and his notorious arrogance (at least for me) shows through. Stellar performances were given by genuine Asian stars like Keye Luke, Philip Ahn, and others, and the series did ignite an interest in Kung Fu. Still, I cannot help but think what Bruce Lee himself would have done with the role!
Summary of Kung Fu - The Complete First Season
He is a man of peace in a violent land. He is Kwai Chang Caine, schooled in the spirit-mind-body ways of the Shaolin priesthood by the blind, avuncular Master Po and the stern yet loving master Kan. Caine speaks softly but hits hard. He lives humbly yet knows great contentment. He is the Old West's most unusual hero. But hero is not a word Caine would use. He would simply say, "I am a man."Everybody was kung-fu fighting after the 1972 premiere of this mystic western starring David Carradine (snatching the role from Bruce Lee) in his signature, Emmy-nominated role as Caine, a stoic Shaolin monk forced to flee China after killing the royal family member who slew his Master. Our wandering hero roams the west in search of his long-lost brother, while eluding American and Imperial bounty hunters, and imparting his ancient wisdom on those he encounters and is compelled to aid. Kung-Fu was never a ratings force, but its cult status was assured long before Samuel L. Jackson referenced it in Pulp Fiction. Along with the inaugural 15 episodes, this three-disc set contains the feature-length pilot that establishes the series' iconography: the inscrutable aphorisms ("When you cease to strive to understand, then you will know without understanding"); the flashbacks to Caine's youth, where the orphaned half-American and half-Chinese boy served as disciple ("Grasshopper") to the Old Man; and, of course, the anticipated moments when the peaceful Caine, like Billy Jack, is reluctantly compelled by some frontier bigot to use his fighting skills. Look for appearances by father John Carradine and brothers Keith and Robert in the episode, "Dark Angel." That's 11-year-old future Oscar-winner Jodie Foster in "Althea." Other notable episodes include the Emmy-winning "An Eye for an Eye" and "Chains," featuring an Emmy-nominated turn by Michael Greene as a not-so-gentle giant to whom an imprisoned Caine is chained. "With each ending," Caine observes in the episode, "The Third Man," comes a new beginning." Kung Fu's new beginning comes on DVD. Thanks to the timeless frontier setting and the uniqueness of its genre-bending concept, Kung Fu dates better than other '70s series. As these episodes demonstrate, the show still has plenty of kick. --Donald Liebenson
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