hey guys welcome to part four on the top five martial arts movie stars in the
1990s that weren't jean-claude Van Damme or Steven Seagal so number two on the
list is Mark Dacascos now of all the guys on this list he's the most relevant
today in fact you probably recently seen him as the villain in John wick 3.
Prior to that he had a really good run in the 90s namely starting with Only The
Strong as being the next big thing could have been the next Jean-Claude Van Damme
and Steven Seaga.l I'm not gonna really focus too much on his straight to video
films of which there were many but I'm gonna talk about his theatrical run he
had, what happened. but to get started off let's talk about the man, his background
his martial arts etc. just to kind of get things rolling. so Mark Dacascos is a
lifelong martial artist who has won numerous karate and Kung Fu
Championships between the ages of 7 and 18 this should not be a surprise however
as his father Al Dacascos is a martial arts instructor who created his own
martial arts called Wun hop kuen Do in addition to that his stepmother Malia
Bernal was a martial arts champion in the first female to appear on the cover
of black belt magazine in September of 1974 when speaking of her
Mark Dacascos says "I attribute my understanding of how hard and consistent
one must work to become good at anything - my mother
Malia Bernal she walks the talk". As far as his father goes, Al Dacascos Wun Hop Kuen Do
off of a base of Kajukenbo which is a hybrid martial arts style
from Hawaii, it's a combination of karate, judo, jujitsu, Kenpo and boxing which is
where the name Kajukenbo comes from. So the main difference with the spin off
from Kajukenbo is that Al Dacascos says Wun Hop Kuen Do also incorporates even
more styles such as northern and southern styles of kung fu as well as a
Filipino martial art called Escrima but what really separates it apart
is that as a martial art that asks you to think for yourself and use your own
common sense to actually see what you should do next, it's this type of
fluidity and creativity that leads to the ability to respond reflexively to
any situation needless to say Mark Dacascos has an extensive background in
training in various styles of martial arts in addition to that he's also
trained in and competed in gymnastics although having 2 martial arts
champions and instructors in the house while growing up Mark Dacascos says
Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee were huge influences on him; in fact, Jackie Chan
was the one that inspired him to get no gymnastics this just goes to show how
powerful movies are especially to a young impressionable mind for me it was
Jean-Claude Van Damme which inspired me to do the chair splits at this young age
here. as far as physical stats go Mark Dacascos is 5 foot 9 which was right up
there with Jean-Claude Van Damme as well as Taekwondo sensation Philip Rhee who
i previously covered in part two of the series on this channel as far as what
Mark Dacascos weighs, he's kept a pretty consistent build his entire career
staying athletic and lean weighing in in the 150s, so he definitely has a
physique more akin to Philip Rhee, both of whom are less muscled up than the muscles
from Brussels Jean-Claude Van Damme now the previous guys are covered on the
list have been pretty easy for Hollywood to categorize for example Thomas Ian
Griffith as well as Jeff Speakman are both Caucasian and have that
all-american look while Philip Rhee is Asian now Mark Dacascos is much more
interesting because as far as a casting standpoint goes he's what Hollywood
would say is ethnically ambiguous but that could work for or against an actor
while it does open the door to play a wider variety of characters with
different backgrounds Hollywood does seem to like to classify and simplify
things which is one reason why you see so many actors get typecast. There's a
very interesting article on flickering myth.com that talks about this which
I'll link in the description below it says there's a certain indefinable
quality that works for some in Hollywood, Vin Diesel and Dwayne the rock Johnson
for example, but put Studios off on others in which is seemingly the case
for Mark Dacascos. This undoubtedly worked against him, not white enough to
play an all-american hero not Asian enough to play those rolse set aside
for Asian American actors in the 90s which were predominantly villains. Philip
Rhee alluded to this himself which is why he created his own film company that
produced the Best of the Best series. As far as the flickering myth article goes
and whether you agree with those assertations as to whether or not in reference to Asian
Americans being relegated playing villains in the 1990s that would
definitely have worked against Phillip Rhee as well as Mark Dacascos as neither
men have that tough dark gritty look in fact they both seem to encompass good
guy qualities. aside from that from a physical
standpoint you'd usually want the villain to be physically larger in
general to come across as more of a formidable opponent at first glance.casting
standpoint aside Mark Dacascos certainly has an interesting background, he was
born in Honolulu Hawaii his father Al Dacascso was of Filipino,
Spanish and Chinese descent while his mother was of Irish and Japanese descent.
In Hawaii this is known as being a Hapa, a term which originated in the
1800s and initially meant being half but later just meant being mixed when
referring to someone of mixed European and Asian and or Pacific Islander
descent so today some people find the term endearing while others find it
derogatory and offensive which being the year 2020 of course there's gonna be
people out there who get offended by this term. Now I feel comfortable bringing
this up and talking about it because I'd be pretty much what you'd classify as a
Hapa myself even though I'm not from Hawaii just based on my mixed ethnicity
that's pretty much what somebody would categorize myself. oh by the way there goes
some origin on how I came up with my whole Viking Samurai moniker by the way
so going back to Mark Dacascos, he actually became an actor after being discovered
walking down the street in San Francisco's Chinatown at the age of 18
by Chris Lee at that time who was an assistant director and Rexall Chin a
hair stylist for director Wayne Wang, who was shooting a movie called Dim Sum a
little bit of heart. Prior to this Mark Dacascos never acted and he told the men
"no thanks", but he accepted their business cards as a courtesy
later that day Mark Dacascos says I told my mom about it. She told me I should give
them a call, give it a shot, that life is a big adventure and that you don't know if you don't try.
Though his first scenes ended up on the cutting room floor he
discovered his second great passion which was acting this eventually led him
to actually be considered for the role of Bruce Lee in the movie Dragon: the Bruce
Lee story 1993, now that did not pan out; instead, that same year he was cast in
the theatrical release Only The Strong. This was actually an important film as
it introduced the world to a new martial art never before seen in America Cinemas
Brazilian capoeira. I have very fond memories of this film myself, though at the
time I was the biggest Jean-Claude Van Damme fan, Bloodsport to me was a
greatest martial arts film of all time. now I heard from an associate at my school
who knew I was into martial arts which he was as well, claimed that this movie
called Only The Strong was the greatest martial
arts movie of all time, now of course I thought that was impossible but he had
my curiosity piqued. Little did I know at the time that the writer and director of
Only The Strong was the same guy who wrote Bloodsport, yes I'm talking about
action filmmaker legend Sheldon Lettich. Prior to Only The Strong, Sheldon Lettich
not only wrote Bloodsport but also Rambo 3, another action classic he would then
go on to write and direct LionHeart and then Double Impact by far two of Van
Damme's greatest action films. So prior to Only The Strong getting produced, Mark
Dacascos' manager at the time, a woman and Cathryn Jaymes heard Sheldon Lettich
was getting ready to make another martial arts movie and that they were
looking for a leading actor who is not going to be Van Damme so she called
Sheldon Lettich and told him about Mark Dacascos, who then drove over Sheldon's
house and introduced himself. So Mark Dacascos trained in capoeira for two
months with Mestre Amen Santo before officially auditioning for the role in
Only The Strong, this was followed by additional five months of training after
landing the role luckily for Mark he already had
extensive experience with gymnastics as well as martial arts so the transition
for him into coming across as a legitimate capoeira practitioner was a
lot easier than it would have been for pretty much anyone else. Mark Dacascos: "The thing is, without a gymnastics
background there's no way I couldn't done any capoeira this fast,
definitely not I mean just to do a handstand, for most people
it takes a month just to get that down then capoeira everything is you're
either on your hands or flipping in the air doing split kicks or something and
fortunately gymnastics you do that as well." Now I remember being obsessed with the movie
as well as a soundtrack to Only The Strong and the film even inspired my
brother and I to practice backflips in front yard,
those were the times. We were eventually able to land them and thankfully without
any formal training as far as flips go, we never ended up breaking our necks. The
film was really good Mark Dacascos showed real charm and
charisma as the lead, the story had a good message the action was fun and
exciting as we have never seen this order style of martial art in any film
it was like seeing Aikido for the first time when Steven Seagal burst on the
scene in Above the Law, it was just different, the film had a
real budget which just helps everything shine however the problem was the
marketing it was never really given a fair shot case in point
here's an interview with Sheldon Lettich, Lettich says 20th Century Fox was
looking at turning Mark Dacascos into a movie star headlining studio films for
them. apparently Rupert Murdoch himself had
been impressed enough with Mark's screen-test to envision him as a
replacement for the recently deceased Brandon Lee, who had starred in Rapid Fire
for Fox but because there had been no advance promotion for the film with a
new star who nobody had ever heard him before
Fox dropped the ball when it came time to actually put the film in theaters.
Sheldon Lettich goes on to say that Cathryn Jaymes, Mark's manager at the time got the
signed to do another movie almost immediately after they shot Only The Strong,
which was based on the video game Double Dragon that film was a disastrous train
wreck, way over budget with a schedule that was completely out of control, on
top of that, it ended up being a terrible movie and a flop at the box office
now Sheldon Lettich goes on to say the reason I mentioned that movie is that
Mark was stuck on it for weeks and weeks beyond their scheduled completion date
and was therefore unable to do any promotion for Only The Strong, which was a
pity because the movie went through the roof when 20th Century Fox tested it
with a live audience, as I recall, numerous people in the
audience rated it either very good or excellent at around 98% as a result
the Fox executives were very high on the movie they had scheduled me Mark and Paco Prieto
to do a three week promotional tour in 12 cities across the USA but
Mark was inextricably stuck on Double Dragon so that tour had to be postponed
and postponed again, eventually the tour had to be canceled altogether and this
was all because of Catheryn's misguided decision a stick Mark on the terrible
train wreck of a movie before Only The Strong had ever been released. To say
that Sheldon Lettich is bitter about the whole incident is an understatement
though I'm sure Mark is bitter as well. So because of that whole fiasco, Only The
Strong only end up grossing 3.2 million domestically in 1993 to put, that in
perspective Van Damme had Nowhere To Run come out in 1993 which grossed 22
million and Steven Seagal shortly after in 1994 had On Deadly Ground with the gross
of 38.5 million domestically. So Mark Dacascos followed that up in 1994 with
Double Dragon as we talked about and that fared even worse with just 2.3
million domestically. So Hollywood is very unforgiving and Mark Dacascos wound
up straight-to-video as a result after the dismal performance of those two
films, while it takes numerous people to create a movie there's usually just a
handful that gets all the credit or blame depending on how successful or
not a film becomes, one such person is of course the lead star and in this case
the blame happened to fall on Mark Dacascos for the dismal box office
performances of Only The Strong and Double Dragon. Although he never became a household name
name or as big as an action star as Jean-Claude Van Damme or Steven Seagal he
still ended up with what would be considered a very successful career in
film and television so I mentioned earlier he's had a string of
straight-to-video releases after Double Dragon, a string of releases that continues
to this day in fact; in addition to that he'll occasionally appear in theatrical released films usually has a villain, such as 2003's cradle to the grave opposite Jet Li and
more recently 2019's John Wick 3. As far as television goes you can make the
argument that he's found even more success in that arena, appearing in
numerous series such as The Crow: stairway to heaven in the late 90s, 2008s
The Legend of Bruce Lee as a Thai boxer, Mortal Kombat Legacy in 2013 as Kung Lao.
He's also had a recurring role in agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Wu Assassins and Hawaii
Five-O, you may have also seen him in the Iron Chef series as the Chairman. So
what do you guys think about Mark Dacascos overall? Had they properly
marketed Only The Strong, do you think his luck would have changed? Could you
picture him as leading man for 20th Century Fox? Let me know in the comments below.