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RIP Visionary Director Albert Pyun (1953 - 2022) of Sword and the Sorcerer, Cyborg and Dollman fame

wenis

wenis

Member
Oct 25, 2017
16,127
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www.imdb.com

Albert Pyun | Director, Writer, Producer

Known for: Cyborg, Radioactive Dreams, The Sword and the Sorcerer
www.imdb.com www.imdb.com

It was a week ago there was a small news story that Al wasnt doing so well (suffering from a long time diagnosis of multiple sclerosis) and just wanted to see and hear well wishes and notes from his fans

www.joblo.com

Legendary director Albert Pyun would like to hear from fans in his final days

Director Albert Pyun may be in his final days, and his wife is asking for fans to send in messages so she can read them to him.
www.joblo.com www.joblo.com

Cynthia Curnan (Albert's wife):
"Albert took another downturn. I could tell he feared going down again. He was working too feverishly. I asked "What's the rush?" He said "If I stop, that's it." … Please write a message to him for me to read. A personal message from you to him will make him really happy. They think he does not have much time left. Update: Albert wept happy and sad tears when listening to your messages for him. He feels terrible to have let you down. by failing to finish his last 2 movies. He wanted them to be a 6 part TV series. He worked and tried like a maniac; it was all that truly mattered to him. To Albert, failure has never been an option."
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Now its spreading over twitter that it seems like Albert has passed on:

View: https://twitter.com/thepwrofgod/status/1596724790878154752?s=20&t=Fc0hXCTzLNT6IKaVjxjVDA

Just an incredible eye for action sci-fi cinema, dramatic character pieces and just fine fine film making of a brand that could only ever truly be defined as solely his. A true original in every regard, with an eye that always exceeded his small budgets.

A great Red Letter Media video on two of his movies (Cyborg and Arcade) as well as a very nice tribute piece (before his passing) at the end of the video that I'll go ahead and time stamp here (Tho I recommend watching the entire video):

Best of the Worst: Cyborg and Arcade (Albert Pyun Double Feature)

Albert Pyun Retrospective

Radioactive Dreams deserves a deep deep re-appraisal

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKLs8MOWfkk

Alien From L.A. is punching way above its weight class

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ng1yj6BR8qQ

and a personal true favorite action classic Nemesis set the bar for direct to VHS action (I was fortunate enough to catch this in theaters very recently on a pristine 35mm print)

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OwDRftSEno

Just a filmmaker with more classics under their belt than you can shake a stick at:
www.imdb.com

The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982) - IMDb

The Sword and the Sorcerer: Directed by Albert Pyun. With Lee Horsley, Kathleen Beller, Simon MacCorkindale, George Maharis. A mercenary with a three-bladed sword rediscovers his royal heritage's dangerous future when he is recruited to help a princess foil the designs of a brutal tyrant and a...
www.imdb.com www.imdb.com
www.imdb.com

Dangerously Close (1986) - IMDb

Dangerously Close: Directed by Albert Pyun. With John Stockwell, J. Eddie Peck, Carey Lowell, Bradford Bancroft. A rebel without a cause at an elite uptight High School discovers some of his classmates have formed an even more elite clique hell-bent on ridding the school of what they deem to be...
www.imdb.com www.imdb.com
www.imdb.com

Vicious Lips (1986) - IMDb

Vicious Lips: Directed by Albert Pyun. With Dru-Anne Perry, Gina Calabrese, Linda Kerridge, Shayne Farris. Sometime in the distant future, a fledgling band gets an opportunity for a breakthrough, if they can make it in time to a faraway planet to perform in a very popular club.
www.imdb.com www.imdb.com
www.imdb.com

Cyborg (1989) - IMDb

Cyborg: Directed by Albert Pyun. With Jean-Claude Van Damme, Deborah Richter, Vincent Klyn, Alex Daniels. A martial artist hunts a killer in a plague-infested urban dump of the future.
www.imdb.com www.imdb.com
www.imdb.com

Captain America (1990) - IMDb

Captain America: Directed by Albert Pyun. With Matt Salinger, Ronny Cox, Ned Beatty, Darren McGavin. Frozen in the ice for decades, Captain America is freed to battle against archcriminal The Red Skull.
www.imdb.com www.imdb.com
www.imdb.com

Dollman (Video 1991) - IMDb

Dollman: Directed by Albert Pyun. With Tim Thomerson, Jackie Earle Haley, Kamala Lopez, Humberto Ortiz. A hard-boiled, intergalactic policeman lands on Earth where he is only 12 inches tall.
www.imdb.com www.imdb.com
www.imdb.com

Arcade (Video 1993) - IMDb

Arcade: Directed by Albert Pyun. With Megan Ward, Peter Billingsley, John de Lancie, Sharon Farrell. A virtual reality game begins taking over the minds of teenagers.
www.imdb.com www.imdb.com
www.imdb.com

Heatseeker (1995) - IMDb

Heatseeker: Directed by Albert Pyun. With Keith Cooke, Tina Cote, Norbert Weisser, Gary Daniels. A kickboxing champion is forced to fight cyborgs in a tournament when the company kidnaps his fiancee.
www.imdb.com www.imdb.com
www.imdb.com

Omega Doom (1996) - IMDb

Omega Doom: Directed by Albert Pyun. With Rutger Hauer, Shannon Whirry, Norbert Weisser, Tina Cote. After Earth is taken over by an army of robots, the small number of humans left are forced into hiding. In the nuclear winter, only droids walk the face of the Earth, in fear of the rumored human...
www.imdb.com www.imdb.com

Thanks for the work, RIP.
 
BackwoodsAltar

BackwoodsAltar

Member
Oct 30, 2017
832
South Coast, UK
Few b-movie directors could do so much with so little money and time. Didn't always enjoy his movies, but he had plenty of enjoyable/interesting winners. RIP, the world is a darker place without his enthusiasm.
 
gforguava

gforguava

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,708
Man made some great films before the market for the stuff he made would shrink and shrink. Nemesis in particular is truly excellent, if Olivier Gruner was a better actor it would be an all-timer.

I hope I get to see his last film, Interstellar Civil War, at some point.
 
RedMercury

RedMercury

Blue Venus
Member
Dec 24, 2017
17,689
Sword and Sorcerer is a super fun watch, Dollman as well, I will have to check out some of his other work. Never read a bad word about the guy, he seemed to just genuinely love making movies. RIP :(

RLM are misogynist assholes, but here is a retrospective in multiple parts (this is part one): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPwxhCNrf5I
 

Velorath

Member
Feb 28, 2018
105
That's a shame. The guy loved making movies even though he typically didn't have big budgets for them. I love Mean Guns so much I imported a Mean Guns/Nemesis two-pack from France a couple years back since I don't think Mean Guns ever made it to blu-ray here in the states.
 
Gavalanche

Gavalanche

Prophet of Regret
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Oct 21, 2021
17,626
RIP. He was a much more talented director then his budgets allowed him to be. And better yet, he seemed to be having fun!
 
19thCenturyFox

19thCenturyFox

Prophet of Regret
Member
Oct 29, 2017
4,309
The audacity to even attempt to make a movie like Dollman on such a tiny budget and to kinda pull it off in the end has to be applauded.
 
Praxis

Praxis

Sausage Tycoon
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Oct 25, 2017
7,257
UK
RIP

Renting his films from the local VHS rental store brings back a lot of memories.
 
Fisty

Fisty

Member
Oct 25, 2017
20,268
Damn... had a feeling after seeing the recent Best of the Worst. Started Alien From LA yesterday, time to finish and then watch Sword and the Sorcerer
 
Galaxea

Galaxea

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,417
Orlando, FL
This is depressing. I watched Radioactive Dreams a couple months back. I loved his movies growing up and he seemed like a guy who just wanted to make creative movies no matter the budget.
 
hjort

hjort

Member
Nov 9, 2017
4,096
Watched Nemesis last night. So many creative little bits and cool action sequences. I never saw his movies as a kid or teen, but if I had they would have been a huge deal to me. I hope he got a lot of nice messages from those who did grow up with his movies, before he passed.
 
Fhtagn

Fhtagn

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,615
I am so glad the critical consensus moved from "He's a modern Ed Wood" to the "he was punching way above what his budgets should have allowed."

Part of this is that now that you can see his films in the correct aspect ratio on blu-ray, they look 100x more competent than they did brutally pan & scanned to VHS, which was the only way to see most of them for decades
 

Deleted member 41651

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Looks like I got some stuff to watch when I have nothing to watch. Some of these films look perfect with an edible and munchies.
 
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wenis

wenis

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Oct 25, 2017
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variety.com

Albert Pyun, Cult Filmmaker Behind ‘Cyborg,’ ‘Nemesis’ and ‘Captain America,’ Dies at 69

Albert Pyun, a genre filmmaker whose sweeping body of work includes cult favorites such as “Cyborg,” “The Sword and the Sorcerer,” “Nemesis” and the 1989 “…
variety.com variety.com
Largely working under low budgets for a direct-to-video market, Pyun developed an immersive form of dreamy lighting, post-apocalyptic dilapidation and surreal, balletic action that found an enthusiastic fanbase among genre film audiences over the years. Over a filmmaking career spanning four decades, Pyun teamed with a veritable who's who of action icons, including Jean-Claude Van Damme, Christopher Lambert and Burt Reynolds, as well as other collaborators such as Snoop Dogg, Charlie Sheen, Ice-T, Lance Henriksen, Ronny Cox, Kris Kristofferson, James Coburn, Rutger Hauer and Dennis Hopper.

Born May 19, 1953 in Hawaii, Pyun was raised as a military child, living on bases across the world before his family settled back in the Rainbow State. After viewing one of his short films, Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune invited Pyun to serve as an intern on the production of Akira Kurosawa's 1975 feature "Derzu Uzula." After Mifune exited the project, Pyun instead worked on the production of one of the actor's TV series, receiving tutelage from Kurosawa's regular cinematographer Takao Saito.

After returning to Hawaii to film commercials, Pyun came to Los Angeles. He launched his film career in 1982 with the high fantasy epic "The Sword and the Sorcerer." Working on a $4 million budget, the feature was an unlikely commercial success, grossing $40 million at the box office.

Developing a close relationship with Cannon Pictures, Pyun was valued for his ability to mount resourceful productions with quick turnarounds. Through the 1990's, he directed more than 20 feature films, including his four-part "Nemesis" series and the 1990 "Captain America," which was the first feature-length live-action adaptation of the Marvel Comics superhero.

After the turn of the millennium, Pyun began to self-fund his projects, producing films such as "Road to Hell," "Bulletface" and "Invasion." Late in life, the director continued developing and tinkering with ongoing creative endeavors while maintaining medical treatment.

According to his wife, Pyun had been working on two unfinished features before his death, hoping to rework the projects into a six-part TV series. "To Albert, failure has never been an option," she wrote.

Pyun is survived by his wife, Cynthia Curnan.
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Soundscream

Soundscream

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Nov 2, 2017
9,236
Cyborg had some amazing fight scenes. Acting was middle school play tier, but that swamp fight was sick.
 
FRANKEINSTEIN

FRANKEINSTEIN

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Oct 27, 2017
4,151
AZ
There's a book about Pyun's movies called Radioactive Dreams: The Cinema of Albert Pyun. It just goes over all his movies with some stories behind them. It's decent.
 
Splatterpunk

Splatterpunk

Member
Nov 3, 2017
277
I've seen Cyborg and Alien from LA (MST3K), but I didn't know about.. any of these really. Added a bunch to my watchlist.
 
PlanetSmasher

PlanetSmasher

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Oct 25, 2017
116,062
I only know of Pyun because of RLM. Hard to believe his wife made that request a couple weeks ago about him being near the end of his life, then all the tributes started coming out, and then he passed a few days later. Hopefully he got to see all the messages before the end. Really sad.
 
Violence Jack

Violence Jack

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Oct 25, 2017
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Sanjuro said:

View: https://youtu.be/J_C5O1Zka-Y

Just watched this the other night. They made this due to the request of his wife and he ended up passing a short time after. Some of the shots and craftsmanship is pretty out there for films of this budget
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Yep. I saw this the other night too. I hope he got to see this episode celebrating his work before he passed. I compared him to a lesser known Roger Corman who knew how to take extremely low budgets and turn them into decent films.

RIP
 
Derkon

Derkon

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,590
RIP. Cyborg was one of those movies I watched as a kid that got me into shitty B action movies.
 
GekigangerV

GekigangerV

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Oct 25, 2017
654
wenis said:

View: https://twitter.com/declouxj/status/1597732470958718976?s=46&t=7jkKqz9znmFxygZ75-i-2A
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A couple of interesting names on the list of donators. Full Moon's Charles Band have $500 and the editor of Viscous Lips/Journey to the Center of the Earth/Cyborg gave $100 and a nice comment.

The director of the documentary did one on Gilda Radner a few years ago which I enjoyed.

I re-watched DOLLMAN the other day and it really holds up. Jackie Earle Haley really puts in a great performance in the role.

I also watched VISCOUS LIPS for the first time and although it is a great concept it also has a similar audacity that JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH had in terms of presenting a fairly non-sensical story with stuff just getting dropped.

I am going to re-watch a few more in the coming weeks.
 
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wenis

wenis

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Oct 25, 2017
16,127
GekigangerV said:
I am going to re-watch a few more in the coming weeks.
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Definitely give Radioactive Dreams a rewatch. The best version is on YouTube because no one's thought to remaster it. Nemesis had a blu ray come out not too long ago from Vestron Video that is worth seeking out and Alien From LA has a sweet Vinegar Syndrome release that is recommended.

I just hope that out of all this comes a deeper appreciation for his work and maybe more boutique labels give his movies the proper restoration treatments
 
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