In the early days of HBO, they had a very limited movie selection. I remember Flash Gordon, Victory and Dirty Tricks played constantly. There was also a martial arts movie whose title I cannot remember for the life of me. I’ve done endless Google and IMDB searches but haven’t come up with anything.
It doesn’t help that I’m pretty hazy on the details. It had a basic plot of a martial arts master and his friends journeying to somewhere (a far-off land, an island, I can’t remember) to compete in a tournament run by an evil crime boss of sorts.
The hero and his friends have to battle the henchmen/army of the crime boss in the tournament. IIRC, the henchmen were all hypnotized/brainwashed. And no, it’s definitely not Enter The Dragon.
I remember two scenes fairly vividly.
Scene One:
Before journeying to defeat the the evil boss, the hero meets up with with an older teacher or mentor. They sit facing each other in the lotus position. First the teacher levitates a few feet off the ground, then the hero levitates as well.
Scene Two:
This occurs at the end of the movie. The hero somehow knows that someone is going to fire a gun. He has a metal plate concealed in his clothes. At just the right moment, when the gun is fired, he pulls out the plate and stops the bullet from hitting someone (I think).
The other movies I listed all were released in 1980 or 1981 so it’s likely this movie was from the same time period.
I’m pretty sure you’re thinking of either Kill Or Be Killed or its sequel, Kill And Kill Again. I remember watching both of them many times in my youth during the early days of HBO. I remember the basic plot you describe, though the two movies have run together in my memory.
You rule! It’s Kill and Kill Again. And I can get it on Netflix.
Judging by the IMDB comments, I’m not going to be nearly as impressed with this movie as I was when I was a kid. It will be nice to relive my younger days though.
Glad to help! I’ve often thought of Netflixing it, but I have the same fear as you–it might not be as cool to me now as it was when I was 8 years old. (I’m sure the same is true of Xanadu, another movie that HBO played over and over back then and that I must have watched a hundred times. What can I say? I had a crush on Olivia Newton John.)
I can vouch for that - it was free On Demand so I watched it recently. It was atrocious.
Olivia roller skates up to the main guy (who can’t act for shit) on the boardwalk in Santa Monica and kisses him, then skates away at about 80 MPH trailing a giant flash of orange light. Which nobody else noticed apparently.
The guy then decides for no reason to befriend Gene Kelly, who is sitting on the rocks playing the clarinet in a suit. The guy says “I just met a girl and she kissed me.” I guess he didn’t notice the giant orange streak and high speed exit.
Then they go have coffee and twenty seconds later they open a club together.