Tiger Claws (1991) on Netflix
Martial artists are turning up dead, their bodies cut with bloody gashes. Detective Linda Masterson is teamed with Tarek Richards, a fellow NYPD officer with martial arts expertise.
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- Netflix2.8/5
- IMDb5.5/101,518 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
Detective Linda Masterson is tired of street crime and wants a more interesting case. Several martial artists have turned up dead, their bodies marked with bloody gashes, and the unknown killer has been nicknamed the Death Dealer. Masterson is told to work with Tarek Richards, an NYPD colleague whose martial arts background lets him read the wounds. They come from the tiger claw, a violent style of wushu said to push its students toward madness. Richards gave up that style because of how it affected his mind, but he goes back to training, hoping the Chinese martial arts community will lead him to the killer. At a tournament he searches for a tiger claw teacher, and the community turns him away.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Tiger Claws (1991)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- When Black Pearls failed to make an impact upon its Spring 1991 Canadian release, some of Jalal Merhi's backers pulled out of Tiger Claws, forcing him to inject more of his own money to complete the budget. Part of the financing also relied on deferred salaries.
- The Donlands Theatre doubled as the location of the film's fictional kung fu school and as production headquarters. Shortly after filming, star Jalal Merhi bought the theater outright to set up permanent studios for his company, Film One.
- Stuntman Bill Pickells performed his feats without trickery: the broken glass he stepped on was not candy glass, and he was really blindfolded when he slashed the watermelon. As nobody else wanted to do it, his girlfriend assisted him and suffered a light cut.
- Tiger Claws had no action choreographer, and the actors were expected to contribute their own ideas, which left Cynthia Rothrock unimpressed after her Hong Kong career. It was the first time she designed her own fights, drawing on that experience.
- Distributor Shapiro-Glickenhaus Entertainment wanted a bigger film than Black Pearls, so Jalal Merhi offered to bring back Bolo Yeung and add Cynthia Rothrock, a casual acquaintance from the competitive martial arts scene he had just reconnected with at an industry function.
- The film's final fight was going to be shot in the Donlands Theatre's rafters, but they were deemed structurally unsafe for that kind of stress, so it was moved to a warehouse.
- J. Stephen Maunder, a student of Jalal Merhi's who had written part of Black Pearls, did not want to commit to a full screenplay. Merhi, who wanted a martial artist in charge of the script, chaperoned him for about a month while he wrote it.
