Yasuaki Kurata’s ‘Fight! Dragon’ TV series coming to DVD

By Mark Pollard | Published February 7, 2010

A sharp-eyed reader has discovered that Mill Creek Entertainment is bringing Yasuaki Kurata’s TV series FIGHT! DRAGON (aka THE FIGHTING DRAGON, TATAKAE! DRAGON, 闘え！ドラゴン) to DVD in the U.S. on March 9, 2010. This is the complete, 26-episode Japanese martial arts series that originally aired in Japan from July 2 through December 24, 1974, starring FIST OF LEGEND’s Yasuaki Kurata as a crime-fighting martial arts hero. Making this series essential viewing for genre fans are added appearances from superkicker Bruce Leung (KUNG FU HUSTLE) and the “Chinese Hercules” himself, Bolo Yeung (BLOODSPORT).

FIGHT! DRAGON is a mixture of Japan’s popular superhero genre with the basher martial arts flicks of Hong Kong and Taiwan that proliferated after the release of films like THE CHINESE BOXER and Bruce Lee’s THE BIG BOSS. Here is the show’s intro featuring all three martial arts legends:


FIGHT! DRAGON (1974) series intro.

If you’re not familiar with Yasuaki Kurata, you should be. Next to Sonny Chiba, he is the best gift Japan has given the martial arts genre. He’s one of the most versatile and talented screen fighters in the history of martial arts cinema who spent a good number of years in the 1970s playing villains in Chinese-language basher films like TIGER VS. DRAGON and RAGE OF WIND. His first major role was opposite Gordon Liu in Lau Kau-leung’s kung fu classic HEROES OF THE EAST where he played a ninja master. Today he is best known for playing the wise martial arts master who schools Jet Li in Gordon Chan’s FIST OF LEGEND but he’s still active with one of his most recent dramatic appearances being in Jackie Chan’s SHINJUKU INCIDENT.

FIGHT! DRAGON has been available on DVD in Japan for some time but without English subtitles and this is the first time it will be available on DVD in the U.S. Mill Creek’s three-disc set comes with original Japanese audio in 2.0 stereo and English subtitles.

The only thing dampening the excitement is the obvious mistakes Mill Creek makes on its sellsheet. They claim that Bruce Leung (aka Bruce Liang) and Bolo Yeung are Japanese martial artists and list Yeung a second time under the alternate Chinese name of “Yang Sze.” The one series actor listed besides Kurata they get right is Yujiro Sumi (aka Tetsu Sumi) who played the karate expert alongside Kurata in HEROES OF THE EAST.

Dragon (Kurata) helps run an orphanage, but is also a righteous martial artist, so he spends more time battling the evil Shadow gang than counseling kids.

Dragon journeys across Asia to take on the deadly assassins hired by the villainous members of Shadow. Filled with bone-crushing fight scenes, outrageous stunts and guest appearances by many famous Japanese [sic] martial artists including Yang Sze [Hey, that's Bolo Yeung!], Tetsu Sumi, Bruce Liang and Bolo Yeung [There he is again!].

What sets FIGHT! DRAGON apart from other Japanese TV shows of the era is the absence of the fantasy and monster elements and the emphasis on martial arts fighting. Filled with exciting karate fights, outrageous stunts and non-stop action, FIGHT! DRAGON is the type of “they just don’t make ‘em like that anymore” television show fans have been anxiously awaiting to appear on DVD.

Misleading cover art for Mill Creek Entertainment’s 3-disc DVD release of FIGHT! DRAGON (1974). Warner Bros’ legal team may have something to say about the use of that particular picture of Bolo Yeung.

I’m also displeased with the inaccurate cover art that depicts Bolo Yeung in promotional art for BLOODSPORT while the larger figure whose head is chopped off is not Yasuaki Kurata, the actual star of the show. Mill Creek’s failure to use any original series marketing material makes me wonder if this is actually a licensed release or not, especially when the street price is only $14.98.

Hopefully, these marketing mistakes do not reflect the quality of the English subtitles or the quality of the video but even if they do, I’ll still take it. I’ve been patiently waiting for someone to release this series for years. Now, my hope is that someone turns their attention to Kurata’s long-running second series G-MEN ‘75 which ran from 1975 through 1982 and once again featured Bolo Yeung, along with Japanese star Tetsuro Tanba.


G-MEN ‘75 intro.

Mill Creek’s previous martial arts offerings include budget releases the SONNY CHIBA COLLECTION and SPIRITED KILLER TRILOGY. They next plan to release Japanese superhero TV series IRON KING and a MARTIAL ARTS CLASSICS 50 MOVIE MEGAPACK.

Discuss this topic in the comments section below or in our related forum thread.

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  • morgoth
    That’s right, there’s also Treeline. I always mix them up with Mill Creek. I have both of the 50-packs. At least I think there’s only 2 versions. The titles are slightly different. They both have the same type of casing, with the sleeves. Most have average quality and are full screen. A couple have really bad quality, like being too scratchy, or too dark. The full screen is the worst thing about the set. It affects a few of the movies badly.

    Thanks for the info on SK trilogy. I probably wouldn't have noticed. I picked up the daybreak series recently, and I noticed a few audio and video glitches. They are a bottom of the barrel company. I always expect the worst, which is probably why I’m usually satisfied with their cheap products.
  • Kungfusamurai
    Oh yeah, for G Men 75, I don't think putting out the whole series is necessary. If people are mainly interested in the episodes with guys like Bolo Yeung, Mill Creek or whoever picks it up, should just focus on the Hong Kong and Macau series of episodes. All of those were put onto selected DVDs in Japan, so the companies who want to bring them here just need to subtitle them. I think they total about half a dozen episodes.
  • Kungfusamurai
    This set was supposed to come out when BCI Eclipse was still putting out Japanese and Chinese action DVDs, but it was scrapped. I don't think Mill Creek did anything beyond carrying that completed set over from BCI. They're doing the same with some of the other Japanese TV series that BCI stopped producing, like Iron King and Super Robot Red Baron, which from the clips I see on Youtube, also have some human-sized karate action, not just cheesy Gozilla-movie-style giant monsters and robots fights.
  • morgoth
    Hey Rhythm-X, how was the Spirited Killer Trilogy messed up? I don't get the Taiwanese reference. I didn't have any problems. I have had problems with Mill Creek in the past, mainly with the quality of the releases, and the constant re-releases in their multi-packs.

    The only thing that disappointed me with the Spirited Killer release was that all the movies sucked. If the Fight Dragon series is the same quality release as S Killer, I'll be extremely happy.

    BTW- that 50-pack is amazing. Check out Shadow Ninja. I don't know where else you will find that movie. The final fight has Steve Tung Wei vs Huang Ha, and then Yen Shi Kwan, and it's fucking epic.
  • Rhythm-X
    SPIRITED KILLER has no subtitles to go with its Thai language track. SPIRITED KILLER 2 and 3 are subtitled but they're presented with their scope aspect ratio stretched out to fill the 16x9 frame. The DVD cover claims, three times, that the spoken language on the films is "Taiwanese". To my knowledge this is not the language spoken by most people in Thailand.

    How's the quality on the movies in the 50 pack? I have one of the Mill Creek spaghetti western sets and some of those movies are in surprisingly good shape.
  • Kungfusamurai
    Mill Creek just took what Tree Line had put out on DVD and put it under their own name. I don't know if it's the same company and they just changed names. I'm guessing they even used the same menus, with each disc having 4 films, 2 on each side. I have the original Tree Line set, which had each disc in little cardboard sleeves with the film descriptions written on them.
  • Rhythm-X
    The Mill Creek SPIRITED KILLER trilogy was a 100% fiasco of a release (all three movies were screwed up, though part one was screwed up differently from parts two and three) and I wouldn't dream of blind-buying anything from this shady ass company run by rocket scientists who think the language spoken in Thailand is "Taiwanese".

    The series sounds interesting but I'll be damned if I'm gonna be the first guy on my block to get clowned by Mill Creek again.

    PDF for the MARTIAL ARTS CLASSICS 50 MOVIE MEGAPACK: http://tinyurl.com/yfw47lp - it looks underwhelming, to put it mildly.
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