A sad reminder today that all things must pass. Big Trouble in Little China actor Peter Kwong has died at the age of 73. He played Rain, one of the Three Storms serving semi-immortal villain David Lo-Pan in John Carpenter’s 1986 classic.
The Three Storms were a henchman boyband defined by their martial arts prowess, wearing upside-down baskets on their heads and their ability to summon localised weather systems that gave them superpowers (or in Rain’s case, probably just made him wet). He was also impervious to Jack Burton’s punches.
The other two STORMS were Thunder and Lightning. Rain may have been short-changed on the name front, but he made up for it with some awesome weaponry. Each Storm carried their own bespoke blades, and Rain wielded the awesome backscratchers you can see in the image above. I’m not fully convinced of their effectiveness in a fight, but they looked cool to me (I was nine). His final swordfight with Wang is epic.
Peter Kwong also appeared in the other 1986 movie featuring Chinese mysticism – the underrated Eddie Murphy action-comedy The Golden Child. In that he played henchman Tommy Tong, who cuts himself shaving and bleeds to death looking for a Kleenex. Not really, but that’s Eddie Murphy’s theory when he finds his body.
Peter Kwong had over 100 movie and television credits to his name, so I won’t list them all here. I’ve seen him in a few other things over the years, and every time my thought process was the same: ‘I recognise that guy,’ followed by ‘he was one of the basket cases in Big Trouble in Little China! I love that guy!’ That’s not a bad legacy.
