I was a fan of many kung-fu hits from the age of 5, religiously renting out films such as Jackie Chan's Lo Wei classics, as well as Armour of God & Project A, Alexander Lou's Ninja Kids: Kiss of Death, Legend Of The Golden Pearl, The Last Dragon, and Big Trouble in Little China among many others. At 12, my nanna bought me my very own first videotape – Ninja USA starring Alexander Lou, and I was hooked! From then on, I made it my life's ambition to own the biggest kung-fu film collection in Northern Ireland!
Something had gripped me - something I still cannot put into words to this day, but I just couldn't get enough. I loved Hong Kong cinema (and then some)!! I would hop on any bus or train to travel the length of the country, to find video shops and ex-rentals that would have something I didn't. Of course, the independent stores were by far the best - littered in amazing video titles and artwork, covered in dust, and sometimes in the back on some shop that was quite scary to a young fantasist like me.
10 years later, the DVD and internet shopping exploded into our lives and well, things just got out-of-hand. Over 30 years later, I'm still buying, still watching, and still a massive fan, although part of me curses the digital age taking away my adventures of finding video stores in the strangest of places, and losing that huge VHS box which just felt so much better than a flimsy disc case. With the fire burning for this amazing cinema, I went on to create my own production company in 2007 and have been making independent feature films since then in the action and horror department - all of which have been released on DVD & VOD around the world. My internationally attended film festival soon followed, just over a year later, and in 2020, I was set to launch a unique film school to take things to the next level - but we all know how 2020 went. So I think it's fair to say that Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Yuen Biao, Donnie Yen, Hong Kong movies and their stars, and Asian film in general, has most certainly had a very positive impact on my life!
Taking a number of years to compile (and I still haven't watched every film yet), this site is a collection of reviews on movies from my own collection of VHS, VCD, DVD & Blu-ray, as well as those I've caught online via Netflix, YouTube or Amazon Prime. Because that's the world we live in...
George Clarke
