What do you think?
Rate this book
Radioactive Dreams: The Cinema of Albert Pyun
Albert Pyun is a writer/director best known for THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER, Jean-Claude Van Damme’s CYBORG and Cannon’s infamous CAPTAIN AMERICA...but did you also know he was mentored by Toshirô Mifune? That he secretly made a feature film on the set of CYBORG in a single weekend? And directed three pictures that starred Snoop Dogg and Ice-T in an ex-communist country? And that he was on the frontlines of a studio going bankrupt, the straight-to-video market exploding, and the collapse of an entire industry? In the first book dedicated to Albert Pyun, Justin Decloux reviews all 44 of the auteur’s films and interviews key collaborators, taking a critical journey through the life of an artist who was passionate, driven and unstoppable in the face of impossible odds.
- GenresFilmBiographyNonfiction
175 pages, Paperback
First published July 17, 2019
6 people are currently reading
95 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
May 25, 2021
Honestly a very enjoyable, quick read, but one with two major flaws: firstly, it’s perhaps a little too quick. There are many instances where the opportunity to dive deep into a subject is readily available, and he does nothing with it. Secondly, the typos are constant. I understand a couple misspellings or grammatical errors, but it feels as though every other page has an obvious error.
That said, it’s a loving tribute to Albert Pyun and in a way its flaws almost seem in tune with the director’s own efforts.
That said, it’s a loving tribute to Albert Pyun and in a way its flaws almost seem in tune with the director’s own efforts.
May 13, 2023
If you read the description of this book and didn’t feel you got exactly what you were expecting, plus a little bit more, that’s on you, bro.
Pyun is such a great cinema character because he kinda made it, kinda didn’t, and why isn’t straightforward, but he seems like a genuinely nice person who often shielded other people on productions from some of the worst parts of filmmaking, which is a the move of a great person.
His love for moviemaking is infectious, for sure, as is Decloux’s love for Pyun.
This book gave me a good answer to the question “What would you do if you could go back in time?” And my answer would be to use my knowledge of the future to get rich and then bankroll Albert Pyun movies with healthy budgets and decent shooting schedules, just because I’d like to see what that nets.
It’s my new second-go-to answer to the time travel question. My number one answer is “Kill baby hitler” because I figure that way I might get to time travel, but as soon as they turn the time machine’s keys over, I go back to audition for Number 1 Single, the reality show where bachelors try to date Lisa Loeb. Selfish? Yes. Frivolous, you bet.
I know I’m supposed to end that with a “but,” like “but it’ll change lives,” but it won’t.
Pyun is such a great cinema character because he kinda made it, kinda didn’t, and why isn’t straightforward, but he seems like a genuinely nice person who often shielded other people on productions from some of the worst parts of filmmaking, which is a the move of a great person.
His love for moviemaking is infectious, for sure, as is Decloux’s love for Pyun.
This book gave me a good answer to the question “What would you do if you could go back in time?” And my answer would be to use my knowledge of the future to get rich and then bankroll Albert Pyun movies with healthy budgets and decent shooting schedules, just because I’d like to see what that nets.
It’s my new second-go-to answer to the time travel question. My number one answer is “Kill baby hitler” because I figure that way I might get to time travel, but as soon as they turn the time machine’s keys over, I go back to audition for Number 1 Single, the reality show where bachelors try to date Lisa Loeb. Selfish? Yes. Frivolous, you bet.
I know I’m supposed to end that with a “but,” like “but it’ll change lives,” but it won’t.
November 24, 2021
This book was a labor of love. I can tell this author was very passionate and invested in Albert Pyun's career. It was also not proofread very well and typos and other errors abound. There is one paragraph near the end that is an excellent summary of Albert Pyun's filmography (and could perhaps be used to describe this book about Albert Pyun's filmography as well):
"If there's one thing I hope you gleaned from all this, it's that Albert Pyun always tried his best to do something different. Did it always work? Hell no. Most of the time, it failed miserably due to a lack of focus, a boatload of impossible goals, and a system that would never accept his experiments.
But goddammit, he tried." (p.155)
"If there's one thing I hope you gleaned from all this, it's that Albert Pyun always tried his best to do something different. Did it always work? Hell no. Most of the time, it failed miserably due to a lack of focus, a boatload of impossible goals, and a system that would never accept his experiments.
But goddammit, he tried." (p.155)
December 4, 2022
This book tells the story of Albert Pyun via each of his movies, made or unmade, finished or unfinished alike. It’s a really interesting way of learning about somebody but at the same time doesn’t really give you a full picture of his life.
I’ve heard Justin Decloux saying that the only reason this book exists is because nobody else has written an Albert Pyun biography and he needed one for a film festival. So the fact that this exists at all is fantastic and I loved every second I spent reading it.
Although I would really love to read a more in-depth look at Alberts life and career, this book has covered a whole lot of ground in a very light read. It’s one of those things that makes you want to pick up a camera and make a movie. Or two. At the same time.
I’ve heard Justin Decloux saying that the only reason this book exists is because nobody else has written an Albert Pyun biography and he needed one for a film festival. So the fact that this exists at all is fantastic and I loved every second I spent reading it.
Although I would really love to read a more in-depth look at Alberts life and career, this book has covered a whole lot of ground in a very light read. It’s one of those things that makes you want to pick up a camera and make a movie. Or two. At the same time.
September 7, 2022
A highly informative record of one director's movies (and partially, his life).
It can be funny and heartwarming, but ultimately it inevitably leaves you depressed.
The noticeable typos and all-over-the-place layout add to the DIY charm of the book rather than annoy - Pyun would be proud of the spirit, I think.
It can be funny and heartwarming, but ultimately it inevitably leaves you depressed.
The noticeable typos and all-over-the-place layout add to the DIY charm of the book rather than annoy - Pyun would be proud of the spirit, I think.
August 10, 2019
A breezy tour through the 40-odd films of Albert Pyun. Gives a nice perspective to what could otherwise be easily dismissed as cheap, trashy action films. I came away with a lot more respect for Pyun and his team of regulars. I enjoyed it a lot.
April 16, 2022
Sure, you can go read your doorstoppers written by highly esteemed scholars on a big time director, but I can guarantee they will not be as fun as this trip through Pyun's filmography, a jaunt into the subterranean of modern cinema. Decloux writes with great depth and enthusiasm.
February 18, 2023
Kailua, Hawaii is about as far culturally as one can get from Hollywood. And yet, from inauspicious beginnings growing up there and pumping gas at a local filling station, young Albert Pyun was determined to be a bigtime director.
He came closest to achieving his dream with his first feature, The Sword and the Sorcerer, a solid b-fantasy movie made in the wake of John Boorman’s Excalibur. The movie was a box office hit and even the critics who didn’t like it (which was most of them) acknowledged the film’s exuberance and charm.
This breakthrough should have led to more and bigger assignments for Pyun, but it didn’t. Part of it was the cruel machinations of the industry, but part of it was down to Pyun’s wild auteur streak. Faced with doing a straightforward film more likely to make money or following his muse, he elected to follow his muse, even if she led him off a cliff.
Some of these experiments were fascinating, if not entirely successful. Radioactive Dreams, for instance, a movie from which this book gets its title, centers around two boys hunkered in a fallout shelter with nothing but PI novels. When they emerge after the fallout lifts, they attempt to live out the noirish narratives of the books they read, intent on solving crimes among the mutants.
Other Pyun experiments feel more like Roger Corman-esque dares, films made on a bet. He shot a sci-fi film in three days in a single location, which, miraculously, didn’t suck. He also went to Bratislava and managed to shoot not one, not two, but three “urban” shoot ‘em ups. This despite the fact that his titular star—Snoop Dogg—was only there for something like a day and was too stoned to really perform during that time.
In and among the near-misses, capable journeymen efforts, and outright debacles, Pyun also made some very good martial arts movies. A lot of these efforts were hybrids between genres that had never been mixed in (American) cinema. Chinese Wuxia (“flying heroes”) were crosspollinated with cyborgs and kickboxers and John Woo-style triggermen who killed each other to a slamming wall-to-wall salsa and merengue music. The mélange didn’t always work, but what scientist doesn’t make mistakes when experimenting?
Critics mostly dismissed Pyun’s films at the time, but many times Pyun proved to be just a couple years ahead of the curve. And as the years passed, his devotion to his own singular vision inspired a cultlike following among a certain kind of cinema nerd.
Radioactive Dreams does a good job of correcting the slander against Pyun that he is a latter-day Ed Wood. For Wood never had the time or resources to prove whether it was a lack of talent or simply bad circumstances that made his movies so bad. Pyun proved, especially early in his career, that with a little money and time, he could turn in not just competent work, but sometimes truly inspired films.
The book includes some beautiful artwork—lurid painted posters as well as kitschier sketches and madly scribbled ideas scratched out in the margins of shooting scripts. Interviews with some of Pyun’s collaborators also help flesh out the picture of the man who devoted himself to an industry that all but dismissed him.
What ultimately emerges is a document of a dreamer refusing to let his dream die, even when disease started to cripple him. It’s also very telling that in an industry full of egos and narcissists, no one had a single bad world to say about Pyun. Those who worked with him once typically thereafter joined up as part of his repertoire troupe, willing to work for peanuts in the wilds of distant lands just to help the man achieve his vision.
Anyone who inspires that kind of loyalty, and frankly love, deserves to be celebrated, not mocked or ignored. Recommended for film fans, and those looking for inspiration and motivation to persevere.
He came closest to achieving his dream with his first feature, The Sword and the Sorcerer, a solid b-fantasy movie made in the wake of John Boorman’s Excalibur. The movie was a box office hit and even the critics who didn’t like it (which was most of them) acknowledged the film’s exuberance and charm.
This breakthrough should have led to more and bigger assignments for Pyun, but it didn’t. Part of it was the cruel machinations of the industry, but part of it was down to Pyun’s wild auteur streak. Faced with doing a straightforward film more likely to make money or following his muse, he elected to follow his muse, even if she led him off a cliff.
Some of these experiments were fascinating, if not entirely successful. Radioactive Dreams, for instance, a movie from which this book gets its title, centers around two boys hunkered in a fallout shelter with nothing but PI novels. When they emerge after the fallout lifts, they attempt to live out the noirish narratives of the books they read, intent on solving crimes among the mutants.
Other Pyun experiments feel more like Roger Corman-esque dares, films made on a bet. He shot a sci-fi film in three days in a single location, which, miraculously, didn’t suck. He also went to Bratislava and managed to shoot not one, not two, but three “urban” shoot ‘em ups. This despite the fact that his titular star—Snoop Dogg—was only there for something like a day and was too stoned to really perform during that time.
In and among the near-misses, capable journeymen efforts, and outright debacles, Pyun also made some very good martial arts movies. A lot of these efforts were hybrids between genres that had never been mixed in (American) cinema. Chinese Wuxia (“flying heroes”) were crosspollinated with cyborgs and kickboxers and John Woo-style triggermen who killed each other to a slamming wall-to-wall salsa and merengue music. The mélange didn’t always work, but what scientist doesn’t make mistakes when experimenting?
Critics mostly dismissed Pyun’s films at the time, but many times Pyun proved to be just a couple years ahead of the curve. And as the years passed, his devotion to his own singular vision inspired a cultlike following among a certain kind of cinema nerd.
Radioactive Dreams does a good job of correcting the slander against Pyun that he is a latter-day Ed Wood. For Wood never had the time or resources to prove whether it was a lack of talent or simply bad circumstances that made his movies so bad. Pyun proved, especially early in his career, that with a little money and time, he could turn in not just competent work, but sometimes truly inspired films.
The book includes some beautiful artwork—lurid painted posters as well as kitschier sketches and madly scribbled ideas scratched out in the margins of shooting scripts. Interviews with some of Pyun’s collaborators also help flesh out the picture of the man who devoted himself to an industry that all but dismissed him.
What ultimately emerges is a document of a dreamer refusing to let his dream die, even when disease started to cripple him. It’s also very telling that in an industry full of egos and narcissists, no one had a single bad world to say about Pyun. Those who worked with him once typically thereafter joined up as part of his repertoire troupe, willing to work for peanuts in the wilds of distant lands just to help the man achieve his vision.
Anyone who inspires that kind of loyalty, and frankly love, deserves to be celebrated, not mocked or ignored. Recommended for film fans, and those looking for inspiration and motivation to persevere.
September 6, 2021
A phenomenal overview of Pyun's filmography (with which I'm unfortunately mostly unfamiliar) and an emotionally resonant portrait of a filmmaker driven to create by any means necessary.
There are interviews with some of his closest collaborators interspersed throughout, but the highlight for me might have been the one with his longtime DP George Mooradian. Just based on *his* enthusiasm and generally good-natured attitude, it's easy to get a picture of what Pyun was like as a collaborator. It's infectious in the best possible way, and it made me want to pick up a camera and get out there and just go nuts with filters.
And now I have 40-some-odd movies to track down (I have seen and loved NEMESIS, so this has been a long time coming anyway).
There are interviews with some of his closest collaborators interspersed throughout, but the highlight for me might have been the one with his longtime DP George Mooradian. Just based on *his* enthusiasm and generally good-natured attitude, it's easy to get a picture of what Pyun was like as a collaborator. It's infectious in the best possible way, and it made me want to pick up a camera and get out there and just go nuts with filters.
And now I have 40-some-odd movies to track down (I have seen and loved NEMESIS, so this has been a long time coming anyway).
January 15, 2025
Like Albert Pyun, book
tries, has incredible heart
best but only one
tries, has incredible heart
best but only one
July 29, 2019
An incredibly informative collection of thoughts and interviews on an insatiably hard-working director who is probably unknown to the wide movie-going audience. Very well done, highly recommended to any movie fan regardless of their experience or background.
September 3, 2019
Prior to reading this I had almost no knowledge of or interest in Albert Pyun, nor really in the type of films that he makes. The book changed my mind on all of that - Pyun's career as Decloux tells it is fascinating, and I'm now looking forward to checking out a bunch of his work.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews