Tales From The Discount Bin - Vol. 2

Items found in discount bins all have one thing in common, they’re priced to move. While rummaging around my collection of marked down treasures I found another commonality among some of my finds; the martial arts. I guess it should come as no surprise that after 22 years of studying the martial arts I would have a penchant for picking up such items. With so many martial arts related finds in my collection I have decided to take the best of the best (if you can call them that) and make this month’s Tales From The Discount Bin an all martial arts edition. Enjoy!



Kill The Golden Goose, which I picked up under the title Kill The Golden Ninja a very long time ago with my mom (in fact, it may have been my mom who purchased this discount bin gem), was one of the first films I saw that proved no matter how good a martial artist one may be it doesn’t make them an action star. Kill The Golden Ninja featured Ed Parker in a leading role, a man who was known as “the father of American karate.” He was not, however, known as a very good actor and Kill The Golden Ninja didn’t exactly have scriptwriters that helped matters. Kill The Golden Ninja makes one appreciate martial artists such as Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee (whom Parker worked with) and Jet Li all the more for not only being great martial artists, but also being able to create great movies. Of course, were it not for Ed Parker, would any of us even be interested in their work? Oh The Golden Goose has quite the sharp double edged sword!



Impulse buys are those products placed by the register that no one would normally purchase, but since they’re right there, and oh so inexpensive, dollars end up being spent. Last month my local FYE had a box of CDs by the register with a sign that said “25 cents each.” That’s right, a quarter for a CD (which is probably how much they cost to make). While flipping through the albums my buddy Chaz Kangas and I came across the soundtrack to The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers television show. I knew it would be a quarter well spent so I picked it up. I’m not going to comment on the music on the album, but anytime you can get something so kitschy for just a quarter it must be done. To put it in perspective, stickers in gumball machines cost twice as much and don’t have nearly the WTF factor.



Stone Cold Wu-Tang is a movie I had to pick up because not only was it only a dollar, and in VHS format, it featured a main character that killed people with his murderous braid of hair. The tagline on the front read “you live by the braid, you die by the braid.” As if that wasn’t funny enough, the killer hair aspect of things had an added element of humor for me and my friends because at the time my buddy Dyalekt had a similar hairstyle, although his braid had no deadly abilities (that we knew of). The production qualities of Stone Cold Wu-Tang were at a newfound level below awful. The first seven minutes of the film are almost impossible to see since it’s nearly pitch black and dialogue is so minimal that you’ll forget any of the actors even have the ability to speak. It’s fight scene after fight scene… of course, sometimes that’s all you really want.

That’s all the tales I have for this month. Just some friendly reminders that your entertainment doesn’t have to cost more than a cup of coffee.

Previous Tales

Tales From The Discount Bin – Vol. 1