I'm not entirely sure how I would have reacted to the cache of kung fu movies that Dan Halsted found in a shuttered Chinese movie theater in Vancouver. I probably would have had a heart attack. I like to think that I'd do what Halsted is doing and tour the country showing the movies. If you haven't heard the story, it goes like this: film collector Dan Halsted of Portland, Oregon came across an immaculate bunch of kung fu trailers. His interest was peaked by quality of the print, and he decided to trace where it came from. They turned out to have a shady provenance, and that trail turned cold. Fortunately, there was evidence with the films themselves, and he followed it to a shuttered theater that was once part of the Shaw Brothers' North American theater chain. In that theater, sequestered under the stage, was a cache of four tons of kung fu movies, most in terrific shape, many the only 35 mm prints of a given movie known to exist. Four tons of 35 mm film equates to roughly 200 movies. This was like finding the Holy Grail and Shangrila at the same time. Halsted is a film programmer who runs a series of grindhouse classics in his home town, but this was too good not to share and he took it on tour. The tour came to my home town of Columbia, MO this week, where it occupied two nights of double features.
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