The Paperback Kung Fu Phenomenon: Part 3 (Movie Tie-ins)

The following column originally appeared in Justin Marriott's PAPERBACK FANATIC 49, which was published in November of 2024. You can buy a copy of it HERE.

Do you remember a time just a few decades ago when it seemed like almost every even moderately popular movie or television show regardless of genre received a paperback tie-in novelization? If you’re like me (and I suspect you are), I grabbed those up whenever I saw them. Unfortunately, over time most of them ended up lost, sold, or traded. Thanks to eBay, used bookstores, and thrift/charity shops, I have successfully rebuilt much of that collection from decades ago. As my recent columns for Paperback Fanatic have clearly shown, I have a borderline unhealthy obsession with the Kung Fu/Martial Arts movie and paperback craze that ran primarily through the 70s, though some lingered into the 80s. 

This time around, I’d like to focus on some of the more prominent movie tie-in paperback novelizations that hit the store shelves and spinner racks. I hope to throw a few quite obscure ones your way as well. I have chosen to present them in chronological order based on publication date.

ENTER THE DRAGON (1974) by Mike Roote (Leonore Fleischer)

We start with the classic granddaddy of Kung Fu movies: Bruce Lee’s swan song film, Enter the Dragon. Arguably the finest example of the mainstream martial arts movie ever produced, Enter the Dragon was wildly successful, released just one month after Lee’s tragic early death at the age of 32. The plot is pure James Bond pastiche concerning a Shaolin master named—well, Lee—who is drafted by British Intelligence to infiltrate the island-based martial arts tournament of Han, a suspected drug and sex trafficker who just happens to have been a former student from Lee’s Shaolin temple. Add in personal motivation in the form of Han’s henchman being responsible for the death of Lee’s sister, and you have Lee headed off as a secret agent in the employ of her Majesty’s secret service.What follows doesn’t push the tropes of the secret agent movie into any new territory, but it made a posthumous international superstar out of Lee and launched the career of Jim Kelly and greatly reinvigorated the career of John Saxon (the most perfect actor to play The Destroyer, Remo Williams, that was ever born!). The book follows the plot of the film for the most part, and was clearly based on an early version of the script with little in the way of additional character or plot embellishment.

However, the most interesting part of this novelization lies in the behind-the-scenes story of its author and its creation. The real author was Leonore Fleischer, something of a legend in the movie novelization business. She cranked out movie tie-ins for years, lending her typewriter to numerous popular titles for decades. Yet, she herself singles out Enter the Dragon as unique, claiming that she wrote it over the course of a single weekend while high on speed. As she herself describes it, “I would sit down on Friday night and take amphetamines. On Monday morning I would topple over sideways with a completed manuscript.”

This might explain why the entire book has a stream of consciousness fever dream quality to it. Make no mistake, it’s sloppy. Lee, a Shaolin Kung Fu master is described as “Karate-chopping” his opponents and much of the action is downright abstract. The entire infamous hall of mirrors climax of the film is absent and Han’s hand with detachable attachments (a major movie plot element) is a non-issue until the very end of the book. But much attention is afforded to sex scenes with undulating breasts and anatomical detail that would belie the author as female. Worth seeking out and reading for the curiosity that it is.

SUPERMANCHU (1974) by Sean Mei Sullivan (Jerry Sohl)

I would be willing to bet that almost none of my readers has ever seen a physical copy of, let alone read, SuperManChu. It’s not remembered as a particular high watermark of the Kung Fu movie bonanza of the 70s. In fact, when I bought and read the novelization as a 12-year old I had never heard of nor seen the movie. Flash forward 50 years and I have still not seen the movie. But I have read the movie tie-in twice now (the second time for this review).

SuperManChu is probably not a good movie; it certainly is not a good book, despite the fact that it was ultimately determined to have been written by longtime Science Fiction writer Jerry Sohl, whose work was featured on television series as prestigious as “Star Trek,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” “Naked City,” “The Twilight Zone,” “Outer Limits,” and “Route 66.” I bought and read the book solely because it was a novelization of a Kung Fu film at a time when that was a true novelty.

Everything about SupermanChu the novelization is smooth but perfunctory. There is at least an attempt to ground the book in legitimate Kung Fu foundations with an introduction by Bong Soo Hong, at the time the leading Hapkido master in the US (he would also later hilariously parody the genre playing Dr. Clan, the villain in Kentucky Fried Movie’s A Fistful of Yen sequence, itself a dead-on satire of Enter the Dragon). Further, illustrations of some of the basic stances and forms of Kung Fu are presented in the forward that attempt to add some level of validity. At its core, this is another in a seemingly endless parade of revenge tales that was the mainstay of the Kung Fu movie phenomenon. But the wholesale inclusion of ludicrous and impossible martial arts histrionics so prevalent in Kung Fu cinema at the time (a samurai henchman bites off nails and spits them into wood), do not translate sans visuals to the prose format. This is one long and confusing slog that fails to reward the reader’s patience. That said, the US movie poster cover art is outstanding!

THE YAKUZA (1975) by Leonard Schrader

Whereas most martial arts films and subsequent books focused on Chinese Kung Fu, there is a whole fascinating culture of fighting arts and styles that originated in Japan. Chief among these are Karate, Judo, and the Bushido discipline of the samurai and ninja. The Yakuza was an attempt at a serious drama, co-conceived by brothers Leonard and Paul Schrader (author of Taxi Driver), with a screenplay co-written by Robert Towne (Chinatown). Directed by Sydney Pollack (Jeremiah Johnson), and starring Robert Mitchum and a then relatively unknown Takakura Ken, the film was a noir crime thriller that focused on Japan’s Yakuza, groups of organized criminal gang lord factions that still retain much of the Bushido spirit in their adherence to a specific code of honor for illegal business dealings.

The novelization of The Yakuza is by Leonard Schrader, who spent years of his life living in Japan, where he even took a Japanese wife. This all lends a tangible verisimilitude to the prose. American ex-patriot businessman George Tanner has angered a Yakuza mob boss over a gun deal gone bad. The Yakuza boss retaliates by kidnapping the American shipping magnate’s daughter. He calls in a favor from his Korean War fellow soldier, Harry Kilmer, a tough retired detective, who travels to Japan to try and rescue Tanner’s daughter. To accomplish this, he must seek out the assistance of Tanaka Ken, a former Yakuza enforcer and sister of a love interest from Kilmer’s past. There are layers of fractured loyalties and hidden histories between characters and a satisfying amount of violent swordplay. All in all, this is a really well-written book with excellent and vivid prose and an effective hard-boiled style set in an intriguing culture. This is a rare movie tie-in that stands on its own outside of the movie upon which it is based.

THE MASTER GUNFIGHTER (1975) by Howard Liebling

Tom Laughlin carved out quite an interesting film career for himself with the creation of the cinematic character of American mixed-race Indian anti-hero Billy Jack, featured in the films Born Losers, Billy Jack, and Trial of Billy Jack. Through this film trilogy, Laughlin’s independent film legacy was successful enough to afford him the luxury of producing a self-financed homage to Japanese chambara samurai films and a sideways version of traditional western with The Master Gunfighter.

The novelization is credited to Howard Liebling, an author who has a few other movie titles under his belt, including Laughlin’s Trial of Billy Jack. I have watched The Master Gunfighter and found it to be convoluted and confusing in addition to being bloated and boring. Its blend of old California Spanish aristocracy mixed with political unrest involving Mexican peasants and a planned massacre of a local native American tribe never coalesces on its own. And then there’s all the samurai swordplay grafted on and combined with lengthy speechifying and moralizing by Laughlin’s character, Finley. And unfortunately, Liebling faithfully captures all of that in his novelization; it’s bloated, full of self-importance and condescending moralizing about race, while making sure to maintain a ridiculously high body count that seems counter to the whole point. Or at least the point it seems to be trying to make. My recommendation? Avoid this one!

THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR (1976) by Bill S. Ballinger

The most interesting thing about The Ultimate Warrior is comparing the novelization of the screenplay to the final movie itself. It is abundantly clear that the movie started life as a post-apocalyptic martial arts film that at some point morphed into a movie about a knife fighter. Perhaps this was due to the casting of Yul Brynner as the titular warrior who, while athletic and imposing, was certainly no martial artist. The film was written and directed by Robert Clouse, whose pedigree as a martial arts filmmaker is beyond reproach, having directed Enter the Dragon, Black Belt Jones (with Jim Kelly), Golden Needles, Game of Death, China O’Brien (with Cynthia Rothrock) and The Big Brawl (Jackie Chan’s first attempt at mainstream US stardom).

However, the novelization, based on screenplay by Clouse, was handled by the prolific Bill S. Ballinger, an author primarily known for television, standalone mystery novels, spy adventures (the Joaquin Hawkes series, itself an early 60’s adopter of much martial arts action). Ballinger is a solid storyteller with chops to spare in the prose department, and the novelization is, at least for me, superior to the film. Part of the reason for that is the martial arts elements being front and center. When we are first introduced to Carson, the titular ultimate warrior as he arrives at the city enclave of The Baron who is at war with wasteland marauders from outside the city, we are treated to this description of his martial prowess:

His graceful moves of avenging death were deceptively simple. With fluidity and economy of movement, with a grace comparable to a conjuring magician performing sleight of hand, he seemed to pull sudden death from out of the very air around him. A man's throat was crushed with a forearm; another enemy swung an axe---and lost both axe and arm in midair. A third foe was kicked in the chest, and in that moment the chest was no longer there---dissolving into a mess of broken bones, blood and tissue.

This is good stuff and comes with a recommendation from the manly book cave.

CIRCLE OF IRON (1979) by Robert Weverka

Originally conceived by Bruce Lee, actor James Coburn, and screenwriter Stirling Silliphant as The Silent Flute, this movie was intended to star Lee and Coburn. Location scouting was even done, but alas, a busy movie schedule and then the untimely death of Bruce Lee saw the project stall until it was revived years later as a vehicle for Kung Fu TV star David Carradine in the Bruce Lee role and retitled as Circle of Iron. There is certainly a deep irony in that casting given that the Kung Fu television series was originally intended to star Lee until the network executives had misgivings about a Chinese actor starring in a primetime series and cast David Carradine instead, a dancer with no martial arts experience.

Circle of Iron is a well-made low budget affair with decent acting and action. The straightforward plot serves as a vehicle for much of Bruce Lee’s philosophical musings about life and combat while taking place in a fantasy amalgam of different periods of ancient European and Asian human history. The novelization by Weverka, himself an old hand at adapting screenplays and teleplays into prose, is faithful and efficient. We get a bit more of Cord’s inner thoughts but overall everything is played as a straight-up and cogent rehash of the beats of the film. In that respect it serves well its intended function. In short, if you like the movie, you’ll probably dig the book.

Are there other novelizations of martial arts films out there? Maybe...probably. But I am happy to have these in my personal collection, warts and all. They still have the ability to get the blood pumping all these decades later.

Here is Part One of this series.

Here is Part Two of this series.

Reviews by Steve Carroll