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Hard Redemption: Lou Ferrigno & Jino Kang Locked In · Cinema Yūgen

• 0:00
  G'day. That's right, it's that time again. Time for Cinema Yugen.
• 0:16
  Whoa, welcome back. Cinema Yugen, the doors just got Hulk smashed in.
• 0:24
  Because when the doors lock, all hell breaks loose.
• 0:28
  Hard redemption turns a school into a war zone as a team marked for death is
• 0:34
  hunted by his former gang.
• 0:36
  Trapped inside a James Park, Juno Kang, an action martial arts master.
• 0:43
  With a past, he can't outrun. And Rico, Lou Ferrigno, Lou Ferrigno,
• 0:51
  the one-time champion of Olympus. fists fly, bullets scream,
• 0:55
  redemption is forged under fire.
• 0:58
  Now, these two titans drop in to Cinema Yugen to chat up a storm about the battle,
• 1:06
  the blood, the meaning of survival, no escape, no mercy, only hard redemption.
• 1:12
  Get to my review at filmthreat.com, the links are in the description.
• 1:17
  But now, welcome to Cinema Yugen, that martial arts action master Juno King and the legend,
• 1:30
  the incredible hulk hercules sinbad of the seven seas he's been an escorpion
• 1:37
  king a sharknado he is the icon the legendary mr universe lou ferrigno gentlemen
• 1:45
  both welcome to cinema yugen.
• 1:49
  Thank you good to see you thank you thank
• 1:52
  you glad to be here fantastic to have you both
• 1:55
  lou for the first time and you know it's been a long time between drinks
• 1:59
  mate but it's good to see you again yes it has been a
• 2:01
  while but it's it's been
• 2:04
  worth the wait mate what a fantastic movie both congratulations to
• 2:07
  everybody concerned thank you so much did you
• 2:10
  see the review i had i think the review went up uh yeah
• 2:14
  i just received it and i took a look
• 2:16
  at it wow thank you for all your kind words i'm glad
• 2:19
  that you liked it and uh that means we did our job that's
• 2:23
  your mate you did more than your job you did great so the 64
• 2:26
  000 you gotta remember there's no amateur uh martial
• 2:30
  arts in the film we're talking about elite uh professional
• 2:33
  that's why it's very classy the way you've done a direct and directed
• 2:36
  done with uh gino because it's all believable it's
• 2:39
  nothing that fake had to do with street fighting real
• 2:42
  down hardcore martial art yeah yeah no
• 2:45
  it's it's it's for real it's there's nothing there's no
• 2:48
  playing around in this one and i have to say gino you mate for for for the age
• 2:54
  that you are if i if i can look as good as you and move as fast as that when
• 2:59
  i uh grow up mate that's that's all i can hope for at this point uh you're too
• 3:04
  kind yes um just in one more week i'll be 66,
• 3:08
  There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Get up there. There aren't too many 66-year-olds doing
• 3:14
  the John Wick thing in movies these days.
• 3:17
  Oh, thank you. I think it's just a daily training and then a meticulous diet
• 3:24
  and stuff like that. That just keeps everything going.
• 3:26
  I'm sure I even got some advice from Lou. I said, hey, Lou, can I eat carbs?
• 3:30
  And Lou said, don't eat carbs after eight.
• 3:33
  And I still stick to that.
• 3:37
  The $64,000 question is, though, does Lou Ferrigno make as good tamales as Rico does? Me?
• 3:43
  Yeah. Do you make as good tamales as Rico does, Lou? What do you mean?
• 3:47
  What's the question? Tamales?
• 3:48
  Tamales. In the movie, you say you make awesome tamales.
• 3:52
  I hardly eat that, but my girlfriend likes those. She likes those.
• 3:56
  I'm being introduced to them.
• 3:57
  Oh, okay. Cool. No, it's just your character in the film said he makes an awesome
• 4:00
  tamale. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember. Yeah. Yeah.
• 4:03
  So I just wondered if you, if you yourself liked Tamale.
• 4:07
  I do like it. Yeah. Yeah. It depends how it's cocked. Yeah.
• 4:11
  It is. But, um, Lou, I think that walking into, walking into this school in
• 4:17
  the film, you should have been, you should have been aware that something was
• 4:20
  rotten in Denmark because they had the Incredible Hulk as a security guard working there.
• 4:28
  Yeah, it's definitely a tough school. That should have been a red flag, shouldn't it?
• 4:32
  It should have been, should have been, but you notice in the,
• 4:35
  in the film, he was going to put his guns back on, but he just neglected not to do it.
• 4:40
  And then, and then you go, then
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  he realizes all the gangsters have special weapons, you know what I mean?
• 4:46
  And so, and he, he didn't want to take a chance on that. That was a great angle
• 4:50
  to take. So we could do a lot of, you know, hand to hand combat scenes.
• 4:54
  So tell us a little bit about the gestation of this.
• 4:57
  I know you've been working on this for a long time and our good mutual friend,
• 5:01
  great bloke David J. Moore is also a producer and a writer on it.
• 5:04
  Tell our audience a little bit about how this has all been coming together slowly but surely.
• 5:09
  Okay, so about a year, actually,
• 5:13
  it was like right around the pandemic, it was pitched to me by David and Dustin,
• 5:17
  the original writers, and they wanted to produce this one location set martial
• 5:24
  art movie, and they were pitching it to me like it's a stand and deliver meets
• 5:30
  assault on precinct 13th.
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  And he teams up with a security guard and a former gangster turned legit.
• 5:37
  They team up together to stop and thwart a gang invasion. And I said, I'm in.
• 5:44
  So, yeah, it took like a couple of years of writing and so on.
• 5:48
  And then after that, you know how when the universe kind of like aligns and
• 5:53
  everything just kind of like comes together?
• 5:55
  Yeah. basically what happened with the film and then all the cast,
• 6:00
  all the crew just started coming together and then the money and the funding
• 6:04
  and all that stuff came together and then one of the missing ingredient was
• 6:08
  Lou and so once we contacted his agent because I think,
• 6:13
  I don't know, I'm not sure if it was David or Dustin who worked with them before.
• 6:16
  Do you recall who you worked with Lou? Was it David or Dustin that you worked
• 6:21
  with before or no? I think it might be David, yeah.
• 6:24
  Okay, okay. Yeah, so he put me in contact with the agent and then we negotiated
• 6:29
  and then I think Lou was going through another surgery before then, right?
• 6:33
  I think knee surgery or something like that. Anyway, eventually we worked out
• 6:37
  the logistics and then everything aligned and the last thing that was to happen was the location.
• 6:45
  And everybody turned us down. Every school, every location turned us down.
• 6:52
  And then, oh my Thank goodness, yeah, we're ready to go, but we don't have the location.
• 6:57
  But anyway, one of the family member's friend.
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  I remember meeting him at a wedding, and he was a schoolteacher principal,
• 7:06
  and he said, hey, anytime you need help, let me know.
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  And I just remember that, and I said, oh, I should just give him a call.
• 7:13
  And once I gave him a call, I said,
• 7:14
  yeah, come on down, take a look at our school and see what you think.
• 7:17
  And we looked at it, he gave us full access, open access to the whole place.
• 7:22
  And then we just had to go through the permit process, you know what I mean?
• 7:25
  Get the permit with the San Francisco Unified School District and so on.
• 7:28
  And once all that got into place, boom, it happened.
• 7:32
  What I like about it is the fact that this is a hard-trained young gang.
• 7:37
  They learn how to shut down the school system, the security system. Yeah.
• 7:40
  They learn how to shut it down because it can happen any time.
• 7:43
  Apparently, it shows that it basically comes down to survival.
• 7:46
  But the way it's portrayed when they shut down the security system just shows
• 7:49
  you that everything is a danger inside.
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  That's why the two of us, you see these two older men, these young guys,
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  especially when we're dealing with this gang, how it's just a matter of just
• 7:58
  protecting everyone in the building, especially, you know, you can't unlock the security.
• 8:02
  So it's like a cat and mouth. It's amazing that the way he's portrayed,
• 8:06
  like going back to me and Gino especially, I'm doing this three fighting,
• 8:10
  he's doing the martial arts, but you should see different martial arts, especially a group.
• 8:16
  They really want to get this one kid, didn't want to be part of the gang,
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  and they're determining against that school system.
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  And also all the people in the school, like just the principals,
• 8:24
  the teachers, They were petrified because they were still, the fear of their light.
• 8:27
  That's why you can see when you watch the film, you can see from that point
• 8:30
  on how we end up overtaking them.
• 8:32
  I have to say, Lou, that I wouldn't be too afraid if you were the security guard
• 8:36
  working at my school. Yeah.
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  If you stood by the door, the movie would have been over.
• 8:43
  If you were standing at the front end of the movie, one gang comes down to the
• 8:47
  steps, he sees me, he goes, shit, he's older than my grandmother.
• 8:52
  If I saw you walking the halls, I'd feel safe as churches.
• 8:57
  Well, you'd piss them off, you'd piss them off, you know, that's what happened.
• 9:01
  I love the story, the whole concept, because it shows you the whole journey.
• 9:06
  That you know it could happen anytime tonight and he scores but yeah
• 9:09
  yeah yeah i like the running mr
• 9:12
  miyagi joke tell us
• 9:14
  fun yeah yeah yeah i was when i was writing my review i was thinking about who
• 9:19
  you gino reminded me a little bit of and i thought it's clint eastwood and i
• 9:22
  want to say like mr miyagi but i thought i'll leave it until as it eventually
• 9:28
  pops up in the movie Lou keep referring to you as Miyagi, you know,
• 9:32
  because the wise sensei is. Yes.
• 9:36
  Originally in the movie, he was watching me work out, but we didn't get to shoot
• 9:40
  that scene. But at that turn, he goes, oh, this guy's a karate guy.
• 9:45
  So he had me pegged as Mr. Miyagi. I thought there was an opportunity,
• 9:49
  though, for you to have a line where Lou tells you that he used to be a boxer.
• 9:53
  And I think you could have said, what did you used to be, the champion of Olympus? Nah.
• 9:59
  But did you get that joke when we were like bantering right in the beginning?
• 10:03
  Which one? It was the part when he just says, when he first meets you,
• 10:07
  why don't you just karate chop it open?
• 10:09
  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you said, yeah, why don't you just smash it open?
• 10:12
  Yeah, it was a little inside joke and Luke was very gracious to entertain that.
• 10:17
  Yeah. Hulk smashed the door open.
• 10:19
  But I tell you, when you watch it, especially Gino, you know,
• 10:22
  being a grandmaster, you can see the skill and the beauty of it.
• 10:27
  It's all believable. It's real. It's amazing because I was doing the fight scene.
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  He showed me a different way how to fight a karate person with the hand.
• 10:34
  It's all about being believable. It's nothing like you see other people that
• 10:37
  just go through the mail. This is real serious fighting.
• 10:40
  Yeah. I like a lot of your one-liners in this, Lou, especially the bit where
• 10:46
  you have the big confrontation before you split up and you fight the guy with
• 10:51
  the brass knuckles and you're like, rematch. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
• 10:56
  You don't have to say a lot because it's all just by standing there.
• 11:00
  Right. Right. Yeah. It's, uh, has an incredible presence, you know,
• 11:03
  when it's just, he's just filled with screen.
• 11:05
  Well, I mean, the man's, he's an icon, isn't he? He just, just stands there. It's like, wow.
• 11:10
  You know, I do not, I do not want to fight this guy. It's not the sensible choice.
• 11:15
  Hey, Gino, at least you tell him how you, how, how you, uh, how you found these
• 11:20
  people, all these different, uh, the classic martial arts. I mean,
• 11:23
  especially if you're dealing with weapons, you're dealing with knives,
• 11:26
  you're dealing with swords, you're dealing with kicking.
• 11:28
  Maybe you can talk a little about how you found it. You probably found it from
• 11:32
  your school, everyday life.
• 11:34
  Yeah, so all the characters are, they all either are instructor at my school
• 11:39
  or another school and a bunch of different schools.
• 11:42
  And everyone specializes in certain different kinds of weapons.
• 11:45
  And so like let's say Felipe is the chain
• 11:48
  whip guy and he actually is a master in
• 11:51
  Chinese Kung Fu and you can there's no faking that
• 11:54
  yeah that chain that whipping around
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  and that's that was for real and stuff like that and then the girl with double
• 12:02
  dagger she's she's one of my black belts and yeah she's been training with me
• 12:06
  since she was uh you know like six years old right I was about to say yeah you've
• 12:10
  got a martial arts school you
• 12:11
  could just round up some of the best like couldn't you Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 12:15
  That's smart. That's sensible. I like that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 12:18
  And then there's some of the two sword guys with the shield and the barbed wire.
• 12:22
  They're my black belts. They're like third degree, very high level martial arts.
• 12:26
  Yeah. So it was very easy to choreograph our fight scenes. You know what I mean?
• 12:29
  Yeah, no, that's, that's really smart.
• 12:33
  Hey, hire a guy who's got like a martial arts school and he's got all these martial arts.
• 12:38
  That's, that's, that's ingenuity, my friend. That's, I'm guaranteed there's
• 12:42
  not too many people think like that, but that's, that's what,
• 12:45
  that's what, especially if you need like, I mean, as you know,
• 12:48
  as you both know with independent films, you need,
• 12:51
  you don't have a lot of time and you don't have a lot of money.
• 12:54
  So the, the more people that you can hire who know how to do their
• 12:57
  job without having to be told i suppose right makes it
• 13:00
  all run smoother if possible right right
• 13:03
  right uh it made everything a lot smoother to
• 13:06
  shoot a lot smoother to choreograph and so on another
• 13:10
  bloke i enjoyed in this and i hope i get to to talk with
• 13:13
  him is is it david kazal who plays the yeah solomon he's yeah i thought it was
• 13:19
  nicholas cage he looks like nicholas cage in the right light for a minute there
• 13:22
  yeah when he's got the okay when he's got the hood on he looked a little He
• 13:27
  looked a bit like Nicolas Cage in that movie.
• 13:31
  Yeah, he's about my height. He's like twice as big.
• 13:37
  Guns, yeah, yeah, yeah. When he took his shirt off, I thought,
• 13:40
  yeah, he's no nonsense. Look at the arms on it.
• 13:42
  I know. Yeah. Yeah. He's a big, big boy. And so we, yeah, we find he's a very
• 13:48
  skilled martial artist.
• 13:49
  And out of all the people that we picked, we said, this guy's it.
• 13:53
  And, um, and he can kick. And that was, that was, that was the deal.
• 13:56
  So I said, you gotta be able to kick, man. You can't just be a boxer.
• 13:59
  I want you to kick so we can do, yeah. Fighting with kicks.
• 14:02
  So that was the part. Yeah. The only thing I regret is I thought that Lou's
• 14:07
  character might have come back at the end to like, you know,
• 14:10
  like when the chips were down, I thought he might have been a big boy.
• 14:12
  Might, you know, he said like, oh, rest here for a while.
• 14:15
  I thought for a second he might've, he may, you know.
• 14:18
  My original thought was he would come back with the gun and then he shoot David.
• 14:23
  Right. And then rescue me. Like the end of Die Hard. Yeah.
• 14:27
  Yeah. But we couldn't do it because we had a strict, strict gun law at the school district. Oh, sure.
• 14:34
  We couldn't even bring it in the school. So we had to do it.
• 14:37
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a cutaway from somewhere else. Exactly.
• 14:41
  Right, yeah. Yeah, no, no, it'd be understandable, but yeah,
• 14:45
  but, but I mean, look again, I guess I had to say, like when you were going
• 14:49
  into this school, I was like, they've got the incredible Hulk as a security guard.
• 14:53
  They've got this system that locks the place down. I was like,
• 14:56
  who goes to school here? Like it's, it, it felt, it felt more like some sort of, you know.
• 15:01
  Military prison there was something i was like this is a pretty serious school
• 15:06
  they have gigantic security guards they've got a security system that is you
• 15:11
  know good enough to keep in the the worst.
• 15:14
  What's funny you're not dealing with a gang of kids you're dealing with a gang
• 15:17
  of martial artists martial artists and that's amazing because anybody today
• 15:22
  would be hard to survive that but especially that without technically able to
• 15:26
  get through that i mean everybody has a different skill yeah totally So,
• 15:30
  I mean, I think what you've started here is kind of awesome.
• 15:34
  I kind of want to see like a series of like buddy films with the two of you now, you know?
• 15:41
  Yeah, if Lou's into it, we could write another one, right?
• 15:45
  Rico and James go Hawaiian. I don't know, something.
• 15:49
  I was just thinking about that during the interview. I go, oh, maybe, you know.
• 15:54
  If Lou's willing, we can do Heart of Redemption 2. Yeah. We could do it at a mall.
• 15:59
  You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Up the stakes, yeah.
• 16:04
  Up the stakes. But otherwise, gentlemen, this has been a real,
• 16:08
  look, an extreme honor, an incredible, incredible experience.
• 16:12
  You have, look, you've knocked it out of the park.
• 16:15
  Indie, I know how hard it is for indie action films to make an impact,
• 16:19
  but it was going to be it was going
• 16:22
  to be pretty difficult for hard redemption not to
• 16:25
  make an impact with two legends such as
• 16:28
  yourselves headlining it and like i say i
• 16:31
  would love dearly love to see not just a sequel
• 16:34
  but i reckon there's a whole series of films where
• 16:37
  rico and james go on the road take
• 16:40
  on the bad guys save the day oh man
• 16:43
  you're inspiring yeah i'm already like thinking hey look
• 16:47
  i've got look i've got ideas and i know david we could get
• 16:49
  together and we can we can we can flush we can flush
• 16:52
  out a series here i reckon we it'd be
• 16:55
  a nice franchise and look we'll do a western we'll
• 16:58
  do we'll do them all oh yeah a western would be good lou have you done a western
• 17:04
  i don't think you've done hey what about a zombie movie martial arts zombie
• 17:09
  movie right yeah yeah yeah i like it i like how you boys think yeah Well, you know what?
• 17:16
  We're put on Earth for a reason, right? And we might as well do it before we grow.
• 17:22
  I'm just going to keep going, man. Yeah, you've got to keep going.
• 17:26
  Anyway, Hard Redemption.
• 17:28
  Before we sign off, check the links in the description, my review on FilmThreat.com.
• 17:34
  Gentlemen, if you wouldn't mind telling your audience where they can possibly see...
• 17:38
  I know Hard Redemption is just coming out, but where can they eventually go to see the film? Okay.
• 17:44
  So at this stage, we have multiple offers for USA and Canada.
• 17:49
  Okay. So we're trying to negotiate and see which one is that would suit ourselves
• 17:55
  the best to align itself.
• 17:56
  But once we pick a company to go with, most likely it'll be streaming everywhere.
• 18:02
  So Amazon Prime, Tubi TV, Apple TV, you name it, Hulu, Google Drive, whatever.
• 18:08
  So it's going to be spread all over. And we can't announce that yet until we
• 18:13
  pick the company. So we are still in negotiation with that.
• 18:16
  Right. But obviously, like any good thing coming soon to a streaming service,
• 18:21
  are you going to do physical media as well or just digital at this stage?
• 18:25
  Most likely, USA Canada distribution comes with a DVD and a Blu-ray distribution.
• 18:30
  It most of the yeah okay so so probably where's where's the best place that
• 18:35
  people could probably go we
• 18:36
  could put a link in so that they could just stay stay aware with updates,
• 18:40
  on the release. Yeah, so right now we have Facebook page of Heart Redemption.
• 18:46
  We also have Instagram page Heart Redemption.
• 18:49
  And then on YouTube we have a Heart Redemption site. We just started populating it.
• 18:55
  So it's a little sparse at the moment. But as the reviews come in and everything
• 19:01
  is being together, we will push it more.
• 19:04
  Wow. It's all happening. Ladies and gentlemen,
• 19:07
  Heart Redemption is an incredible, indie action
• 19:11
  film as is it is incredible stars juno
• 19:15
  kang and the mighty hercules the
• 19:18
  incredible hulk the incredible lou ferrigno
• 19:22
  they're an unbeatable team that we will hopefully fingers crossed movie gods
• 19:27
  a smile down we might see more of together in the future gentlemen thank you
• 19:32
  for making this movie thank you for being my guests on cinema you get thank
• 19:36
  you thank you lou before Before we go,
• 19:40
  I have one question about Sinbad of the Seven Seas.
• 19:44
  And what about it? You like it? I love that movie. Yeah.
• 19:47
  I always wanted to ask you about the scene in which you have to talk the snakes
• 19:52
  in the dungeon into letting you tie them together to get out of the dungeon.
• 19:57
  What was that like to do, if you remember anything about it?
• 20:00
  Well, it's best for trying to communicate to find out what the villain I was looking for.
• 20:06
  It was part of the communication. The funny thing though, especially when I
• 20:10
  came down that shoot, yeah, good memory. It was fantastic.
• 20:13
  Thank you. I love your pictures very much. You'll always be my Hercules.
• 20:18
  Juno, I love you too, mate. Thank you, Ken. I love all your work.
• 20:22
  I look forward to the future sequels and our audience here looks forward to
• 20:26
  checking out Hard Redemption.
• 20:28
  Thank you very much for being my guests. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having us.
• 20:32
  Thank you. Yes, that is the blinding light of awesomeness that has blinded me
• 20:38
  to no end. I sit here in the dark, stunned after having sat there.
• 20:45
  With a couple of legends get to the links
• 20:48
  in the description my review on filmthreat.com hard
• 20:52
  redemption indie action spectacle at
• 20:56
  its finest let's hope the lads get
• 21:00
  the band back together for a sequel another
• 21:03
  team up they're a great giro juno kang
• 21:07
  the mighty lou ferrigno hard redemption
• 21:10
  get down to the links in the description and as always my little eugenites thank
• 21:19
  you for listening to us on spotify or wherever you choose to listen to your
• 21:24
  favorite podcasts i'm ket hill and until next time you've been listening to cinema.