Liverpool friends finish childhood kung-fu movie 47 years on

A group of friends who spent their childhoods in the 1970s making mini-movies reunited to complete one of them 47 years later.

Paul Sudbury, 62, had dreamed of being Liverpool’s answer to Steven Spielberg when he was growing up on the Gerard Gardens estate in the city centre.

But after the death of his dad, he shelved his Bruce Lee-inspired kung-fu movie Big Boss.

Now he has premiered the film at The Museum of Liverpool, having re-assembled the surviving original cast and finished filming the movie he began making with a Super-8 cine camera he bought for £7.50 in the summer of 1976.

Paul recalled filming the action-packed spin on blockbusters of the time on the estate, and then charging his friends 10p to watch them when his parents went out on a Saturday night.

The takings would be put towards the £3.50 cost for a reel of film for their next production.

He said they were fantastic, carefree days living in the close-knit tenement blocks.

But he put his prized Super-8 camera away as he dealt with the sudden loss of his father.

When he heard one of the original cast in The Big Boss, Ian Sallery, was returning from Australia to visit family, Paul decided to reunite the cast and finish what they had started all those years ago.

Ian, Paul Birchall and John Tyson joined Paul and his son John for the final scenes.

Friend Tony Gandy, who had been involved in the original filming, died in 2020.

“It was so sad about Tony. He was one of the original henchmen in the film,” Paul said.

They filmed close to the now-demolished Churchill Way flyover in Liverpool city centre, where they had filmed in their youth.

Paul said: “It was like we were 14 again – and the years had melted away.

“We laughed so much as the combat scenes were so terrible. Four old men fighting… it was like a comedy.”

Paul never have got to work on Hollywood movie and instead had a career in banking, but he said the premiere of The Big Boss had been an “absolute dream”.

He said it was “emotional watching it”.

Paul described himself as an amateur filmmaker, having produced some documentaries over the years.

One of them, Gardens of Stone, about social housing and featuring Gerard Gardens, was also screened at the Museum of Liverpool to celebrate 20 years since it was made.

Also on display at the event was the unveiling of a model by historian Ged Fagan, featuring several tenements from Byrom Street in the 1970s, including Fontenoy Gardens, Gerard Gardens, The Technical College and Churchill Way flyovers.