After Bruce Lee.

Bruce Lee died far too young. He could have made three movies a year for thirty years and would have reigned unchallenged.

But I've discovered the guy who, in Asia at least, replaced Bruce and led the martial movie craze back in the seventies. He is called Sonny Chiba, and his last name really IS Chiba. First one is too hard to pronounce.

I saw the first movie, on Netflix, and it led me to watch a marathon that I mixed up. Takes my mind off my worries.

My first impression was that his martial arts were not up to par... but of course, I have seen Jackie Chan and Jet Li and all the enormously talented ones of my generation. Sonny got the genre kickstarted, after Bruce died and left Golden Harvest and all the rest of them gasping for air...

And eventually, I saw a fight scene in which he let it all hang out, and realized he was hugely skilled... a true black belt. It was the direction and production that didn't let him shine as he could have. Now and then, though, he did.

The plotlines are just stupid. Thank heavens for this generation of movie professionals who helped make Jackie Chan funny, or Jet Li menacing. (And apologies for Chris Tucker, who managed to bring the stupid up across the decades and into our generation.)

The music is often a lamenting flute solo, carried on for far too many minutes. Like a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western, a single musical theme that goes from the beginning to the end of the movie.

The plotlines are... unsalvageable. :-). But Sonny Chiba deserved to be the leader of the modern martial arts movie movement. He was big and handsome and manly, more so than Chan, certainly more than Jet Li, even more than Bruce Lee. He was the anti hero, like Clint in those italian jobs... a guy you weren't sure you liked, but you were glad to see him kicking bad guy azz.