He'd hit the ground running in 1982 with his first movie, The Sword and The Sorcerer - which gave us the legendary blade-firing Tri-Sword.
My write-up had concluded with a trailer for Tales of An Ancient Empire, the long-awaited sequel to The Sword and The Sorcerer.
It so happened that I had acquired what I thought was an 'official' DVD of that sequel via eBay, but as Albert would go on to explain that was actually an unsanctioned early cut that he was not best pleased to discover was out in the wild.
He sent me a link that allowed me to view the first 18 minutes of the actual cut of Tale of An Ancient Empire... and it was such an improvement on the first version I had seen.
I've always had a preference for sword-and-sorcery B-movies, so my knowledge of the rest of Albert's vast oeuvre was very limited.
IMDB, which has a lengthy biography of Albert, says this of him:
"He is credited with pioneering the cyborg sub-genre and is considered to be a maverick and renegade in independent genre cinema. With over 50 titles to his name, he has enjoyed a prolific career spanning 30+ years and has earned himself a fevered cult following."
From our brief interactions well over a decade ago, Albert came across as a genuinely nice, and enthusiastic, film fan and it was his willingness to reach out to me all those years ago that really made an impression.
That he was keen to engage with a random small-time blogger such as I and ensure that I saw, and reacted to, the film as he had actually envisioned it spoke volumes.
Albert Pyun passed away on November 26, 2022, at the age of 69.
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