I never thought a documentary about No Retreat No Surrender would make me cry, but Oliver Harper and Christopher Stratton’s The Untold Story of No Retreat No Surrender, not only is a supremely satisfying deep dive into a cult classic (which I still have my VHS copy of), but a bountiful banquet of joyous moments, as seen through the eyes of both the people that made the movie, and the fans and fellow action stars that love it so much, they’ve kept its fire burning bright, able to hold on to that vision in their eyes.
This is a film that I always wanted to exist, which, like NRNS, was a concept ahead of its time. Whilst editing the anthology in 2015, Conquest of the Planet of the Tapes: Straight to Video III, I began a correspondence with Keith Strandberg, Loren Avedon, and Keith Vitali in relation to their work for The Seasonal Film Corporation. Strandberg, having established himself as a writer for martial arts magazines, contacted Hong Kong movie companies, seeking their interest in making a new sort of film, one that combined an American story, an American cast, with Hong Kong action. For over a decade, Seasonal ran like a well-oiled machine until they broke from their formula with a bigger budget picture, Bloodmoon, which, when sent to the film markets, garnered much less than previous production, thus marking the beginning of the end.
A documentary interview moment outside a strip-mall location in The Untold Story of No Retreat No Surrender (2025).
“NRNS had two different songs and scores for the US and international releases.”
But the films left behind from that run, like NRNS and this documentary, end in just such a perfect way. Triumphantly. Whereas, as the picture went along, I greedily wished that each film in the Seasonal catalogue (like Superfights, also known as Karate Tiger 9) would receive the same treatment, I found that feeling soon diminished as one big revelation after another dropped before my eyes. One big “Hey, I didn’t know that” moment coming when I learned Joe Satriani (before he was famous), played on the title song. Yet this title song wasn’t the title song everybody heard, as NRNS had two different songs and scores for the US and international releases. This sumptuous trivia morsel then spirals into a glorious discussion among critics as to the multitude of variant titles, applied both to NRNS and another Seasonal entries, by money-hungry distributors looking to build franchises, to catch waves of crazes. From Karate Tiger to No Retreat No Surrender 2: Raging Thunder, these attempts to cash-in ring alto are like the Bruceploitation pictures that they have lumped NRNS in with.
The heroes’ journey as a martial arts tournament movie was, at one time, a household favorite. NRNS stands out from the pack because of the unique glint in its eye. For we once were young and had heroes, and nothing would have pleased us more than to have said heroes leap from the book pages, or comic book covers, or finally movie screens, to tell us not to fear, to fight at our side. And Oliver Harper and Christopher Stratton’s The Untold Story of No Retreat No Surrender distilled this wish so brilliantly. I found myself moved. I guess by something that may have moved the first time I saw NRNS. That feeling returned to me, much like the ghost of Bruce Lee, in this opulent piece of behind-the-scenes exploration that makes you want to stand back-to-back with a buddy, and you say, “No Retreat!” and they reply, “No Surrender!”
"…a supremely satisfying deep dive into a cult classic..."
