The Karate Kid’ is 30 years old this weekend. To celebrate, we caught up with Martin Kove, one of the film’s stars, to help us delve into its history.
“None of us really knew what was going on, it was just magic,” says Martin Kove, sitting in his Philadelphia hotel. The actor, who played evil Cobra Kai instructor John Kreese in the first three ‘Karate Kid’ movies, is in between engagements at Wizard World, where he’s celebrating 30 years of the original classic movie alongside the fans.
“As it was all cut together, then I think the actors knew [it was something special]. It’s like one big family even thirty years later.”
Kove has spent the last couple of days sharing the stage with Ralph Macchio, relishing the role which turned him into a pop culture icon (as anyone with a ‘Sweep The Leg’ T-shirt will tell you).
“Little kids come up to me in the supermarket, give me a punch on the hip and say, ‘you hurt Ralph!’” he continues. “[Kreese] is the kind of character the public enjoy hating.”
But Kove’s admission that initially no-one guessed this comparatively low-key movie, shot in 42 days around Los Angeles, would eventually gross more than a hundred million at the box office and become a phenomenon isn’t actually that hard to believe.
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