For fans of 80s action cinema, No Retreat No Surrender holds a special place.
We’ve been speaking to the man behind the series… As a kid, this movie was everything to me.
Jason Stillwell was my hero.
The series offered everything from ultraviolent ramboid bloodbaths to lightweight action-comedy.
Ad content continues below
Lets start at the beginning withNo Retreat No Surrender.
It was the first film you ever wrote, right?
Okay, lets start right from the beginning.
And I wanted to write a good martial arts movie.
So I got a job taking Americans to China as a tour guide.
This is back in the early 1980s.
I didnt get past the receptionist in most places.
So somehow I got Ng on the phone.
and then asked me to come on over.
He liked the idea of doing an American movie with Hong Kong fighting because it had never been done.
I went back to the US and didnt hear a thing for about a year.
Was the story your idea?
It was Ngs idea but we developed it together.
I was so bad at writing scripts that my original draft ofNo Retreat No Surrenderwas about 200 pages!
What sort of stuff got cut?
I wondered was that something that fed intoNo Retreat No Surrenderwith the ghost of Bruce Lee?
Was it ever intended to be part of that genre?
and I thought it wouldve been a dream come true to someone who was training and needed help.
and the guy says Nah, that isnt Bruce.
so I won the argument with Ng!
I went up to L.A. with my wife to go to the premiere.
For me at least though, I always see what we could do better.
Theres always gonna be a mistake in everything that comes out.
Although the fact that its now out on Blu-Ray shows theres still very much a fanbase for the movie.
It did resonate with people.
We started something, for good or bad.
SoNo Retreat No Surrender 2: Raging Thunder, then.
He was a good kid who basically gets in over his head.
But what they did in the end, the guy who co-producedRaging Thunderchanged the script.
They made his character much harder.
Its just a straight action movie and theres no change for the character.
So were you involved at all on the set of that?
No, I didnt go to the set, I stayed away from that.
And I have to admit it is kind of a shock.
Was that in your original script or was that something that changed?
I dont think it was.
Im not super clear on it but I dont think it was in the original script.
Okay, so we cant blame you for that.
I had known Cynthia before.
Shes a cool girl.
I think actuallyRaging Thunderwas probably the first time Id seen her on film.
We tried a similar thing inBlood Brotherswith someone different and it didnt work as well.
Okay, so lets talkBlood Brothersthen.
Loren Avendon was back again but you say it wasnt originally written as aNo Retreatmovie?
You changed directors onBlood Brothersfrom Corey Yuen to Lucas Lo.
Did this make a noticeable difference?
Lucas wasnt a martial arts guy, he was a film director.
He paid more attention to the setup of a scene cinematically than he did to the action.
And this happened time and time again.
It was a nightmare, just having to keep cutting down the dialogue.
The choreography this time was all done by Tony Leung.
Up to that point, its all been training stuff so his experience has always been in the dojo.
So I go up to Tony and I ask Why do you have Loren killing somebody?
and he goes Because this is gonna look GREAT!
and then just changes it.
[Laughs]
We did a smart thing starting with that movie too, actually.
We started to train people before we started shooting.
That streamlined the process so that we didnt have down time.
We could spend all our time on set doing the fighting and I think that really showed out.
The stars were always great but its the guys that get beat up that make the stars look good.
And we had a much better core of people who could take a punch!
No, this is a much darker film.
Yeah, its phenomenal.
What was it like working with Billy Blanks, because he is terrifying in that film?
[Laughs] Yeah, hes terrifying in real life!
Hes such an amazing actor.
I remember following his career as a fighter and he could do stuff that no one else could do.
and then this foot comes over and hits him in the head!
That last fight in the dome is just incredible.
I think I read somewhere that it took two weeks just to shoot that scene?
Yeah, it was two weeks in the jungle.
It was just… ugh…
They have to get to each part in a line and so it just takes forever.
That two weeks in Thailand was great but really hard.
It was hot and we were working 16 hour days…
Both guys are just such incredible athletes.
I mean, those movies couldnt be more different in tone.
We wanted to come back to something a little bit more wholesome.
The fish out of water thing, yeah.
Was it a tough pitch in terms of selling the concept?
Did that make things hard in terms of getting funding?
We couldnt just make another one, we wanted to do something that pushed the boundaries a bit.
He also had a real affinity for Shaolin and he was behind us from the go.
And Reece Madigan, your lead.
Where did he come from?
He was a bit like Kurt McKinney actually.
He was a trained actor who had some martial arts experience.
Kurt was a black belt in Tae Kwon Do.
And we did the same with the Trevor character too.
Yeah, I suppose theres more focus on the story and the comedy than the fighting inAmerican Shaolin?
Well, I was going for wholesome.
And Ive got to ask: the song,The Shaolin Temple Blues, was that… your idea?
and it worked out really well.
Its insistent, alright…
[Laughs]
So what happened afterAmerican Shaolin?
You seem to have stopped making films for a little while?
So we needed to regroup and figure out what we were going to do.
Yeah, the genre kinda dried up for a while there in the late 90s/early 2000s.
I couldnt believe it!
I dont think Im done making movies but I want to make them on my terms.
There you go, I hope so!
Thanks, Keith Strandberg, for the interview and also for kindly providing some awesome behind the scenes photos.
