David Carradine

David Carradine started his acting career in 1963, and according to imdb.com has acted in 221 shows/movies/whatever. But after going through that entire list, I found out that there have only been three movies in which I've seen Carradine perform. It's a testament to his greatness that even though I've only seen him in three movies, I still know what a legend he was. (Yes that's right, I've never seen an episode of "Kung Fu", which is what he's most famous for.)

Having only seen three of his 221 various on screen performances makes writing this article about him a lot easier. The three movies I know David Carradine from are: Kill Bill (1 and 2), Circle of Iron and Death Race 2000 (1975). All of those movies are a lot of fun, especially if you're a geeky movie dork like myself. Death Race 2000 is a Roger Corman film from the height of the Corman era of film making, so it's campy and a riot. In Death Race 2000 Carradine co-stars with Sylvester Stallone (before Rocky), and the guy who plays the evil sensei from the Cobra Kai dojo in The Karate Kid. (Oh alright, his name is Martin Kove.)

In Death Race 2000, Carradine plays Frankenstein, the winningest racer on the circuit. The film takes place in the future where everyone in America loves to watch Death Race in which racers drive from point A to point B and try to run over everyone in their path as well as kill the other racers. The more infirm or young the victims along the way, the more points are earned. Frankenstein is the biggest baddest racer ever, but in a nice twist he has gotten tired of the race and what it stands for politically, so he plots to use his fame and success to kill the president of the united states. I'll only say that the movie has a happy ending, whatever that means. If you like a nice solid B movie with some T & A and violence thrown together with some dark comedic elements, you should rent Death Race 2000 right away.



Here's what Carradine had to say to The A.V. Club about Death Race 2000:
"I had just walked off Kung Fu. Kung Fu was never cancelled; I just left. I decided I had enough of it, and I thought I should do a movie right away, because I think when you leave a television series, it's important that you establish the fact that you're a movie actor really quickly, or you might never get that chance. So this Death Race 2000 thing came up, and the other thing I wanted to do was get rid of the image of the character I play on Kung Fu. And this character Frankenstein, who runs over people, would definitely do that. So I took the movie, and we shot it in three weeks. I had a lot of trouble with Paul Bartel, the director—I almost got fired off the picture at one point before we actually started shooting. We had a very difficult time choosing who was going to play my navigator, and we finally got Simone Griffeth, who was the most perfectly constructed human being I have ever had the opportunity to hang out with naked. That was kind of interesting. And we shot it in three weeks. The whole picture was shot in the hills of Los Angeles, even though it's supposed to be a cross-country race. And we shot the whole picture for $350,000. It was raining all the time, which you actually can't see, but it was always drizzling, which made some of the turns in our racecars a little scary with the wet roads. I had 9.3 percent of the producer's gross after break-even, which I didn't think would be worth anything on a little movie made in three weeks, but I made probably close to a million dollars. And I think I've got a lot more coming."

The next film from Carradine that I've seen is Circle of Iron. I really like the philosophy of this movie and the lessons its trying to teach. It goes parallel with "Kung Fu" because both the show "Kung Fu" and the movie Circle of Iron were products of Bruce Lee's imagination. (The original title of the movie as created by Bruce Lee was The Silent Flute.) Originally Bruce Lee was to star in "Kung Fu", as it was his show, but producers didn't think that American audiences would root for and endear to an Asian leading man, so they cast Carradine instead into Lee's vision. The same thing happened with Circle of Iron.

In Circle of Iron there was always supposed to be one man who played four roles, and it was originally intended to be made in 1969. Bruce Lee was supposed to play The Blind Man, The Monkeyman, Death and Changsha, and the protagonist, Cord, was to be played by Steve McQueen. McQueen didn't want to make Lee a star so he offered the four roles to James Colburn. The movie never made it to the light of day. later on, after Bruce Lee's tragic death in 1975, David Carradine acquired the rights to Circle of Iron, cast a friend of his in the lead of Cord and himself played the Blind Man, Monkeyman, Changsha and Death roles. Eli Wallach also co-starred as did Christopher Lee.

Here is the synopsis from imdb.com:
"A young martial artist, Cord the Seeker, competes for and loses the right to go on a quest for the Book of All Knowlege held by a wizard named Zetan, but he goes along the path to seek Zetan anyway. Along the way, he meets strange tests and challenges by enemies and allies - often having difficulty determining which is which."

This could easily become an article about Bruce Lee, but you can't talk about Carradine and not talk a little about Bruce Lee because they had such similar philosophical interests in addition to their martial arts backgrounds. A lot of Lee's ideas are still present in Circle of Iron and although on the surface it looks like a throw-away movie about a guy who fights a lot of people and talks to an almost cliche character of the wandering prescient blind man, there are many great idea to be found at the movie's core. Plus the hair on the guy who plays Cord is a must-see...

Here's what Carradine had to say about playing the different roles in Circle of Iron:
"It helped when they were changing my looks and everything, but really, what's the difference between Changsha, the guy in the desert who never wears a shirt, and The Blind Master? They're both just me. I'm doing a funny little accent as the guy in the desert, and my blowfish routine, where I'm able to expand my chest and look like I've got muscles. And then The Blind Master, you look at this guy and he's just skin and bones, right? He's just as soft as he can be, while the guy in the desert is rippling with muscles. And sometimes I'd play those two characters in a single day. It 's a question of posture, really."

Which brings me to my, as yet, final viewing experience with David Carradine, Kill Bill. Carradine plays Bill, a role originally intended for Warren Beatty. Kill Bill was intended to be one complete movie, but with it's length, the Weinstein's decided to cut it up into two films instead. Carradine isn't even shown in the first segment, he only appears as Bill in the second part. And he's amazing in Vol. 2. What's great about Quentin Tarantino and a film like Kill Bill with a character like Bill played by a guy like Carradine, is that the role of Bill feels almost like a culmination of all the major cult roles Carradine had played beforehand. Bill is a fighter, a philosopher and an all-around awesome badass guy. You want to pound shots of tequila with him or spar or go for a walk and talk about random meaningless shit. And yet he's the main villain at the same time that he's being so magnetic.

Bill could be Caine from "Kung Fu", he could be a reincarnation of the Blind Man from Circle of Iron, (plus he plays theflute he uses if Circle of Iron too), but he's as hard and tough as both of them put together along with Cole Younger from The Long Riders. It's a brilliant role. There's not much more to say about it. As a bit of trivia however, the yellow jumpsuit that Uma Thurman wears in Vol. 1 is the same as the one Bruce Lee wore in Game of Death, the film he died shooting. I told you Lee and Carradine go together.



Here are Carradine's thoughts on Kill Bill:
"Kill Bill was, what can I say, just an incredible experience. Quentin [Tarantino] is more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Actually, he is a barrel of monkeys. And he's just a great filmmaker, there's no doubt about that. He's a huge party guy, but making the movie, it's strictly business. Very serious about what he does. And he knows more about movies than anybody I've ever met. It was just an incredible joy working with him, and with Uma Thurman. Most of my stuff, I worked with Uma and Michael Madsen and that was about it, but I hung out with everybody, and we trained together for three months. Five days a week, eight hours a day for three months. I think that's more than you'd do for the Olympics. Can you imagine? We're talking about Uma Thurman, Daryl Hannah, Lucy Liu, I think a couple other ladies, and they're all in sweats or trunks or something, working out, and I get to do that with them. Eight hours a day, five days a week, for three months. That was almost better than making the movie."