Kinavesa and Silver Star Filmography

Kim Yong Lim's KINAVESA and SILVER STAR: A Biography and Detailed Filmography

A familiar presence at the overseas film markets was one of the busiest of the low-rent Filipino outfits, the Silver Star Film Company, formerly Kinavesa Films International. Chinese-Filipino (or “Chinoy”) and possibly part-Korean businessman Kim Y. “Kimmy” Lim had been involved with Hong Kong productions filmed in the Philippines as far back as 1973's Tiger Force (aka Kill The Tiger), and the Seventies kung fu boom proved lucrative for Lim, who made his own carbon copies for the local market (They Call Him Bruce Lee [1978] featured the OTHER “Bruce Lee of the Philippines”, or one of them, at least: future export action star Rey Malonzo). After a series of goon actioners featuring all-Filipino casts, Mr Lim started thinking globally, and reasoned a number of European faces would enhance opportunities to sell his films internationally. He chose Richard Harrison - American star of countless spaghetti western and spy films of the Sixties, and kung fu movies of the Seventies – arrived on a plane from his Hong Kong home, and the motley crew of what would become Silver Star's stock company of familiar faces. The Vietnam-era war film Intrusion: Cambodia (1981) was a minor hit, but Mr Lim's standard US $50,000 budget practically guaranteed a healthy return. Richard Harrison returned to Mr Lim's meagre payroll several times - Fireback, Rescue Team, Hunter's Crossing (all 1983), Blood Debt (1984) - to be replaced by fellow Americans Bruce Baron, Max Thayer, Ron Marchini and Spanish-born Romano Kristoff, and backed by the ever-familiar faces of James Gaines Jr, Mike Monty, Nick Nicholson, Don Gordon Bell, Jim Moss and many others. Some, like Nicholson, Bell and Mike Cohen, were ex-US military and presumably at home on Lim's ersatz battlefields; others were actors or would-be actors looking for adventure in the Philippines’ frontier conditions. 

Urban revenge movies with martial arts gave way to the inevitable ninja cycle following Enter The Ninja (1981), and Rambo: First Blood Part 2 (1985) continued the seemingly endless string of jungle actioners, and Mr Lim was able to keep up the exhaustive output by maintaining his Hong Kong connections: film print processing, points of international distribution, and access to the wider Asian market. Cannon Films would also pick up many of the Silver Star's product and redistribute them as “filler”: bonus films to bulk out a video package of their own productions. The fact Mr Lim not only survived the decline of both the Filipino export and Tagalog markets, and maintains the same office in Manila's Chinatown peddling the Silver Star Film Company back catalogue to the overseas DVD trade, is testament to his staying power, resourcefulness and penny-pinching tenacity.