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For more than thirty years, fans have talked about the fights in Green With Evil. The timing still holds. The work still looks sharp. What has not been said clearly enough, in all that time, is that stuntman Hien Nguyen was one of the people who built those fights.
Official end credits list John Barrett and Isaac Florentine as the stunt choreographers. Austin St. John was there, and he puts it simply: he and Hien choreographed the fights in the dark dimension — Jason against Goldar, and then Jason against the Green Ranger in the suit. Austin says that he and Hien did most of the choreography on those two fights, with advice from John and Isaac, who also choreographed the other fights across Green With Evil. Thank you to both of them for their advice on those fights, and for choreographing the other fights in Green With Evil. Austin says that he and the late Jason David Frank choreographed the final battle on the beach, where Jason and Tommy face off. Public credits have long listed Hien as a Putty Patroller and as a performer in tournament scenes, and have not listed him as a choreographer of those fights. Austin wants Hien’s work on them named here.
Bruce Heinsius, who photographed behind the scenes, remembers that fight this way: “One thing that struck me about the scene where Austin is fighting Goldar is that he did it as a teenager without the power suit. It's partly written into Austin's character. However, his martial arts skills in real life, made it believable that he could challenge Goldar even without [Jason's] superpowers…” And one moment stayed with Bruce: “I remember him doing a somersault roll into the dry ice fog. It was so cool to see him roll through and see the mist move out of his way and he did it so gracefully as a fighting strategy… He looked quite confident even if he was at a disadvantage fighting a super villain!”
Hien has said that he played himself in Season 1, Episode 17 — Green With Evil, Part I: Out of Control — during the martial-arts tournament in that episode, and that he did the sticks. In U.S. airing order, that is the first part of Green With Evil, which premiered on October 5, 1993. The episode opens at the Angel Grove Martial Arts Expo, at the Youth Center, where Jason and Tommy compete in an exhibition match. The original end credits list Hien among the Putty Patrollers. IMDb also lists him and Richard Branden as performers at the tournament in this part.
Hien was one of the martial artists and stunt performers who made the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers look as precise as it did. IMDb credits him on the series across dozens of episodes, including Green With Evil. Power Rangers Central, a long-running fan credit list, also names him among the suit performers for several of the Rangers, including the Green Ranger. On his IMDb page, and on long-running fan credit lists, he is listed as the stunt double for the White Ranger in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie (1995).
Bruce Heinsius, who photographed behind the scenes, remembers Hien this way: “Hien Nguyen was a super talented bundle of energy who seemed very inspired by Bruce Lee, and sometimes he seemed to channel his spirit. Hien was capable of doing an amazing backflip, kicking objects quite high like Bruce Lee used to do in some of his TV appearances when he would kick a hanging lamp from the ceiling. Hien not only was one of the grey Putty Patrollers. He also did justice when he put on the green [or] white Power Ranger suits to make Austin St. John and Jason David Frank's dynamic martial arts look without compromise!”
Hien wore the Red Ranger suit on rare occasions, but mostly he doubled Jason David Frank. He did not wear the Red Ranger suit in the Green With Evil episodes (Episodes 17 through 21), because the Red Ranger’s suited scenes in those episodes were Japanese footage filmed in Japan.
Hien adds that in the original American footage of Green With Evil, he performed the in-suit action and stunts as the Green Ranger, alongside other stunt doubles he names, including Erik Betts and Tomoo Oe. Jason David Frank played Tommy on camera and handled the out-of-suit acting and some of the martial arts. Over the arc, Hien performed in more than one suit: Goldar in the dark-dimension fight pictured above, and the Green Ranger. Hien notes that much of the large-scale suited battle footage was adapted from the Japanese series Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger, featuring suit actor Seiji Takaiwa.
Austin says: “Hien was a martial artist on set for whom I had the utmost respect. His skill certainly surpassed many martial artists in Hollywood at the time.”
That same skill showed up in other work. In 1995 and 1996, audiences saw him as Tsunami on WMAC Masters, a martial-arts television series, in more than twenty episodes. In 1995 he was also credited as a fight choreographer, and as an on-screen fighter, on the film Savate. Years later he was the stunt coordinator on Finders Keepers (2018).
Choreographing a fight means designing the rhythm, the character, and the safety of every exchange so it reads on camera and so the people in it can walk away unhurt. It is exacting, physical, unglamorous work. It is also work that often goes unnamed, even when the scene itself lives on.
Green With Evil is still one of the moments people bring up at the table. The name that belongs with those fights is Hien Nguyen. Thank you, Hien, for the skill, for the work, and for the fights fans have been talking about for three decades. The credit is yours.
Want to meet Hien Nguyen in person? Hien appears at Comic Cons around the world, booked through Galactic Productions. For booking, contact Zach McGinnis at zach@galacticproductionsllc.com or Anicia Capozzoli at anicia@galacticproductionsllc.com.
Behind-the-scenes photos © Bruce Heinsius. Used with permission.
Stunt and fight credits
The official end credits of Green With Evil, Parts I–V, use the same stunt and fight wording on all five parts.
Stunt choreographers: John Barrett and Isaac Florentine.
Credited as the Putty Patrollers: Erik Betts, Richard Branden, Bridget Riley, Ed Neil, Hien Nguyen, Duwane Heide, Carl Mosher, Danny Stallcup, Robert Steck, and Tony Weatherilt.
Isaac Florentine is also credited as 2nd Unit Director on all five parts.
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