Over the last forty years, director Albert Pyun has built an awesome career. He started off with the appropriately titled sword and sorcery classic The Sword and the Sorcerer and since then has directed such films as Cyborg, Captain America (1990), Kickboxer 2, Kickboxer 4, Arcade, Nemesis, Dollman, Mean Gun, Infection, and many more. So many more, he has around fifty feature directing credits to his name. Sadly, Pyun was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis several years ago… and it seems he is now in his final days. His wife Cynthia Curnan took to Facebook to ask fans to send in personal messages so she can read them to him. Curnan’s request for messages was then given a signal boost by a Sam Peckinpah fan page.
Curnan’s Facebook post can be found HERE. She said, “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.“
The post from the Sam Peckinpah page is HERE. They said, “It has come to my attention that cult movie director and direct-to-video pioneer Albert Pyun is very ill and does not have much time left. The Hawaiian-born filmmaker began his career under the tutelage of Toshiro Mifune and carved a reputation for himself as a B-level action/sci-fi director who brought memorable visuals and endless imaginations to films that were usually filmed on very limited budgets.
Known primarily for his kickboxer/apocalyptic spectacles, Pyun was clearly a student of greats like Sergio Leone, John Woo, Akira Kurosawa, and Sam Peckinpah in the way that he staged his action scenes and often transformed them into surreal landscapes for his eccentric characters to inhabit. Cult classics like THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER (1982), RADIOACTIVE DREAMS (1985), CYBORG (1989), CAPTAIN AMERICA (1990), NEMESIS (1992), KNIGHTS (1993), and MEAN GUNS (1997) are never going to be mistaken for cinematic masterpieces, and certainly many of Pyun’s films fall cheerfully into the so-bad-it’s-good corner of cinematic legacy — but they were all made on a wing and a prayer by a director with a distinctive artistic vision with a range of impressive cinematic tricks up his sleeve. Additionally, consider some of the legendary actors with whom Albert Pyun has collaborated: Burt Reynolds, Jean Claude Van Damme, Charlie Sheen, Lance Henriksen, Ice T, Christopher Lambert, Ronny Cox, Darren McGavin – and Peckinpah alumni Kris Kristofferson, James Coburn, Rutger Hauer, and Dennis Hopper.
Albert’s wife Cynthia has been posting updates about his condition for a while now on her private page and has let us know that while he is in his final days, Albert would love to hear from fans. She’s given me permission to post this request here for my readers – and I’m asking you now to rise to the occasion. Albert has been ill for quite some time, but his love for cinema has kept him going; indeed, he has spent these twilight years of his life working tirelessly on new projects that he will never live to see completed. I think it would mean a hell of a lot if those of us here who love cinema could express some words of gratitude to a man who has spent his life in the field, fearlessly working against an often unforgiving industry to bring his artistic vision to the screen.
If you’d like to leave some words of thanks for Albert, please do so in the comments below. Cynthia will make sure that Albert sees them. And by all means – share this post everywhere. Thanks, team.“
So if you’re a fan of Pyun’s work, now is the time to reach out and let him know that you appreciate the entertainment he has provided over the decades. Here’s hoping his health will actually turn around for the better, but it will be good for him to hear from fans either way.