As any pack rat might attest, there are often rare treasures hidden in attics. After a few years' absence of what was once an annual summer tradition, 4 Star owner Frank Lee has once again ventured into the theater's crawlspace and come up with some forgotten gems of martial arts, action and erotica and cobbled together an Asian Movie Madness series to last through July.
The 25-film program begins with a national theatrical release of "The Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen," the latest film starring Donnie Yen, Asia's biggest box-office star, which opens Friday and plays daily (more on that below; two more Yen films play later in the series).
The series then moves to a double feature each Thursday, beginning May 12 with a knockout combo: the too-crazy-to-be-believed "Deaf Mute Heroine," a 1971 martial arts movie starring the dynamite Helen Ma as the title character; and "Pursuit," a rarely screened 1980 actioner with Chow Yun-Fat, then 25, as an assassin.
Generally, Lee's strategy is to pair a newer film with a lost treasure from his library of hundreds of films he, and before him, his father, a Chinatown theater owner in the '60s and '70s, have collected.
So there's Jet Li's 2007 film "The Warlords" paired with his first film, 1982's "The Shaolin Temple" (June 2); and a new-school martial arts film from Vietnam, "Clash" (2009), with an old-school 1971 classic "Iron Fan and Magic Sword" (June 9).
Never mind trying to find the older titles on DVD; many of them aren't even listed on imdb.com. The 4 Star audiences might literally be the first in years to even see some of these films.
Take "Crimson Bat, the Blind Swordswoman" (July 14), which kick-started the four-film action series starring Yoko Matsuyama in 1969. The print in Lee's attic was for its Hong Kong release, meaning the Japanese-language film is dubbed in Mandarin with Chinese and English subtitles.
There are also four double bills of erotic films, including several infamous Roman Pornos made by the Japanese studio Nikkatsu. A Google search turns up nothing on "Dirty Doll" (May 19) or "Rorita Couple" (June 16). But if there's anything like that horse scene in the gloriously trashy "Lady Chatterley in Tokyo" (July 28), maybe you don't want to know.
Yen plays Chen Zhen, an early 20th century fictional hero first embodied by Bruce Lee in 1972's "Fist of Fury" (Jackie Chan and Jet Li have also played him, as did Yen in a '90s TV series).
In this sumptuously made actioner, set in 1920s Shanghai, Chen aligns himself with a gangster (Anthony Wong) to get inside dope on the Japanese occupiers' movements. He then slips into a guise resembling Lee's outfit in "The Green Hornet" to battle the evildoers. He also falls in love with a nightclub singer (Shu Qi) who might be more than she seems.
Director Andrew Lau ("Infernal Affairs") is the right choice for this escapist entertainment, and Yen (The "Ip Man" films, "Bodyguards and Assassins") adds to his successful run of martial arts films.
Starts Fri. Asian Movie Madness double feature Thursdays begin May 12. At the 4 Star, 2200 Clement St., S.F. (415) 666-3488. www.lntsf.com.
E-mail G. Allen Johnson at ajohnson@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page G - 18 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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