In this first film in the ZA KARATE trilogy, Japanese-American martial artist Tadashi Yamashita (played by Japanese-American martial artist Tadashi Yamashita) travels to Kyoto to compete in a Budo tournament, hoping to use the $50,000 prize money to save his family’s farm in Ohio. His superior fighting skills anger several opponents including the ruthless Black Tiger, whose underworld managers try to kill Yamashita before the rematch but end up blinding him instead. This is much better than I remembered from my first viewing 35 years ago on the pan-and-scan Warner Home Video tape, mostly because it features real competition fighters of the day and director Yukio Noda knew how to film them in action, eschewing the shaky hand-held camerawork that ruins a lot of the fight scenes in other Toei karate films. New Line Cinema acquired the U.S. rights in 1975 and planned to release it as KAPTAIN KARATE, but the title became BRONSON LEE, CHAMPION once Yamashita's onscreen persona was dubbed with a bad Ohio farm boy accent and renamed Bronson Lee (though he's plainly seen wearing a gi with “YAMASHITA” emblazoned across the back). The New Line version -– which didn't come out until 1978 -– was edited by Jack Sholder and dubbed by future DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE director Joseph Ellison for Simon Nuchtern's August Films. Two sequels followed, neither of which were distributed by New Line, and today most movie websites erroneously claim that ZA KARATE 3 is BRONSON LEE, CHAMPION.
