Jalal Merhi

Jalal Merhi is a Brazilian-born Lebanese-Canadian martial artist and filmmaker.

As a competitor, he was a regular on the tournament scene in the late 1970s to mid 1980s.

As a film and television producer, he owns the Film One company, and previously owned a studio located at the Donlands Theatre in Toronto.

Merhi was born in Brazil to a family of Druze Lebanese expatriates working in the jewelry industry.

He moved to Lebanon at age six, before moving again to Canada at age nineteen to study and to escape the Civil War.

He initially spent time between Montreal and Toronto before permanently settling in the latter.

In Canada, Merhi studied film and business.

He is an alumn of Ryerson University and George Brown College, where he was discouraged to pursue a film career by one of his professors.

He originally followed in his forebears' footsteps, operating JM Co., a Toronto branch of the family business which consisted of several shops and a manufacture.

Merhi started martial arts at the age of eleven.

He was inspired by his grandfather, an amateur boxer whose training books he discovered, and his brother, a Taekwondo practitioner whose routines he emulated.

His formal training, however, started at age fifteen with Beirut-based club Benzi, which was affiliated with the Japan Karate Association.

While he stuck with Shotokan karate long enough to earn a black belt, he deemed the rigid training out of touch with the spirituality he sought from martial arts.

His true interest lay in Chinese martial arts due to their emphasis on artistry and traditional weapons, but tuition in those disciplines was not widely available at the time.

Within two months of moving to Canada, Merhi found Mo Chow's kung fu school in Toronto and started training there, primarily in the Choy Li Fut and Hung Gar styles.

Crediting his karate background, Merhi says he became competitive in kung fu in about half a year.

He found a particular niche in the weapons category, where he secured his first placing in just his second tournament in early 1977.

Merhi originally competed in combat, open hand forms and weapons, but a hand injury suffered in late 1978 led him to withdraw from combat to focus on the later two categories.

Although he had pondered entering the world of film as early as 1979, Merhi's involvement with the industry began in earnest in 1986.

Among career highlights, Merhi claims victories in such competitions as the Canada Cup Classic and the North American Open Weapons Championship, both in 1980.

Merhi also helped promote martial arts tournaments like the Canadian Karate Internationals, and later the Diamond Challenge, with his Shotokan teacher Bill Pickells.

His jewelry company presented winners in major classes with a diamond-studded championship ring worth close to CDN$3000 (equivalent to CDN$8,500 in 2024), an attractive novelty on the burgeoning North American martial arts scene.

It lured several name competitors from the U.S., such as Steve "Nasty" Anderson, Terrance "Tokey" Hill, Sonny Onoo, Cynthia Rothrock and Billy Blanks, several of which later appeared in his movies.

Merhi's red sash granted him the authority to teach kung fu, and he once owned his own school in the Danforth–Greenwood neighborhood of Toronto.

Following a win in an Ontario tournament in 1986, he received an offer to play an ensemble role in a martial arts film, which led to another offer to double for a younger actor.

The aspiring actor considered both offers, although neither was to his liking.

When the financing for the first movie fell by the wayside, he entered talks to back it as well.

Having thus gained inside knowledge of the film production chain, Merhi reasoned that he would be better served to launch his own production company and control his career.

Merhi established his company Film One in 1988 or 1989, depending on sources.

His first completed film, Black Pearls, was not successful, with Merhi bearing the brunt of the financial burden.

It still sold in Canada to Cineplex, whose Jeff Sackman helped him network and gain financing for a second picture, Tiger Claws, through Shapiro-Glickenhaus Entertainment (SGE).

Thanks to SGE's distribution deal with MCA/Universal Home Video, the film found a wider audience, which Merhi saw as vindication after his inauspicious beginnings.

Merhi's first two films were produced without any provincial or national subsidies.

Later films relied on some of Canada's usual assistance programs, although a condescending rebuttal by a Telefilm Canada member, the country's main film support organization and an arbiter of taste within the industry, soured him so much that he resolved to succeed without them.

Even in his heyday, Merhi stuck to a lean template, banking on his martial arts experience to limit superfluous coverage, and wrap his films within three weeks for budgets around CDN1 million—substantially less than the Canadian industry average—and grosses generally equaling three times that.

Thanks to Tiger Claws' success, its successors Talons of the Eagle and TC 2000 quickly gained financing, and Merhi brought in friend Billy Blanks as his co-star.

When they proved successful, SGE decided to retain Blanks' services and go in a different direction, discarding all of Merhi's influences over the anticipated Talons of the Eagle sequel, which became an unrelated buddy movie starring Blanks and "Rowdy" Roddy Piper called Back in Action.

An acrimonious split ensued.

Still reeling from the loss of his SGE deal, Merhi regrouped and aligned his company with fledgling Le Monde Entertainment, an affiliate of Canadian major Alliance Communications.

It afforded Merhi his highest budget yet for Expect No Mercy, which mixed fisticuffs with early CGI-based science fiction, although Le Monde president John Freme voiced limited belief in the long term prospects of martial arts vehicles.