kungfu A 1994 Kung Fu Movie Starring Sherlock Holmes

[BBally1981]

Yes, you read that correctly. In 1994, a Chinese film production company called Beijing Film Studio produced a martial art film with the world's greatest detective as its star. The film titled Sherlock Holmes and the Chinese Heroine or Sherlock Holmes In China,  Holmes played by a less known actor named Alex Vanderpor (his IMDB profile only lists this film on filmography) and his partner Dr. Watson, portrayed by Chinese actor Zhongquan Xu (who only has 4 movies to his credit on IMDB) arrive in China to help in the war against opium traders. Apparently, the character is so popular in China, several non-Canon stories were published there along with this film. 

 

The film is available to watch on Youtube, unfortunately it's in Chinese without subtitles.

 

 

[Carol the Dabbler]

Sherlock Holmes does seem to have become a citizen of the world, doesn't he?  In addition to this film, there have been non-English-language television series made in Russia, Japan, and presumably a number of other countries (and in the Japanese series, he's a she).

As for martial arts, even though Conan Doyle's Holmes was an expert in "baritsu," it does seem odd to see him featured in a martial-arts film (as opposed to a detective film where he occasionally uses martial arts as one of his tools).

I found a review by one David Vineyard.  He doesn't understand Chinese any more than I do, but he describes a good bit of the action.

 

[BBally1981]

54 minutes ago, Carol the Dabbler said:

Sherlock Holmes does seem to have become a citizen of the world, doesn't he?  In addition to this film, there have been non-English-language television series made in Russia, Japan, and presumably a number of other countries (and in the Japanese series, he's a she).

As for martial arts, even though Conan Doyle's Holmes was an expert in "baritsu," it does seem odd to see him featured in a martial-arts film (as opposed to a detective film where he occasionally uses martial arts as one of his tools).

I found a review by one David Vineyard.  He doesn't understand Chinese any more than I do, but he describes a good bit of the action.

 

Yeah, we even had our share of non-canon Holmes stories here in Egypt like these digest books

 

Holmes is basically the precursor to characters like Tarzan, Zorro, Superman and Batman who become popular characters worldwide with Tarzan getting his own stories in different countries (there was said to be Hebrew and Arabic Tarzan comics that were used as propaganda regarding the Arab-Israel conflict)

[Carol the Dabbler]

1 hour ago, BBally1981 said:

(there was said to be Hebrew and Arabic Tarzan comics that were used as propaganda regarding the Arab-Israel conflict

I never pictured Tarzan as living in the Middle East!  That sort of propaganda thing is nothing new, though.  When I was a kid, they ran Popeye cartoons on television, and some of the older ones had Hitler as the villain.  I can only imagine what the early-40's German cartoons were like!

1 hour ago, BBally1981 said:

we even had our share of non-canon Holmes stories here in Egypt like these digest books

When you say "digest," do you mean the pages are a small size?  The illustration on the left looks like it could be for the lengthy American scene in "A Study in Scarlet."

 

[BBally1981]

Yes, I mean the small sized books, they're quite cheap in Egypt though not as widely available as it was in the 80s and 90s.

I found that image online so I can't tell you about the story but I assume they're original because of their titles, one's called World of Crime and other is called The Secret Mission and as far as I know all of the Doyle books are given translations of the original titles in Arabic.

[Carol the Dabbler]

7 hours ago, BBally1981 said:

Yes, I mean the small sized books, they're quite cheap in Egypt though not as widely available as it was in the 80s and 90s.

We apparently used to have those over here too, but it's been quite a while ago, more like a hundred years.  They were called "dime novels" (because they cost a dime, 1/10 of a dollar).  In the more recent past, the cheapest novels have been so-called "paperbacks" (because their covers are just heavy paper); their pages are even smaller than digest size (about 10 x 17 cm) but they typically make up for that by having more pages.  During this same time frame, the digest size (about 14 x 19 cm) has mostly been represented by magazines, often those that print short stories in a specific genre, such as westerns or science fiction -- or detective stories.

 

[HerlockSholmes]

Is nothing sacred?😪

[Artemis]

Not anymore!