Behind The Scenes of No Retreat, No Surrender Movie.

Go behind the scenes and learn what went on during the making of the 1985 Martial Arts movie starring Kurt McKinney, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Kathie Sileno et al.

In the film's training montage, you see Kurt McKinney, who plays Jason Stillwell, doing one arm fingertip pushups. First off, Kurt didn't know how to do one arm pushups, so had to be shown the correct form. Then, he tried to do it for the camera and it just didn't have the impact. So, Yuen Kuai, the director, decided that it would be much more effective for the pushups to be faster and to be off two fingers. When asked: "He can't even do one arm push ups fast enough, how's he going to do this?" Yuen Kuai just smiled and held up a piece of wire cable. They affixed a wire to Kurt's back with a special harness and every time he goes up and down, there are really three Chinese stunt men off screen pulling on a wire that takes him up with ease, and keeps the pressure off his fingers! He looks great doing it, doesn't he? The wire doesn't show because they hid it by having the trees in the background and what wire did show they spray painted white so it would blend in with the sky!

Contributed by: Andrew Ellis

Another interesting point is that the Korean actor playing Sensei Lee (Kim Tai Chong) had been a double for the real Bruce Lee in his films. He couldn't speak any English so a Korean dialogue coach had to construct sentences in Korean that matched the timing of the English script. English was then dubbed over the Korean. So when we see Kurt McKinney and Kim Tai Chong talking to each other neither had a clue what the other was saying.

Contributed by: Dwayne Fails

On the set of this movie, Van Damme could barely speak English.

Contributed by: THIEN VO 864

Before and during filming Kurt Mckinney (Jason Stillwell) would only refer to Kim Tai Chong (Sensei Lee) as Sensei Lee on and off the set. He thought this would help his performance. Kim Tai Chong got very mad that Kurt wouldn't refer to him by his real name and because of this a fight between the two almost happened on more than one occasion while filming.

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Deleted Scenes

When movies are made, scenes are often left on the cutting room floor.

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Alternate Versions

Sometimes, there will be several versions of a movie floating about on cable, tv or video etc. Other times, a Director may release a special cut of the movie.

Contributed by: Trent Davidson

There are two versions of NO RETREAT NO SURRENDER out there. I don't know what the US version is like, but I have seen both the UK & Australian versions. The UK version adds a scene where Jason & Kelly go up to the top of the Space Needle in Seattle but delete a few others of which I forget. The Australian one subtitled: "Complete and Uncut version" contains everything except for this scene where Jason & Kelly are at the Space Needle. The soundtrack is also different between the two. The British one has a slow version of the title song and try-hard oriental music, whereas the Australian one has a mainly synthesizer try-hard "BEVERLEY HILLS COP" style of music and an excellent version of the title track whatever its called "Hold on to that vision in your eyes". The SILVA Screen CD has the UK version Music as I bought it excitedly hoping it was the AUS version, how dissapointed I was. If you have a choice between the two go the Aussie version (hopefully this is the same as the US one, if not the rest of the world is missing out on a classic film soundtrack).

Contributed by: Dennis

As quoted, yes indeed the Australian version is better. It features the title soundtrack sung by Kevin Chalfont (of 707, Storm AOR Rock group). The title is known as "Hold On To Your Vision".

Contributed by: Anthony Goodman

The Australian version and the UK version use different people for dubbing Bruce Lee, the Australian version is laughably bad, however the UK version uses someone who sounds very similar to whoever did Bruce Lee's own movies.

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No Retreat, No Surrender Behind The Scenes