“Hong Kong Phooey, Number One Super Guy”
Hong Kong Phooey grew out of the Kung Fu craze that swept the world in the mid-seventies, mainly thanks to the movies of Bruce Lee bringing Martial Arts to a western audience and the show itself is like a cross between Batman and Enter The Dragon.
Mild mannered police station janitor Penrod Pooch is in reality Kung Fu superhero Hong Kong Phooey who on hearing of trouble would dive into a filing cabinet to emerge in his super hero guise, leaping into his Phooeymobile which had the amazing ability to transform itself into all manner of vehicles.
One of the brilliant aspects of the show was that Phooey was learning his trade via correspondence course and quite often would have to seek recourse to his text books in the middle of a fight, another brilliant plus was the fact that the legendary Scatman Crothers provides Phooey’s voice, other voices on the show include Joe E. Ross as Sgt Flint who channels the same “ooh ooh” type vibe as he does in the equally superb Help It’s The Hair Bear Bunch and Kathy Gori provides the voice of Rosemary the phone operator at the station who harboured desires for Phooey but wouldn’t look twice at Penrod Pooch.
production details
USA / ABC-Hanna Barbera / 16×20 minute episodes / Broadcast 1974
Producers: William Hanna, Joseph Barbera, Iwao Takamoto
Voice Cast
SCATMAN CROTHERS as Penrod ‘Penry’ Pooch
JOE. E. ROSS as Sgt Flint
KATHI GORI as Rosemary
DON MESSICK as Spot the cat
